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What is a shotgun house? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-is-a-shotgun-house | Shotgun houses are iconic pieces of American architecture: they're long, narrow, and filled with artistic flourishes. But where did they come from? In this episode, Chuck and Josh explore the mysterious origins of shotgun houses. | Shotgun houses are iconic pieces of American architecture: they're long, narrow, and filled with artistic flourishes. But where did they come from? In this episode, Chuck and Josh explore the mysterious origins of shotgun houses. | Thu, 10 May 2012 17:49:48 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=17, tm_min=49, tm_sec=48, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=131, tm_isdst=0) | 22626296 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporicscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles, www. Chuck Bryant with me, as always, which makes this stuff you should know. Yeah. That's what themes on. Thank you. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I feel like we just did this. I'm looking forward to this show. Are you? Yeah. Because it touches on parts of Atlanta in its history, which I always love. Sure. And that's just Atlanta, man. All over the state. All over the state. Chuck. Yes. As the immortal David Byrne put it, you may find yourself living in a shotgun check. You may find yourself in another part of the world. I think even David Byrne didn't realize what he was saying when he put those two lines together. I think he meant them to contrast with one another. Yeah. But really, if you found yourself in a shotgun check and, say, the beginning of the 19th century, you probably were experiencing both. Yeah, but he doesn't tip. No, he doesn't. He cares what he said. That's crazy. So, Chuck, do you remember hurricane Katrina? Sure. It killed, I believe, 1800 people. Wow. That is a lot of people. And one of the things, in addition to all the loss of life and property, was a real worry about loss of very specific type of architecture, the shotgun house. And the reason even though you can find it everywhere from Key West to Chicago to San Francisco, all over the place, you can find shocking houses. Atlanta. The reason why people were worried about losing it in New Orleans is because as far as the United States goes, that is where it was born. That's right. And the whole reason anybody would even worry about a shotgun house, if you've ever seen one, you might think, why would anyone care about losing old chocolate houses? Is because they are routinely cited as the possibly greatest contribution by African Americans to American specific architecture and design. And not only that, responsible for the bringing together in many ways of the African American communities due to their things that we're going to talk about. I was going to ruin it. Thank you for saying that was good, man. Okay. You've surely seen a shotgun house. Yeah. Let's talk about some of the features we should. Yeah, because there's probably plenty of people out there and people who have seen them and don't know what we're talking about, about you're to go, oh, if you haven't seen them, then go onto how stuff works.com and type in what's a shotgun house? And you will find some images of shotgun houses in this article that I wrote. That's true. You wrote this years and years ago. I don't think I knew that. Yeah. Nice job. Shotgun house is long and narrow. A lot of times they won't have windows on the side of the house. Although in researching this, I saw plenty that do. I did, too. It's almost like a throwaway. Sometimes they do don't. Yes. And the reason why is because they're often really close together. Sure. Like, I mean, like a foot, couple of feet. You can maybe walk without turning between two houses. Yeah, but that's it exactly. Well, you just said they were close to one another. They have high ceilings. Very few of them had indoor plumbing at first. That was usually brought on later and tacked onto the rear of the house, sometimes crudely. Typically what you have is living room, bedroom, bedroom, kitchen, all in a row, all in a straight line, all the doors lining up, interior doors lining up. Right. So when the front and back door is open, you can see clear through the house, which is one of the reasons why a lot of people think it got its name. You could shoot a gun or shotgun through the front door and it would exit out the back door without hitting a single wall, and it would hit the house behind it. Right. Or some poor staff who is coming in. And like you point out, Josh, it's a cute story and it's all over the place. I bet you there are many, many tours of New Orleans that say that story is true. May or may not be. It probably isn't. What else is specific about shotgun houses, Chuck? Aside from being modest homes? They have certain architectural flourishes that make them distinctive. I think the idea was kind of like, we may be poor and not have the biggest house, but we can certainly adorn the venting grades. And what the arbor that held up the not the arbor brackets that held up the roof, they would be intricately carved, usually in a gingerbread design, which a lot of people kind of criticize or poopooed that addition as poor blacks or even before that, slaves just trying to emulate whites. Which is not the case, because if you trace the shotgun house finds its origins in the US. And New Orleans. That's right. But if you go even further back, you'll find older ones on Haiti, and then even further back, you will find something that looks startlingly similar in West Africa and in the Yaruba tongue. These houses are called to do, which means house in Yaruba or Shogun, which means God's house. So probably that's where the name comes from, by the way, to Gun or Shogun from the Yoruba dialect. Right. Which I love. But in these houses, they also had like intricate details, but they were more of an African motif over time. Here in the United States. They adopted gingerbread or Victorian. Yeah. Different kinds of carvings. But it is very cool. It's kind of like this is a very modest, straightforward house, but there's also pretty neat little details. Right. We can still have, like, great pride in it. Exactly. They were usually New Orleans they were typically a few feet off the ground because of the obvious flooding problems there. Yeah. And it seems believable to me, but I didn't have time to triple check it at the time. Property taxes were based on frontage. Still are, man. Are they? In New Orleans, if you have a house, you're paying by the frontage, which is the width of your house. Yes. And if you are looking at a shotgun house, it's very narrow, but it's long. Right. And the number of rooms. Okay. Yeah. And in New Orleans, they changed it to the number of rooms they added that on. Yeah, it's both. Okay. And in New Orleans, rooms include hallways and closets, and you're not going to find a hallway or a closet in a shotgun house. So it's also another way to, I guess, keep your property taxes low as well. And I found that originally it was just frontage. And then so they started building the Camelbacks, which is a shotgun house with a second storey on the rear of the house only. And then that's when the city said, oh, well, we should tack rooms onto this as well, because these smart people have found a way around paying as much property tax. Right. Pretty smart. Yeah, it makes sense. And I also found that the first mention in print calling them shotgun houses was in our very own Atlanta Journal Constitution. Is that right? In 19 three, a classified ad may have been the first time that it was actually named that in print. And it was like, shotgun house, $12 a month rent. That's not too bad. But you could get a shotgun house about that time. A kit for $100. Yeah. They also allow for good airflow, too, I wanted to mention. Yeah. Because you can open up the front and back doors and you got a straight shot. Well, that's one of the reasons why they were adopted in Haiti. Not everybody in Haiti was from West Africa, but that became the predominant style, this West African design house, because it fit in really well with the Tropics sure. In New Orleans. Right. So, well, it made its way from Haiti to New Orleans indirectly because of the French Revolution. Right. So French Revolution takes place and you've got Liberty egality fraternity to all people, that put French planners in Haiti in kind of a pickle because they couldn't grant liberty to their slaves because they wouldn't have any profits any longer. Right. So as they're figuring this out, they're trying to figure out what to do. A guy named Tucson Lou Vicher makes the decision for him and leads a slave uprising that lasts for many years and basically drives all of the white plantation owners from the island of Haiti, one of the places that they went. And then Haiti became the first recognized sovereign maroon nation of freed slaves, revolting slaves, which is pretty cool. But that also led to, if you go back and listen to our voodoo podcast, a deep and abiding suspicion by whites of Haiti. All things Haiti from that point on. Right. The slave uprising that led to the freeing of Haiti also led to the white populating of New Orleans. Right. So about that time, if you went to New Orleans, there were about twelve zero people and a third of them were slaves, a third of them were white, and then a third of them were free blacks. Right. So this real melting pot. And one of the things that came about from that was people fleeing Haiti, bringing the shotgun houses with them. Right. And then it was always African American and it was always associated with African Americans. And it just kind of spread from there to where if you came across a working class African American neighborhood like in Chicago or something like that, you're going to see shotgun houses. Right. Or Atlanta, like I've mentioned many times, if you are local, then you can see these kinds of houses in like the Sweet Auburn district, cabbage Town and I think Cabbage Town. They were houses for factory workers, for the nearby cotton mill off and factories. Yeah, it changed tans also you're going to find them directly across the street from Martin Luther Kingsburg place. That's right. In the King Memorial area. The whole park is there are still people that live in them. Oh, yeah. And they've been pretty well preserved over the years. Yeah, it's very cool. But those were like late 19th century built. But it did kind of transition from African American only to working class of all colors. The shotgun house became kind of an emblem of the working class as much as African Americans. Now, is a row house the same thing, or is the row house just no, those are side by side, like touching, sometimes all forming one large building. But then maybe different gables, differentiating them. A shotgun house could be a row house, but a row house can't be a shotgun house because doesn't row house indicate like the proximity to one another more than the style of the house? Or does it? No, I think it's both. Is it? Yeah. And then the shocking house is not supposed to be confused with the railroad house either, which is you enter and there's a long hallway from front to back and off of the hallway are rooms. Yeah. My friend rail car apartments. My friend Meredith in New York and Brooklyn lives in a railroad apartment. Okay. Which is always a little weird because when I would stay there, I would stay in the living room. And when someone had to go to the bathroom, they would have to walk through the living room to get to the bathroom. It's always awkward. Yeah. Or she could go outside through the hallway right. And then come back in because she had two doors to her apartment. Got you. Still does. Yeah. Hi, Meredith. So, chuck, we were talking about where else they spread. There's also a lot of them in oklahoma, especially southern oklahoma. Oh, really? Yeah, and one of the reasons why is because southern oklahoma, the oklahoma territory, before it became a state, was a free black area, and a lot of blacks traveled to oklahoma to move to oklahoma to be free. And a lot of runaway slaves, maroons is what they're called formed and integrated with native american tribes like the seminoles. And when these five civilized tribes and making air quotes, like, furiously were moved to the oklahoma territory, a lot of blacks went with them, and shocking houses showed up alongside the whole thing. Awesome. And there's, like, all black towns are formerly all black towns in southern oklahoma, where it's like shocking houses everywhere. Wow. Yeah. So, chuck, if you ask me, I feel like now we've reached the point where this is the facts of the show, and I know you're excited about this one. Well, it's cool. It's one of the reasons I talked about why the cultural legacy of the shotgun home had a lot to do with bringing together the african american community is because of a little something called the front porch. Yeah. They didn't exist in the United States before the shotgun house brought it along. So shotgun houses are typically I mean, a lot of them actually were so far forward that they were on the sidewalk. Yeah. But the ones that weren't had a few feet of grass and then a front porch to hang out on and a small house you're going to congregate on the front porch. And in the evenings, if your neighbors are on a front porch 5ft from you and they're 5ft from another one, then what you have is a big old, friendly cultural block party going on right. Every evening. And the porch is made it's a spandrel, I guess, of the overhanging roof. And then if you add the fact that in new Orleans, like you said, they were built off of the ground some, you have to build steps to go up to it. And then you have just you have a de facto porch, and then you add a bunch of them together, and there you go. So we don't have porch. So, like, these huge wraparound porches and old, like, plantation mansions stoops in new york, all of this stuff can be traced back to the shotgun house. Really? Yeah. That is crazy. And thank you for that shotgun house builders, because one of my favorite things is the front porch or the back porch. Good porch. It's very important. You know, shotgun houses started to wane in the 20s. Yeah. And it wasn't until fairly recently that we knew the history of shotgun houses that architects went back and art historians went back and figured out where this all came from and traced it step by step. I mean, it was within the last couple of decades. Well and they were like, okay, we found some stocking houses, and these are really old. And they date them and they'd be like, okay, New Orleans is the birthplace. And then somebody be like, have you been to Porter Prince? They got some that are really, really old there. And then they traced them back, and then somebody figured out that they were from West Africa. But the new construction in the United States waned in the like I said, about the turn of the last century, you could get a kit for about $100, which also made them really good cheap housing for labor. If you had, like, a work camp, you probably had a shotgun house cabbage down. Yeah, exactly. And they were also really good for disaster relief. Specifically. They made a big appearance in the San Francisco earthquake of of 19. Six. Well, yeah, they needed to put up displaced people. And when you can build a house for $100, then you do so. Exactly. And when it can be prefabricated and then taken apart in, like, six large parts, put on a train and sent somewhere, and then put back together within a couple of hours. It's like a waffle house. Yeah, it's exactly like a Waffle House, as a matter of fact, I think you can go on a limb and say, we wouldn't have the Waffle House without the shotgun house. You're right. Little pop culture. Yeah. You already mentioned David Byrne. Yeah. Coughs. John Mellencamp. My boy. Coughs pink Houses was about a shotgun house. Apparently. His legend has it he was driving on a busy main road and he saw this old black guy sitting on the front porch of his little pink shotgun house. Gave him a wave, and he said he just looked like he was as happy as could be sitting out on his porch nice. And wrote a song about it. That's nice. The album that I was on, too. Yes, I think so. Great song. Elvis Presley was born in a shotgun house. Oh, yeah. In Tupelo. Yeah. Mississippi, which is where I have family, actually. And Aaron Neville grew up in a shotgun house. The incomparable and muscly. Man, that guy's. And moly. But boy, man, that guy can sing. Yes. Like a bird. Look at his face. Pretty good. Aaron Neville shocking houses are making a resurgence, too, by the way. Are they building them again? Yes, there's this thing called the tiny house movement. Oh, yeah, that and the whole idea of living modestly in a house you can afford that grants a very small carbon footprint. Shocking houses fit that bill. I like the tiny house thing. I think, actually Emily might have written an article about that. Is that right? If I'm not mistaken? Or maybe it was me. Somebody did. Somebody in our family did. I remember it happening. Was it Buckley a few years ago? Yeah, Buckley wrote it. You got anything else? No. Go seek out local historic landmarks that might be easily overlooked when you're angry in traffic? Yes. And when next time you pass a shotgun house, like, stop and look at it and you'll see some pretty cool little details to it, ask them to open the door so you can shoot a gun through it. Don't do that, man. That was a reversal. I was like, no, don't do a Chuck. Just normally. It's the other way around. And if you are ever in Atlanta, chuck and I always recommend going to the King Memorial Center, the place where he's buried, where the eternal flame is. And all the surrounding area is like, a living museum. Preserved house is just awesome. One of my favorite parts of Atlanta, for sure. So if you want to learn more about shotgun houses and see pictures of shotgun houses, you can type the words shotgun house two words into the search bar athouselfworks.com and that'll bring up this article that I wrote. And I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh I'm going to call this Beastie email. Hey, guys. Did you read this one? No, I just listened to the music sampling podcast. We get a lot of good feedback on that, by the way, and everybody loved that. It was a good call to us. And a lot of people offered up like, people that know way more than us, offered up a lot of cool insight. Yes. We kept getting called out for not mentioning Girl Talk. I've never heard girl talk, so I don't feel bad. Yeah, but everyone we know about Girl Talk now. Okay, guys, I just listened to the Music sampling podcast, wanted to say how great it was that you featured the Beastie Boys so prominently in the show. Thought I'd share a little story of when I met them during their 1987 licensed Ill tour in Las Vegas when I was 15. So this girl must be my age, because I saw that to her, and I was about 15. Well, they performed in a concert hall on the UNLV campus, so it was easy to get to the area where their tour bus was. Because I lived in the bleachers, they were inviting every female they saw back to their hotel for a party, including 15 year old Jeez. Well, they were only, like, 18. 1920 still. Well, I know, but you get to be 40, and you're like, what's the big difference of five years back then? Trust me. I'm just saying, it's not like they were, like, 1520 years old. Right? I'm with you. All right. I'm defending their pedicilia. By the time we got there, the party had taken over the 9th floor and had already been shut down. We got to say hi to MCA before being escorted away by security for curfew violation, but I was determined. I skipped school the next day, went back to the hotel, basically casing the joint. I ended up finding MCA, who remembered me from the night before. I said, Howdy? He said, Hi. Very nice. What? You were waiting on that one. Yeah. I ended up spending the whole day with the guys, chatting, playing arcade games, walking over to a 711 with a very hungover Ad rock and even helping load their bags onto the tour bus. They're only 1920 and 21 at the time, very unassuming, so they weren't getting much attention. It felt like a little sister tagging along with their super cool older brothers. That is very cool. At one point, MCA offered me a tour of the bus we got on and he closed the door and said, now we cannot do all sorts of things that you're going to tell all your friends. We did anyway. He was really hysterical, so he was like he was still a gentleman, unfortunately. And he's like a Buddhist now. Yeah, big time. Unfortunately. I had not thought to bring a camera with me, so I have no picks. I did get her auto documentation. Any of this happened? No. She does. Oh, yeah. I did get their autographs, but the only paper I had in my jacket was old school Snoopy Valentines I had bought to give out friends. I still treasure my three Snoopy Valentine's, each one with their autographs, and she sent pictures of them. That's cool. I stayed until they left around six at night. I naively asked NCAA if he would write to me. He answered with an honest no and gave me a very sweet kiss on the cheek. I loved it that they have continued to rise in popularity and are given the respect of being true innovators in the field. First is Ally Smith, and she got kissed on the cheek by a very sweet sounding MCU. And all your 15 year olds out there, you better be at home sleeping. Yeah. Don't be hanging out with the 21 year old dudes. Especially not those girl top people. Are those guys or girls? I think girl talks. A guy steer clear. That girl talk to yeah. Let's see. What do you want to call out for? Do you live in a shotgun house? No. I guess yeah, if you have a house with an interesting history we did that one. Yeah, but let's do it again. Oh, boy. If you live in a house with an interesting history or you hung out with the BC boys, we want to hear those. You can write to us at let's see. You can tweet to us at Syscape podcasts with our handle facebook. Comstuffyshennow is also on Facebook and you can send us an email at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? 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. 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How do trees affect the weather? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-do-trees-affect-the-weather | Sure, you know that trees have an impact on climate change: to wit, fewer trees mean more atmospheric CO2. But did you know that trees can actually impact local and immediate weather? Learn about why you should love trees even more than you do. | Sure, you know that trees have an impact on climate change: to wit, fewer trees mean more atmospheric CO2. But did you know that trees can actually impact local and immediate weather? Learn about why you should love trees even more than you do. | Thu, 06 Jun 2013 13:21:40 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=13, tm_min=21, tm_sec=40, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=157, tm_isdst=0) | 26262131 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from houseupworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, which makes the stuff you should know. The podcast I don't think I should ever see. Finish, please. Because of that horrible house fire. It's good, but it's not quite poetry. What was it? I don't think Cassel ever see something so beautiful as a tree. Is that right? A poem. As beautiful as a tree. Is it a poem? Okay. Yeah. Which is really something, because what was that, longfellow or Whitman? No, I want to say, like, Joyce Carol Oates. No, no, we should look this up. Okay, well, we're freewheeling. While you're looking it up, it's really saying something, because insert poet's name here really was taking his own craft a task and appreciated his or her own task. And it was still saying that a tree is lovelier than any poem, which is a real ode to nature. So I said, Joyce Carol Oates. But I was in fact, wrong. It was in fact, Joyce Kilmer, who was a dude. I thought for sure it was like Longfellow the mama's boy if I've ever seen one. Right there. Nice bright poems about trees would expect. That's a great line. Yeah, we botched that one all over the place. Yeah, we did. But we're not going to start over. That's okay. This isn't a poetry slam. This is stuff you should know. We would never slam poetry. No. Instead, we would spend our time, as is our want, promoting trees, talk about trees and how great they are. And Val Kilmer. Yeah, his great grandfather joyce. Joyce Kilmer. Yeah, he kind of had a dead on. Because trees are not only beautiful, they are functional. And as either Longfellow or Whitman said, nothing can ever truly be beautiful unless it's also functional. Oh, yeah. They didn't really say that. Somebody said it. And we live in Atlanta, Georgia, for those of you who don't know. And we basically live in the middle of a forest. Yeah. If you ever go up on the building here or any building in Atlanta, and you think you're in downtown or Midtown, you just take a look out there and you realize, man, there are trees everywhere. There's a lot of trees. And people that are from, like, the west or other places where they're not as foresty come to the Deep South, sometimes they're like, wow, you can live in the middle of the forest. It's a city in a forest. Yeah. And it's pretty nice. Nice living. Sure. Up and down the East Coast is kind of like that. Right. And we actually live in a temperate deciduous hardwood forest area. Nice. Look at you. From what I understand, although there's a lot of pine trees, too. There's those Georgia pines. Yeah, that is true. I may be incorrect. Coniferous. Well, here's the deal with forest. The author of this, I take slight issue 30% of our planet is forest land. Right. And she says it's mostly concentrated in ten countries. The US. Canada, russia. Sorry. Russian Federation, Brazil, China, Australia democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Peru and India. Great. But no mention of like Europe, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway Like serious forest going on there. Is there enough? I mean, I know there's a black forest in Germany. Yeah. Like the boreal forest basically ten degrees above or below the equator. You're going to have rain forest. Got you. And then between roughly like 50 and 70 ish degrees, you're going to have boreal forest, which is like Europe and Canada and Russia, and it's like serious, dense forest. And she didn't mention Europe at all. Those are the northern climbs forests. Yeah. We're talking coniferous, pine, spruce, birch. Beautiful trees. Nice. In Canada, of course, America's at is lousy with trees. Yeah, there's a lot of trees. There like Atlanta 1.5 million sq mi of forest land in Canada. Right. So they got it going on up there. That sounds like a lot. And it's it is. But it's still alarming to consider that we lose about 13 million ha what's a hectare? A hectare is, I think 1.5 acres, I believe. Well, I do know that only I'm sorry, I'm not getting one more thing wrong in this episode. You go ahead and talk. I do know that. I'm sorry. Roughly 20% of the Earth's original forest land is still intact today. So over the years, 80% has been lost due to things manmade and things natural. And apparently we lose an amount of forests that's about the size of Greece every year. Wow. So we need Canada. We need Canada's trees. Yeah. And there are things like forest fires, disease, insects, competition between species, acid rain, things like that happen. Of course. That one is actually manmade. And then there's things like logging and slash and burn practices, just when you cut down trees and burn them to create a field. So those are things that man is doing to make trees go by. Man and nature are conspiring to rid us of trees, which we need. Yes. And the heck here, by the way, is about over two acres. Okay. Yeah. Well, look at the intro corrections for the first time. All right, so, Chuck, everybody loves trees, not the least of whom would be Joyce Kilmer. That's right. But we like them too. We like having them around, and they actually serve a little bit more of a function than you would think. Yeah. Apparently it's not just they give us oxygen. Right. Which is what everyone thinks, which is great. They actually can affect the climate. And the climate is defined as a period of weather patterns in a localized area over about a 30 year at least, stretch. I think not many people realize that everything else is just weather. Anything under that? Although I imagine once you start getting into like, the 28, 29 years climate yeah. They'll be like, okay, all right. That's climate fine. That is true. And our planet is warming. We're not going to get into the whole rigamarole of global warming and all that entails, although we should do that in earnest one day. But the climate is warming here on the planet, and it is heating up by about one to one and a half degree, 100 years, or at least over the past century. Yeah. And that's an important qualifier, too, because it wasn't supposedly until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, starting around 1830, that after that we started to see temperatures rise thanks to global warming. Right. So the fact that it rose by one to 1.5 degrees in a century, that's significant, even though it doesn't seem like much. Not to us humans. You can breathe into your hands and raise the weather around your face by more than just one degree. Yeah. It also be foggy. Yeah. A little smelly weather, depending on so how can trees affect our climate? Really? Three main ways, right? Yes. So the first is to lower temperatures, which is something they do themselves. Yes. Next, they reduce energy usage, which is a new phenomenon for trees because we've only had, like, air conditioning for 50, 60, 70 years. Yeah. But it's a new gift that trees give us. That's true. And then they actually remove air pollutants, which is pretty awesome. All right, so let's start with the first one. They lower temperatures. They act as a natural air conditioner for the world, in a way through a process called evapotranspiration. No huge shock. That is a mix of not a mix, but both things going on at the same time. Evaporation and transpiration, both of which release moisture into the air, one by way of drawing water from lakes. And we talked about in our clouds episode, we eventually get clouds, and then transpiration is when trees pull up water through the roots, work its way up through the tree, and then eventually leave from the leaves. Right. And we don't actually see after a heavy rain in the summer, you can see the evaporation going on. Yeah. And probably what you're seeing off of the trees is actually evaporation off of the leaves. Transpiration is invisible. It's vapor. But over the course of a year, a large oak tree supposedly can transpire about 40,000 gallons of water. That is crazy. That's a lot. Yeah. So they bring up all the nutrients through the water, they take what they can and peed out their leaves into the atmosphere as vapor. Right. Not as urine. Right. But since that's going on, especially when it's going on at the same time as evaporation, it produces water vapor and it can actually decrease the temperature. That's right. And like you said, a big thing now, and it's not now, actually. That's the funny thing. A lot of things that people do now to be green are things people did many years ago as just way of life. Yeah. Homesteaders yeah. Like Emily's grandmother and actually my grandmother, too, they were like, they composted and did all that stuff because it was a way of life and they didn't have trash pickup. Homesteady yeah. And now we're like, oh, yeah, compost, like big deal, nothing new. I mean, it is a big deal. You should do stuff like that, you know what I'm saying? Right. People like nowadays think they invented the green movement when it was our forefathers. Really? And mothers. Yeah, I guess just as long as you're not burning trash. Yeah. You're doing good. So what led me on that mini rant against our people of this age is that passive heating and cooling is a big thing now. But it was a big thing way back when. Because before they had air conditioners and things. They would plant trees where it made the most sense. Or not plant trees. But plant houses between trees where it made the most sense. So they say. I think a tree to the north of your house and the south of the house can cut down on your energy expenses. By how much? Well, a heating cost two to 8% and cooling costs by eight to 18%. And you want to plant at least one tree to the west and one tree to the south. Deciduous trees? Yes, that's the key. If you plant a big old magnolia tree, you're going to be like because while it'll cool your house in the summer by keeping some sunlight off of it, projecting shade in the wintertime, it will still keep sunlight off of it. With the deciduous tree, they lose their leaves so the sun shines through the branches during the wintertime, so it cools your house in the summer by producing shade. Warms your house in the winter by letting the sunlight through. Yeah. And I love mangoes trees, but boy, you ever had one on your property? It's a pain. Waxy leaves that don't disintegrate ever or degrade, they just are there. And then those grenades, which were great as a kid when you played war, but they're not so great when they're all over your yard. Right. And then pine trees, which I love to look at as well here in Georgia, they're also a big pain. Yeah, they can be. Well, yeah, they don't lose their leaves on an annual cycle, they just lose them all the time. But they always have the needles. That's true. But with the Magnali, though, you also get the lovely scented flour and you can snip those off and put it in a little water bowl in your kitchen. It's like a natural air freshener. Nice. Well, my neighbor has a magnolia and one branch hangs over into my yard and so I will clip flowers and not really have to deal with much of the waxy leaves. It's kind of the best of both worlds. Sounds like you're living the life. Living the life, man. So passive heating and cooling, transportation, that is a great thing that trees do. And they can also help cut down on what's called the heat island effect, which is bad in cities. Yeah, we have that bad here. So there's this thing called the albedo effect, right, where if you are dark colored wearing a dark shirt, you're wearing a black shirt right now. That's right. You would be hotter in that shirt than you would if you were wearing a white shirt. Why? I'll tell you why. White shirts reflect sunlight. Black shirts absorb sunlight and trap heat. Same thing with asphalt, same thing with dark rooftops. And when you put all this stuff together, it actually absorbs all this heat, traps it. And so when you're in a city, it's frequently much harder by several degrees than it is out in the suburbs where you have more trees and lawns and stuff like that that aren't going to absorb the heat quite as much. Yeah. And I lived in Yuma, Arizona, as, you know, a lot of white cars in Yuma. Yeah, not a lot of black cars. And they actually have I might have mentioned this before they have almost carpet that they put on their dashboards, and it's like a thing, it's like, fit to the car and it's velcroed on and it saves your dashboard. Oh, yeah. But you have carpet on your dashboard. Yeah, pretty much. And you go to the video store at the time. They had video stores back then in the mid nineties, and they would have melted video cassettes on display. Yeah, I've seen those. Or like the ticketmaster tickets, don't leave them in your glove box or this will happen. What, do they catch fire? It looks like they caught fire, but it was just heat exposure. Is that the average ticketmaster employee? That's what the sign sounds like. Okay. Yeah. Don't just pay a million dollars for fees. So that's the heat island effect in Atlanta. Five to eight deg hotter. And Phoenix, in 1950, it was six degrees warmer than the nearby Cafe Grande monument. I don't know why that is. Oh, because in 2007, it was 14 deg. Okay, I get it. Yeah. So it's getting hotter in the cities as urban sprawl and the black tops of asphalt take over the world. Yeah, exactly. Phoenix isn't exactly like a work, live, play, walkable community. It's pretty dry, right? Or at least golf carty. Yeah, well, same with Atlanta. So you've got sprawl, which is going to increase the urban heat island effect. Yeah, phoenix is big time sprawl. Yes. But trees help counteract this. They cut it down. They say, no more of this. We're going to provide you passive energy savings and evapotranspiration. And while we're at it, you know, all this horrible air that you're breathing, we're going to filter it for you. We're going to throw that in as a bonus. Included in the low, low price, they will filter dust, ozone, carbon monoxide, other kinds of pollutants. And through photosynthesis, they actually remove CO2, which is a greenhouse gas, as we all know. Right. They remove it and release oxygen instead. And they can actually even store it. Yeah, they sequester it in the forest soil. And apparently that soil, depending on where you are, I think in a deciduous temperate forest that carbon dioxide will be stored for anywhere from 100 to 1000 years. Wow. Yeah. I think we talked about that. We talked about carbon sequestration before. Or what was it? Desertification? Desertification, maybe. Or earthworms. Yeah. We play in the dirt a lot. Yeah, we do. The Earthworm one. That was a good one. That was a good one. So the trees are filtering out the air, but they actually and this is a little known, ronald Reagan actually once said trees pollute more than cars do any day of the week. And it was not entirely wrong. Yeah, I don't quite get this. The photochemical smog. Okay. So when it gets hot, trees have this volatile organic compounds, two of which are terpenes and isoprene. Okay. Okay. And they give them off of their leads. It's just like, it's too hot. I got to get rid of my VOCs. Right. And I supreme, in particular, act as a catalyst. They speed up the breakdown by sunlight of nitrous oxides into ozone. And ozone is a big contributor to smoke. So basically, when the trees are giving off these volatile organic compounds they're accelerating the production of smog indirectly. Okay. Right. So when you mix sunlight photo with these chemicals photochemical smog, it's from the breakdown of, like, car exhaust into ozone, which scratches our eyes and makes us itchy and hard to breathe. So we should cut down all the trees. Pretty much. That's what Ronald Reagan thought. No, of course not. And that's like the one negative effect that we can find, right? Oh, yeah. Other than that. Well, that and falling on somebody or your house or something. Other than that. Trees are great. Right. That happens a lot in Atlanta with the heavy rain. Well, it does because we went through a drought cycle where the roots all started to come toward the surface. And then when you get a heavy rain, the trees no longer planted like it was and it just tips over. Yeah. Just the other day, another guy sitting in his car. Man, they love talking about that on the news. It will be like, Crime, crime, crime. A tree fell over. Let's go cover that instead. That's the Atlanta news? Yeah, because, boy, there's a lot do you watch the local news? Sometimes. Really? Yeah, I'll see it out of the corner of my eye. I haven't watched the local news since I was probably in high school. It's good on the treadmill. Like when you can't hear anything. Yeah, it's good for that. When they're in front of the varsity interviewing somebody about something important a tree falling over. What do you think about this? Right. Yeah. Okay. So we're talking about global warming. Can we actually plant trees and get more forest land, actually help us out? That's what Pearl Jam used to do to offset the carbon usage or emissions for their tours. Did you know that? I needed something. They planted trees. Yeah. They calculate how much, like, their jets emitted, like, in greenhouse gas, Co, too. I think specifically how much, like, their fans cars emitted, like, on the way to the venue for a whole tour. Wow. And they calculate it, and then they would buy an equal amount of trees, or however much carbon number of trees could sequester. That's how much they got to offset their tour. And then Al Gore started doing it. It was really close to about the same time. Right. And everybody thought, this is great. This is a great idea. But there are a couple of problems with it. One, once you cut down that tree like that, carbon is released in the atmosphere prematurely. And then secondly, there was a 2007 study that said it depends on where you put the tree. Right. If you put it in the tropics, then it actually will cut down on global warming. Because in the tropics, trees not only cool the place by evaporate transpiration, it's actually warm enough that they produce clouds. Right. Which cool the rest of the Earth. It's like a cloud factory down there around the equator. Yeah, we hit that in the rainforest podcast. Right. Okay. In the middle climates where we live, it's pretty much a wash. If you plant a tree there for a carbon offset, it's not going to really have a net effect. Right. If you go up to the borealis forest, which is a term you taught me recently, it actually can contribute to the heating the boreal boreal forest. Yeah. Well, the aurora boreal, which is what I understand now, it can contribute to the heating of the planet because remember the Albedo effect? Well, up there, it's cold enough so that that green canopy that's trapping sunlight, and hence warmth, is actually going to raise the temperature. So this cold climate, cold part of the Earth that you used to balance out the overall global temperature. If you plant trees up there, it'll warm it where was Pearl Jam planting trees, do you know? I don't know. Hey, we mentioned ticketmaster, too. They stuck it to those guys. Yeah, they did. Remember Eddie better wore like that German World War II helmet in court. Oh, really? Yeah, he was not happy. Yeah. I saw a lot of Pearl Jam shirts at that Soundgarden show last night. Yes. How was it, people? You know, it was great. And my buddy ended up getting hooked up with VIP seats because he knows the guy at the tabernacle. Nice. So we were literally, like, front row, the balcony right in the center. Nice. But the setless man, they got to work on that. Oh, really? Yes. It's one of those deals where I know I don't want a complete nostalgia tour, but when you're coming back after that long, no one wants to hear seven songs from your new album. Oh, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Well, I mean, if you're trying to kick start your career again, there was a decided energy change in the room when they were doing, like, Bad Motor Finger and Screaming Life and Louder Than Love, and then they were doing whatever that new album is called, which I don't care for Here Comes the Sunshine. Everyone was just kind of like, oh, okay. Another one of these. Yeah. Except for the drunk 18 year old near me. Yeah. Woo. This is the only song I've heard. Yeah. Finally one I recognize, but yeah, good. He sounded great, man. He's amazing. Well, I'm just glad that Pearl Jam fans and soundgarden fans are apparently getting along now. Sure. It was rough there for a while. Yeah. And then you factor in Alice and change. It got really ugly. Go look it up, kids. Music of the 90s. You got anything else about stupid trees? No. I do have another thing. So you remember the 2007 study I was just talking about where I misused borealis? Yes. A 2013 study this year. Yeah. Said, you know what? Nuts to that. Nuts to Lawrence Livermore laboratory. We have a computer model that says that if we doubled the amount of forests, including boreal forests, and especially, I think, boreal forests, as soon as possible, we would lower the global temperature by a full one degree Fahrenheit. So we would offset that 20th century increase, possibly. Yeah. The last 100 years. It's crazy. Yeah. And we would increase summer rains by 10% to 15% all by 2071. Wow. Yeah. Well, at the earliest, but still. So is there a plan in place or was that just like, hey, we should do this. Somebody's like, what can I do as a computer model today? Right. How about trees? Got you. Yeah. All right, well, good for them. Plant a tree. I'm sure there is a program in your community. We can go out and sponsor a tree to be planted. Yeah. But God help you if you plant one in the northern clients, because you're part of the problem. All right. You got anything else? No. If you want to learn more about trees and weather, type those two words into the search bar athousoforks.com and I said search bars means it's time for a message break. All right, listen to mail time. Yeah, great. I'm going to call this one hottitude from the Land of Cotton and Faulkner, because that was the subject line. I was like, you know what? That one's so good, I can use it. Yeah, that's good. And I just kind of like the cut of this guy's jib. That's why I'm reading it, guys, the name is david Holbrook. Yeah. And I'm from a little town of Waynesboro, Mississippi. I'm currently a senior in my final semester at the University of Mississippi for my BA in Political Science. Go revs, should we say, that section. I also work part time in the parts department, the local GMC dealership here in Oxford. And I'm a bouncer on the weekends at one of the bars on the famous Oxford Square. Busy boy. You ever been there? Oxford? No. A lot of fun. Yeah. Great college town. I'm a huge fan and just never found the gut to write you guys until today. I really enjoy after my third mint, julia I put pen to paper. I really enjoy throwing around the knowledge I learned from you all in the workplace. Although I sometimes think my coworkers get a little jealous. And my girlfriend as well. Yeah. I have to say, one of my favorite things about the show, I will admit this is really random is when Chuck whispers things at the end of sentences, which he does. A lot. I have no idea what he's talking about. That's a pretty poor example, but, yeah, I agree. I always laugh so hard because sometimes it seems as though Chuck does really not mean for us to hear those bits. Right. But he forgets he's in front of a mic. That might be true. I also really relate to you all in the way of, oh, wait, this guy is a fraud. What did he say? You all no, I did it's, y'all. Okay. All right. He checked out. I really relate to you all in the way that it seems we have held many jobs in our past. That makes us well rounded people. Well, I feel like I'm rambling on with this nonsense. I will continue with the fan mail and maybe with some filled with more interesting and beneficial substance. Thank you from the Land of Cotton and William Faultner. David Holbrook jr random fact about me. PS. I grew up on a chicken farm. We have eight chicken houses with anywhere from 250,000 to 350,000 chickens at one time. Jeez. In eight houses? What he said. Those are big chicken. Chicken houses are huge. Well, that's great. What's his name? David Holbrook Jr. Thank you for one day we will get a David Holbrook the Third. Yeah. We keep doing this long enough. Yeah. David Holbrook, Jr. Thank you very much for writing. And, Chuck, did you practice reading that one? No. And I kind of went back and forth with the accent. Like Kevin Costner and Robin Hood. Right. Or Dances With Wolves or Water World. But I'm impressed, and I think you hit all the emphasis just perfectly. I'm from the South Waldoran. Like, corn is in my blood. Yeah. I'm more like that little chicken with the glasses. I'm a chicken hawk and you're a chicken. No, the little one who never talks. Okay. He just read all the time. Yeah, the little jerk if you are. I don't know. Stereotypically Regional we want to hear from you. Great. You can send us a tweet to s yskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com. Stuff you should know. You can email us. We understand. You can send it to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and check out our website, guys. It's stuffyousheanow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. 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How the Maori Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-maori-work | It's a familiar theme, an indigenous group's culture falls apart when exposed to European ideals, weapons and disease. For the Maori of New Zealand, however, a determined effort to preserve and revive its ancient identity has started to pay off. Join Josh | It's a familiar theme, an indigenous group's culture falls apart when exposed to European ideals, weapons and disease. For the Maori of New Zealand, however, a determined effort to preserve and revive its ancient identity has started to pay off. Join Josh | Tue, 15 Oct 2013 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=288, tm_isdst=0) | 35146257 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the allnew 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to stuff you should Know from Housedaporzcom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. So this is stuff you should know. The podcast. Jerry with her face tattoos, hipster maori want to be yeah. Maori. I thought it was Mayori Maori. Yeah. We just looked at the pronunciation. I was sure Chuck was right because he picked this article, but it looks like mayori. It seems like that should be an acceptable pronunciation as well. I know. And you know, we have lots of Kiwi fans there in New Zealand. Yeah. Hey, everybody. And so this is for you. And if you're not from New Zealand, all the other ones, you shouldn't be. Let's just this one. If you're not from New Zealand, then I think you'll enjoy it anyway because indigenous tribes are interesting. Plus, those of you outside New Zealand won't know how much stuff we got wrong. That's right. Yeah. So, Chuckers yes. Were you familiar with the Maori ahead of time? Did you know most of this stuff from this article? No. I had seen the movie Once Were Warriors, and that was my introduction to them. Is that right? Many years ago. Yeah, that was the one that won a bunch of Academy Awards. Right. Or I'm thinking of Whale Rider. You're thinking of Whale Rider. But yeah, once we're warriors, it's not a feel good movie. Is it a documentary? No, it's just a regular narrative feature. But it shows sort of the dark side of the modern Maori with propensities for violence and crime and alcoholism. So basically, it's like I guess anyone who hears the story in the US will be like, this sounds familiar. An indigenous group pushed around and completely obliterated by Europeans. Yeah. And then later on, perhaps suffering from alcoholism and further marginalization, trying to hang on to a culture that is not well, it exists, but I don't want to spoil anything. Well, I think okay, so the extent that I came to figure out my awareness of the Maori culture was my familiarity with Mike Tyson's face tattoo and the fact that there is such a thing as tribal tattoos and that those are mostly rooted in Maori tattooing. And in fact, the Maui, they didn't necessarily come up with tattooing. They're directly descended from the people who did. But they had a specific kind of tattoo, a specific method of tattooing, I should say, that kind of gains them the status of the toughest tattoo people around and that they use not needles, but chisels to do their tattoos, which you call the tamo. Yeah. Tom moko. Two words. I think so. No, I mean, it's two words. Yeah. Moco is the face tattoo. Specifically, I think. Right. There's another type of tattoo that's not quite as spiritual as we'll find out, called kiri tuhi. And that's kind of more like the tribal band you see around people's arms and things like that. Yeah. Like if you're a hipster with moco face tattoos and you're from Michigan, then you're going to be frowned upon by real Maori people because you shouldn't have a mocha on your face. No, you should have the other one because that's not as sacred. Right. You know what I'm saying? I know what you're saying. And the question is, do the people who have these face tattoos know what you're saying? I don't know, I've seen these white dudes with it and I'm just like, you know you're not Maori. Well, when I was looking up like Mike Tyson Maori face tattoo, like a whole slew of articles came up about how his visa was canceled before a trip to New Zealand. I was like, oh man, was it because he had a face tattoo? No criminal passed, which makes sense. Yeah. And I don't think his is a mocha, I think it's just a face tattoo. Yeah. Okay, let's get into it, man. Yeah, because there's much more to it than face. That too. Yeah. So the Maori are credited as being the first settlers of New Zealand. The thing is there's a lot of controversy around this. I should say in academic circles it's typically accepted, widely accepted that it's been proven that the Maori were the original settlers of New Zealand. Right. There are other circles that are like no, there's evidence that they're not. The Maori's own oral history so that there are people there before them. There's evidence here, there but for the most part, if you believe that in academic circles you are considered fringe dweller. Right? Sure. So for the most part the generally accepted ideas that the Maori settled New Zealand from Polynesia somewhere between. Yeah, and they came over on canoes, on ocean canoes that they still use today. And they supposedly came from a mythical land called Hawaii. But these days scholars will say what that probably is, is a combo of some real places, tahiti, Samoa and the Cook Islands. Yeah, tomato. Tomato. Exactly. But they got to New Zealand and they named it Otoroa. And there's a lot of pronunciations in here we might not get exactly right. By the way, I think that was one. I think that might be right actually. Oh, terror. I'm going to say the A is silent. I don't think so. It's capitalized even that means land of the long white cloud. Right. In other words, it's the Maori name for New Zealand. Yeah. And we should say that when the Maori arrived as they didn't describe themselves or self described as Maori until the Europeans came before then it was just disparate tribes that were familiar with one another. But they settled, it's believed either in close together waves or pretty much all at once heading out from Polynesia, arriving and saying, okay, let's go to war. Pretty much the name means ordinary or common. And they were and are tough people. Right. And the reason Maori means ordinary or common is they're referring to themselves in comparison to white Europeans who are fancy pants. Right. And their knickers and their fancy hats with feathers. Exactly. And their muskets. Yeah, exactly. So that's not very ordinary, especially compared to Maori. And they had a name for them, piqueja. Yes. Those are white Europeans who came, culinary settlers, anybody who wasn't Maori or ordinary. Very true. And like we said, they were tough. They were very fierce when they battled. One of the trophies that they would. And a lot of tribes you'll see do this. So we'll put the old head on the stake as a trophy. Very tough. And then something else we'll get into in a minute is very important to them, called mana, which is power, prestige. And there was a lot of fighting going on when the mana was challenged or disrupted, basically, sort of like, you insult me, so we're going to go to war. Right. But all of this is extremely structured. The Maori wars were typically held in the fall after the harvest, right? Yeah. Football season. Yeah. That's a really good analogy. They would use weapons that were usually clubs. There were short range battle clubs called kaika, and then there were clubs that had a cutting edge that were called patu. These are the most typical weapons used in these battles. And you would get brained and creamed and beaten up the heck. But as far as loss of life goes, compared to firearms, they were relatively few. Yeah. It sort of reminded me of the old gang fights back in the day, like when you would get together with your chains and your clubs and hit each other and fight it. Yeah. And then you would walk away with your bruises and your scrapes and not a lot of loss of life. Right. But the intent was the same. It was to vanquish people, to get control of their land, to make them move to more populated, less fertile areas. And like you said, it was to gain mana or prestige for your tribe. Everything changed once the Europeans came and brought firearms, as is the pretty, by now familiar narrative for anybody who's listening to one of our cultural historical episodes. Yeah. It's pretty interesting that it follows about the same path all over the world. The boomstick comes in, the white folks come in with the boom stick and the boom powder, and then things change. Yeah. And things change by the Maori gaining access to some of these guns. And it says here they would trade things like pigs and flax and potatoes. But I watched a documentary last night and six, as the documentarian said, was the big trading coinage. Basically what was six? Got you. He kept saying it, though, in that Kiwi accent, which is one of my favorites, by the way. I got you. And so they would trade when they ran out of other stuff to trade. It was a big hot spot for Europeans, not even to settle, necessarily, but to come by and do some trading and stop over. And they would stop over and they would sign their women up to like, three week contracts and trade for one musket. And it was a very sexual culture. Like, women, and this is in the 1800s, could take, like, multiple lovers and not be looked down upon. And they didn't have the hang ups that Europe did about sex. Got. I know the HMS Bounty was mutiny because the sailors wanted to go back to Polynesia. Well, dude, the Maori were down with it early on. They didn't have big hang ups. Hang ups. No, they didn't. In the 70s, you could have sex before you were married and it wasn't a big deal. So the sex trade by the 1830s was the biggest money maker in New Zealand for musket maker. Very nice. So, Chuck, when the muskets come along, 18 seven is kind of a seminal year, because this is a year when the first Maori tribe got their hands on muskets and used them for battle. The problem is they hadn't practiced quite so much, and so as they're trying to fire and reload and aim, they were vanquished by the tribe they raided with using traditional clubs, and they get clubbed in the head while they're trying to load a musket. And I think that some of them started just swinging the musket like a big club, which makes sense. Yeah. Especially even out of frustration. Yes. And that actually started the musket wars. Yeah. Because the leader of that tribe said, you know what, these firearms, we shouldn't abandon them yet, so let's get some more and we'll trade whatever we need to for them and let's practice this time. And hence, the musket wars were born. Once they got good, they started tearing up the countryside in 1815 and just basically said, we've got these guns, we're going to kill you, take your land, enslave you and maybe eat you. Yes. We mentioned that a lot of Polynesian tribes, they were accused of cannibalism. Yes. I don't know if it's true or not. Yeah. Bear pointing out, though, right? Sure. This first group that got the muskets definitely changed everything, because now it was kind of like when the Soviets and the Americans had the bomb. Soviets were like, we have to have the bomb now. You can't just have one country with the bomb. You couldn't have just one Maori tribe with firearms. Other groups were forced to adopt firearms as well, and hence the musket wars got pretty bloody. Yeah. But it became the great equalizer. About 20000, maori and New Zealanders died. But once everyone had guns, it sort of calm things down in a weird way. Yeah. Well, it's like the mutual assured destruction. Exactly. So before we move on, I think it's a good time for a message break. Okay. All right, so let's continue. So, Chuck, the 1830s, two tribes that have been forced off their land by other musket using Maori's went south, I believe it's south to the Chatham Islands. Yeah. They wanted to basically find a better place to live where all this war wasn't going on. But they found the moriari people. Right, I know that's right. What's one more war? Exactly. Because they were peaceful people and they were like, well, these people are here, let's figure out what to do with them. And they said, kill them. Kill them, basically. Yeah, that's what they did. They killed them, thrust them into slavery and then basically took over Chatham Island. And now it's a Maori island. Right. So one genocide but got another genocide. That's right. So the Maori are pretty well established by this time, but they're kind of hanging on to their cultural lives and everything kind of hinged on a rumor. I don't know if it was a factual rumor or not, but come 1835, there was a rumor that France was going to try to annex New Zealand. Yeah. In previous to 1848, they were pretty welcoming of the Europeans. Like they started trading with them, they got along pretty well. Exceptional point. Even this guy in the documentary that said six said that they got pretty friendly and they said, come here, root down, we'll be trade partners and we all got along great. But like you said in 1835, that's when France started, or at least the Maori's point of view as France was trying to get their little French hooks in them. Right. By this time, the Maori had a pretty good idea that they were in trouble. They were losing their numbers, which they think hit about 100,000 before contact with Europeans to not just the musket wars, but also disease introduced by Europeans. I know they're familiar. So they decided to lie themselves in the face of this rumor that France was going to annex New Zealand. They decided to ally their lands to the British. And why not at the time? Who else are you going to go with? Yeah, they're like, we like your powdered wigs, your red coats. Yes. Like your accent. We can nick that and change it around a bit and make it our own. Right. And so let's sign the Treaty of Watani. Yes. And it was a pretty good contract at first. They thought it gave the Maori control over their own land and even sovereignty. Yeah. So they think until it turns out that the British really said, you know what, we're going to take a lot of that land, we're going to tax you and violate the treaty in that way. And this ancestral land that's been in your family forever, we're going to just take what we want, basically and shuffle you to the side. Yeah. Who knew, just like America, the tree was going to be broken. So that started the New Zealand wars. And this guy in the documentary said it's sort of again, sort of like here in America, they weren't really taught that so much in school or they were taught a very sanitized version of the New Zealand wars, when in fact, it was 30 years of very bloody fierce battling with the British soldiers and the British government and dwindled down to 45,000 Maui. Yes. Really sad. So at this point, what you have is what would be called an evolutionary bottleneck. Basically, you have a group of population that's in real danger of extinction. And I guess what the Maori does say, okay, all right, the British control New Zealand. We're not going away, right? We are fierce warriors. Have you seen these tattoos we got? Yeah. And the British said, again, we are in control of New Zealand. You just said it yourself. We won't wipe you out entirely because, hey, it's almost the 20th century and who does that, right? Yeah. But we are going to anglicize you. And first, let's start by creating an alphabet, which this struck me is weird, right. Maori culture had an oral tradition. They didn't have any written language. They had totems basically what amounts of comparison, but they didn't have any kind of alphabet or written language. And so European missionaries set about creating one rather than teaching them just English, like, oh, well, here's your written language English. That was really odd too. They went about creating a Maori written language, which is strange to me. This is the Maori experience. It's almost like a condensed version of what went on in North America. In the United States, there's like one treaty, there's some weird aspects to it where missionaries are not just trying to anglicize the groups that are helping them preserve their culture simultaneously. Right. And I think that helped Maori culture survive by taking their traditions and writing them down. But that's not to say that Maori were helpless in preserving their own traditions because as we'll see, everyone's expected to know their own history and to be able to recite it. Yeah, for sure. And that came along in the 70s, is when they really started to sort of gain more ground in reestablishing their culture and claiming their culture as their own. Previous to that, it really dwindled because they scattered. Basically. They started to move to urban areas. After World War II, there was a mass migration. Prior to the war, 75% lived in rural New Zealand and 20 years later, 60% lived in urban areas. When you move the tribe from their native land, you take their land and they move to the big city, the culture is just going to go away. Well, it gets diluted, for sure, especially in the face of the government. The official language of New Zealand was English. Yeah. They tried their best to stamp it out. Yeah, there were government schools that didn't teach anything about Maori culture. So, yeah, the culture was the people were still there but they were losing their culture. And then like you said, again, analogous to North America, the 1970 saw an awakening of pride in being a Maori. Just like the aim. The American Indian movement was founded in the 70s. Exactly. And in the 1980s, by that time about 20% of the Maori were actually fluent speakers of their language, which was terrell Maori was the name of the language. Right. So it was a big win. It was, but there was a lot of groundwork that was laid between the lot of battles that were fought in one there's the establishment of the Maori party political party. They sued the government to have T Reyo Maori, the Maori language, be officially recognized somehow. And in 1985 the British were forced to say, yes, this is a treasure that we're supposed to protect under the treaty of Watangi. And we didn't. So now we're going to make this one of three official languages in New Zealand. English, New Zealand sign language and Terreo Maori are now the three official languages of New Zealand. Exactly. In 1975 that was the designation of Maori language week and they opened the first bilingual school in 1978. So by the time 85 rolled around they made it an official one of the official languages, like we said, about 20% were now speaking it and fluent in it. And the British were like, we'll give you these small things, but what we don't want to give you back is your land. But they were forced to eventually with the Wangi Tribunal in 1975. I don't think they established laws. I think it was just like you fill an application out and to a claim on some land and they'll decide whether or not to give it back to your family. And they did to a large degree. Not all of it though. So was it like a European run tribunal that indigenous people went and petitioned or was it made up of indigenous people? Because I got the impression that they were like jealously guarded Maori culture and we're like suing for repatriation of Maori artifacts from other museums. Well, yeah, that definitely happened because there were Maori trinkets and mummified heads, heads all over the world and it's still ongoing today. Like all these reparations are still going on, like people are still getting back their land even here in the 21st century. So the Maori culture kind of is vibrant beaten down, hangs on by a thread and starts to revive. Right? That's right. That's good, that's where we're at. Okay, let's talk a little bit about their culture again. A lot of it was diluted and lost over time, but there's still some very robust fundamentals that are very much alive today. Yeah, they're very spiritual people, even though they were fierce warriors and a lot of the white folks thought they were savages. Of course. Sound familiar? Like the face tattoos were very much repressed but never went away. Exactly. So they're very spiritual. They believe that their ancestors and other supernatural beings are always around their family, and their ancestry is really important. Their genealogy, which they call the Wakapapa. Wakapapa. I went with Wakapapa. Wakapapa? Yeah. That's the genealogy of the ancestors spiritual and mythological significance. And basically your whole spiritual existence as a person is told through the Wakapapa. And the face tattoos will tell that story. That's what it means. That's why they're not hip on nonjack Maori people getting these things. Brooklyn hipsters you're insulting. Like their ancestry, basically. And they're really protective of this stuff. I was reading about Maori waka papa stories and how if you are like a social services worker, you're not necessarily told to ask these questions that would be considered part of somebody's waka papa. They'll tell you if they trust you. You don't just run around telling just anybody. Right. There's actually some sort of I believe there's a law where Maori will tell their waka papa to government agencies, but these things have to be explicitly protected. Now that they're being put out there on the Internet and everything, they need extra protection because these things are sacred. They belong to the individual because that's their history. Right. And since there wasn't anything before, like a written language, speaking it out loud is extremely sacred and protected. Yeah, well, part of it, too, is they're really big on learning and changing things that they did wrong, learning from past mistakes. So part of the waka papa is it's not just like some rosy history of their family. It's also the bad, because if you understand your past, you can understand your future better. Right. And the point of it is to keep going as far back as you can. And usually from this article, they end at about the time your ancestors arrived to New Zealand yeah. By canoe. So we talked about mana a little bit, the honor and prestige. There are three forms of mana in the culture. One is achieved by birth. So basically, what the rank of your descendants and your ancestors? The mana given by other people, which this article says they boil down to good deeds, like being recognized for what you've done. Pat on the back. Yeah. Here's your mana and the mana of the group, which is when outsiders visit and if they leave with a good review on Yelp for you or TripAdvisor. These guys are so welcoming then that's mana of the group. And it's very important to them. They want to leave a good impression, I guess. Well, yeah, there's mana stake. Exactly. You can also be affected by Koreo. This one is tough. Kero. K-O-R-E-R-O which is the spoken word, which is where you gain mana by how people speak of you personally, I guess. I think it's kind of like mana of the group, but for an individual. Yeah. And you mentioned earlier how they had an oral history that, of course, the white Christian missionaries poopooed. They said, now you got to write stuff down. And they said, no, we're not just, like, telling stories here. Historians are trained and their memory is trained to remember everything about the history. So it wasn't just like, hey, let's just tell stories about our past. Like, historians were revered and very important and acknowledged for their incredible memories. Right, so coming up next, we got to have a little message break, but we're going to talk about what I think is one of the coolest things, which is the hakka dance. That's something big, huh? Yeah. Let's get back to it. All right. The Hakka dance. Have you seen this? I have. I saw in Budapest, of all places. Really? At a natural history museum, there was basically a grass outfit and there was a video of a guy wearing this grass outfit doing a hockey dance by himself. Yeah, it was like an Ethnographical footage. Oh, see, I've never seen it with, like, a solo dancer. I've usually just seen it as a big group, like a whole tribe. And it's really cool. You should look it up on the YouTube. H-A-K-A. Very in fact, they're doing it in the picture right there. Very intimidating. They would do it before battle and it's kind of scary. And when they first get started, before they're even moving in unison, they're just, like, individually shouting out things and sticking out their tongue and their eyes are wide and crazy and it's just like it would have sent me running for the hills. Right. Well, that's what I was attended to. And the New Zealand national rugby team, the All Blacks, they do a hakka before every rugby game. Yeah, they still do it. They've done it for more than 100 years, I think, starting in 1888. Yeah. And they got the name the All Blacks when they change uniforms to all black uniforms. Makes sense. And again, to intimidate and even watch the rugby team do it, and it's pretty cool. I would like to try it out, but I think people would laugh at me if I wouldn't intimidate anyone with my hockey. Especially if you like bulls drive and stuck your tongue out, too. It wouldn't have the same effect. No. Let's talk. Chuck the tatu. Yeah. That is actually from the polynesian word T-A-T-A-U tau, I guess, which means to mark. Yeah. And we need to do one on the whole tattoo thing. We will. And like we said, the Maori aren't the first to come up with tattoos. It's traced back further in their Polynesian lineage, but they are the ones that use chisels. Really sharp chisels, but chisels nonetheless. I wonder how that works. It's like you hammer in I know how chisel works. And then you rub the pigment and so basically, you take a very sharp chisel and a hammer and you tap it. How do you make a mark? And then after you've made your marks, you go through and rub a pigment usually taken from a certain type of caterpillar. And then since you've used a chisel instead of a needle, there's not only a tattoo, but there's also scarification along where you made that chisel mark. Yeah. So the original Maori Tamos, they were pretty severe looking. They looked even more like hardcore than a regular table. Well, that's what I was going to ask is how tight was it? I have the feeling that this was considered an art form. It was pretty tight. All right, well, I know they, incidentally, are the ones who introduce color tattoos even though most of the mocha scene are black. So I don't know if they just don't use color that much. Yes. I see any colors on either a rainbow dolphin and they're like, let's just go back to the moco. Yeah. Men typically have the moco on their face, but women also have the tattoos and they have them on the arms, the thighs, the abdomen and the crotch, apparently, while men will have them on the face, buttocks and thighs. And it's detailed stuff like, I'm sure you've seen it before, but if not, look it up right now because it's not like Mike Tyson. Right? Well, it has to be the entire case. It's supposed to depict the waka papa like. Each swirl and symbol has a real meaning that has to do with the person's genealogy. That's right. It's pretty cool. And then again, we said that there's another kind of tattoo that's not quite as intricate. That's called the what is it called? The kirituhi. Yes. Which is just fun to say. And I think that won't offend. No. A Maori person. The impression that I have is Maori culture from this resurgence of Maori pride in the revival of the culture and taking steps to save it. Yeah, they do very jealously protect and guard their culture, their cultural history, their personal lineage, maybe even compared to other indigenous tribes. Respecting Maori culture on its own terms is a good idea for sure these days. They made quite a comeback in population. New Zealand as a whole has more than 4 million people and about 14% of Maori, compared to a low of about 45,000 in the 80 90s. Yeah, it's about 560,000 people. But like I said, there are like many marginalized indigenous tribes all over the world. There are problems with alcoholism. The Maori are 82% as far as more likely to be drinkers than 56% Pacific islanders. And among those who consume alcohol, hazardous drinking occurs in 36% of Maori. And crime too. And violence is still sort of part of the culture. Sadly. I think I have some stats here from a criminologist. Even though they only make up 14% of the population, I believe they make up about 50% of people in prison. Wow. And they throw that right. Back to the fact that they were marginalized and their culture was stamped out and young people are more likely to be violent young Maori are than older ones now. But yeah, apparently losing your cultural identity really put a hamper on your evolution as people. Yeah, you can see that all over the world, can't you? You certainly can. So that's Maori. If you want to know more do you have anything else? Right now I got nothing else. If you want to know more about the Maori people, you can type in M-A-O-R-I in the search bar athousofworks.com it will bring up this article. And since I said Maori it's time, Chuck. For listener mail, I'm going to call this email from a student at North Carolina Wilmington. Okay. Hey guys. He's an econ dude. Yeah. My girlfriend and I have been together for a little over three years and are both members of the Stuff You Should Know army. In the early days of our relationship, I used to pay her in doll hairs for favors such as cooking dinner or getting out of bed to plug my phone in when I forgot. I do this too. I tell Emily like, I'll give you $675 to take out the trash and I'll just make that we keep a running tap of what we owe each other. Got you. It's just fun. He's doll hairs. Being that a doll hair is not real currency, that's why it uses it. I could bid the price up or down with ease depending on her mood. The going rate for dinner was about $12,000 and a back rub was $21,500. DH. Capital DH. Of course, she quickly figured out that she was not accruing the American dollar she thought she was and wanted her doll hairs exchanged for US. Currency. To get myself out of this, I quickly got on ebay to purchase her 600,000 Zimbabwe dollars to fulfill my financial debt obligation. Like you, I appreciated the novelty of owning paper currency from a country that's all hyperinflation on this scale the world has never seen. We both got a real laugh out of a joke and I am out of debt now. We both now carry $100,000 in our wallets every day so we don't feel like broke college kids, right? Economic research is a great passion of mine. From observation to data collection and model building, I find happiness through math and statistics. We don't have much in common. Talent. Talent. That's his name. No. I would be more than happy to help you out with any economic questions you ever have. Although I don't think you need much seeing as how your super stuff guide to the economy was so well presented. Awesome. Yeah. So that is from Talon wisdom. His last name is Wisdom Man from UNC Wilmington and I wrote him back and he followed up and said he was in the middle of writing a lesson plan and eating leftovers when he got my email and he said he's often daydreamed about being on listener mail. Right. So this is a dream come true. And you're going to like this part, Josh. Okay. He has a dog named Conway Twitty. Conway Twitty owned by Talent Wisdom. That's right. He and Conway Twitty call this entire family to let them know to look out for the upcoming listener mail. Good going. Thank you. Talon Wisdom. Talon Wisdom. Conway Twitty and his girlfriend. Yeah, he's got a lot of doll hairs who is very easygoing with a good sense of humor about money. If you have a good story for us that has anything even remotely to do with something we've even mentioned in passing on any of the episodes here on Stuff you should Know, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffyshotnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and you can hang out on our website with us@stuffyturno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.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 charttopping series will have you hooked before you know it. 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414ea80a-53a3-11e8-bdec-97a67d5cb8c0 | The Science of Break-Ups | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-science-of-break-ups | Breaking up is hard to do. Your brain might even think you're getting over a cocaine addiction. Learn all about the science behind break-ups today! | Breaking up is hard to do. Your brain might even think you're getting over a cocaine addiction. Learn all about the science behind break-ups today! | Tue, 26 Feb 2019 15:09:01 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=15, tm_min=9, tm_sec=1, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=57, tm_isdst=0) | 57438116 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's. Charles w chuck brian over there. There's Jerry. Rush, Rush, Rush. Jerry, this is stuff you should know. The breakup edition. Right? Three people who've never broken up with one another. No, that's true. The last three. Great point. Modern triad. Yeah, the triad. So, hey, before we get going, we want to tell everyone, all right, at the end of this episode and before listener mail, actually, instead of listening to mail, we're going to have in a couple of dudes from a new show on our network and they're going to break up in front of us. No. Their shows called how to Money. And these guys are local and they were big Stuff you should know listeners, Matt and Joel, and they were like, we want to start a podcast about finance and money matters in life. This sort of like what you guys do, that's approachable and real and just like a couple of people talking normal. What about money? Yeah. And it's really good. So we're going to have those guys on at the end for a few minutes, but it's a show I think everyone would love, so stick around for that. Cool. So I picked this one out because mainly this is a refrain. We get an email a lot. We hear from heartbroken people a lot. Sure. More than you would think are just like, that's so sad. What's a broken heart. And you guys have helped me with this show as a distraction, which we will learn is one of the official ways to get over a break up. Yeah, look over here. Yeah, exactly. So it just got me thinking about, is there any science behind breakups and the emotions that go along with it? And it turns out there's a lot like a disturbing amount of study has been done. I know. When you look at it, you're like, oh, man, maybe you should have allocated that money toward research toward other things. Yeah. Like cancer. Yeah. Although social psychology couldn't do anything about cancer. No. And it's not like they're like, oh, well, it's all taken from one big pool. We'll just allocate some of this break up money toward cancer research. So it's not how it works. Well, you could allocate the money, but the mental energy, I guess, is what I'm talking about. Yeah, but it seemed like study after study. And also, we should point out, too, that I think there was one case in here of one study where they looked at homosexual couples, but most of the study is like cisgendered straight couples through that lens, only they're not doing a ton of research outside that. I found one that tracks it correlates the likelihood of breaking up to time, and they had it broken out by same sex and straight, married and unmarried. Those are, like, the four categories. So some people are doing it. Sure. But yeah. For the most part now, and I think one of the reasons why Chuck is a lot of this is from the mid 2000s, early 2010s. Yeah. And that was about the last tail end of that. Now I think it's starting to change, fortunately. Right. Because people of all genders and sexual orientation break up and get dumped, and we're here to help all of you. So buckle in, grab a hanky, and let's get through this. Yeah. We should go ahead and start out by saying, I guess that in theory, more people are breaking up now because people are generally waiting longer to get married. So if you can extrapolate that, if you're not married for ten more years than, let's say, our parents were right, then maybe you've gone through a couple of more breakups along the way. Yeah. We should give a shout out to Kristen Conger of Unladylike Media yeah. Who wrote this article. She points out that typically means that you are going to find somebody who you work with rather than rushing into it, but it also, as she puts it, like, leaves the window open longer for heartbreak to be dumped. Yeah. One thing I saw, Chuck, this is mind boggling to me. 85% of people, according to this one study, will be dumped in their lifetime, will experience being a break up in their lifetime. That means 15% of humanity won't. Those are some interesting people. 15% have not had a breakup or been broken up with, will not in their lifetime. They're just going to either never have a relationship or the first time they're going to hit it out of the park. But that doesn't mean, like, or settle. I've never been dumped. Yeah. Like, they'll never have gone through a breakup. But I've been through breakups. I've been the dumper. Right. I know what you're saying. No, I believe that they will not have experience to break up in their lifetime either way. Well, that's great. That means they met the person that they love when they're young, probably, again, they decided to live their life alone just fine. Right. Or both. Like I said, they decided, like, yeah, I'm just going to stick with this person. Yeah. I don't want to ruin my record, my spotless record. I think it's very interesting here that supposedly and this is very hinky how they found this out about the spikes and breakups from, like, that's a Facebook data poll. Social media, it doesn't count. Social psychology doesn't count. I agree. But it doesn't make a little bit of sense, and I could see this being true, that generally dumping someone or getting broken up with can happen on any day of the year, but there are spikes in early December and early March because of Christmas holidays and spring break. Yeah. And technically, I could see that being true. I'm sure it's true. At least on Facebook. It is a pretty big data pool. But it's, like, so lazy. It's lazy, but I could see it because it makes a little bit of sense that you would not want to go through the holidays with someone and you send a thing, too. And this is important to point out, like, when the breakup happens, when that talk or these days text message or phone call happens, it's not okay. That is the end of something for maybe both of you, but definitely one of you. Yeah. Sometimes most of the time, that actual act of saying we're breaking up, that's at the end of many weeks or even months or even years of contemplation about whether or not you want to still be with this person. Right? And that's why being broken up with is almost across the board way harder than breaking up. Because by the time, like you said, by the time the person who initiates the breakup initiates the breakup, this is at the end of a long road of decision making, whereas the other person might have been blissfully unaware or at least willfully ignorant or not willing to address the issues. And so they are, one way or another, largely caught off guard by being broken up with. So the person who does the breaking up has already gone through all these stages of grief or separation, whereas now it's this person, the person who's just been dumped. It's their time to go through it, right? So if you're doing the dumping, like, the hour after you have that conversation, you're like, what a relief. I'm starting over. Let's go get some gym. Whereas the dumpy is like, let's go get some gym. That begins their process. Although the only thing I'll take issue with that whole line of thought, though, is that a lot of people, even that might get dumped aren't like, what? Like they may have known and just didn't want to admit it or weren't brave enough or strong enough to do it themselves. And I agree with you on that. I think that there's still a thread that they had not been preparing themselves just by being in, say, denial or unwilling to address it, face it. Now they have no choice but to face reality, whereas the person who did the breakup was facing reality and coming to terms with it quietly. True. And then now it's your turn. Right? Which brings me back to my original point, which is Christmas and spring break make a little bit of sense because the person who is desperate to get out of a relationship and break up with somebody, they're staring at those Christmas holidays, and that first week of December rolls around. They're like, I got to do this now because I don't want to travel out of town with this person and go through the whole gift thing. Right. And the holidays are just tough to be in a relationship. That's a lie. Well, sure, because the holidays I mean, the holidays are so about connecting and feeling and warmth and all that. And if you're faking it or have to fake it, some people are like, I'm not going through that. No good. I also saw an explanation in Harper's Bazaar, of all places, that some people may do that because of the pressure of coming up with a really good gift. Sure. That the relationship is not worth the pressure of coming up with a good gift outweighs the value of the relationship to those people. Or there are some people who don't want to put their significant other through that, so they just break up proactively. Right. Which also means that they didn't value the relationship that much either. But at least in their mind, they're not doing it for themselves. They're doing it for the other person because they don't want to put the other person through that pressure of having to get the perfect gift. Yeah, I've never had that thing either, where you start dating someone and it's like a couple of weeks for their birthday or Christmas, and then that pressure of like, man, how do I play this one? After a couple of weeks? Yeah, you like this person, but how deep do I go on this gift here? I don't really know you, so I got you a basket of socks. Everyone loves socks. So here's an Amazon gift card for 38 50. Right. After a couple of weeks, it's a little close to come up with the perfect gift or even be expected to. And I did mention breaking up by text or whatever. Like you would suspect if you were born before 1975, like myself, you break up in person supposedly about 74% of the time. Not bad. Post 1984, if you were born less than 50% of the time, you're going to do that in person. And they say Generation Y, whatever that is. I think it's millennials. Is it? I'm pretty sure. When do they name them, though? Does my daughter have a generation already? I don't know. Like a name? I'm sure somebody out there is named your daughter's generation. Yeah. Annoying. Don't box her in. Right. Well, you got a pigeonhole, folks. Let her grow up. Be her own person. But if you are Gen Y, you're more likely 30% to do it over the phone. And of course, this says Searing instant Message, or an email. I think these days you would call that a text. An email is the lowest percent wise and compassion wise, 4% of people. That's the worst break up by email. What, was he pretty bad? Email is as bad as it gets. Was it Sex in the City where it was a sticky note? I don't remember. In the movie or the show? I didn't see the movie. Sticky note break, I think. So should we take a break? Yeah, let's take a break, man. This is going really well so far. Okay. All right, Chuck, so we've talked about when people break up? How they break up? Why do they break up? Well, actually there's one more, I think, pretty important thing about the how, which is men and women, women tend to present and this sort of makes sense too if you want to be stereotypically stereotypical about it. Women tend to present a list of grievances. Here's all the things wrong with you, Bob, pretty much. Whereas men it's a little more supposedly a little more nebulous. Where'd the magic go? Yeah, there you go. Apparently the difference is as far as rationale for breaking up and these are so macro level and broad and how we talk about it. It's a little embarrassing to even do to talk about this stuff. Yeah, I know. Men do this and women do this, right? No, it's absolutely true. But I feel like when you talk about this, people can find themselves in the contours of all. If you put all this stuff together, if you just took one study and said that this is definitive, people should punch you in the kidney. Agreed. But not really. Don't punch anybody. You know, everyone over the last almost eleven years of stuff you should know, I've said a lot of things that make it sound like I'm inciting people to violence. Friendly violence. I was joking every single time. Why someone said something. No, I just want to make sure that everyone knows that I was never ever actually serious in saying hit somebody in the head with a tack hammer or punch someone in the kitten. Actually I'm kidding all the time. Except for when you recommend that you pants somebody in front of you. I was kidding even then. You have a classroom. That's psychological abuse. It is. It's physical. But it's more psychological than anything. You ever been pants in front of people? Yes. Really? Yes, and I can tell you it's psychological. I don't think I've ever been pants. Boy, I can't imagine anything more horrifying than being pants without underwear on. Well I can confirm that because I can't remember being pants. I just remember that I have been pants. I think I just immediately blocked out everything. Yeah, no story there. So if you get broken up with, you will feel and we're going to talk about the science of a lot of this because it's very similar to overcoming addiction sometimes but of course depression and anxiety, sometimes suicidal thoughts, sometimes homicide. Oh sure, that's an outcome. Worst case outcome. That and suicide of breakups. But they are directly related to breakups. That's how bad breakups can be. Yeah. And apparently when people do write in about getting dumped and stuff, I always say it's the most trite thing in the world. But like time is the only thing that really helps. Yeah. Like ice cream and stuff like that is good, but it really does decrease over time. However, in studies eight weeks after being dumped in this study, 40% of people still had signs of clinical depression and 12% appeared moderately or severely depressed. It depends on the relationship, how long you're in it, how much it meant to you, what kind of person you are. But it can stick around for a bit. It can. So the thing is, though, there are things you can do to help accelerate the healing process, and we'll talk about those at the end. How about that? Okay. We'll make you all wait. All right, so where are we at, Chuck? Are we at the well, the attachment styles, I think, is interesting because we did talk about, like, gay, straight cisgendered on the gender spectrum. Maybe none of that matters. Maybe what matters is what they call your attachment style. That's what this says pretty plainly. That's what it comes down to, how you attach yourselves to other people. You can be a needy, clingy dude, you can be a avoidant woman, or you can be either one of those things anywhere on the gender spectrum. That's the thing. Like, the idea that women are clingy and men are distant is fabled. Yeah. Or it's at least ham fisted. Yeah, I think so. It's sort of that thing in social science that bothers me, which is, like, you're either this or this, right? Like, one thing or the other, and really all you are is a white college student. That's what they really mean. Yeah. You had a little time on their hands. Right. You needed extra credit. But there are two supposedly, again, two things attachment styles, anxious attachment and avoidant attachment. Conger points out like, that's two ends of a spectrum. Oh, okay. And you can fall somewhere on there. It's pretty straightforward. It's the Ois I believe or OSI. It's a scale where you pick how your relationship is best described by a series of Venn diagrams. In one circle is you, and one circle is your significant other. And they're just increasingly together from just barely touching to almost completely merged into one single circle. And you just circle the one that best describes your sense of what your relationship is like, and that supposedly gets your spectrum replacement on the spectrum of attachment across. Oh, interesting. It's real subjective and self reported. So that is to say, not scientific. Right. Unfortunately, supposedly two thirds of women initiate divorces, and this article says that might give them a statistical edge over getting over a relationship because they initiated the break up. So they've been in the process already. Maybe that's what I think she meant. I think so. I'm just not so sure that just because a woman initiates a divorce, it may have been after years of systematic abuse right. Which may not mean, like, she's so ready to get over this quicker than he might be. Right. Yeah. No, I mean, you can't just say, like, if X, then Y right. With this stuff, it's relationships are as messy as humans get. It's a relationship. Yeah. That's all you need to say? Well, let's talk about the brain a little bit because this is where it does get a little more interesting, I think slightly more scientific. Okay. There was a study in 2011 by neurologists at the Einstein College of Medicine which sounded totally fake, but it's not. I have sounds made up, written down. It's in the Bronx. Yeah. There's also reputable. There are also anthropologists from Rutgers and SUNY to legitimize things in the study. It's Rutgers. It's legitimizing things. We're in trouble. Oh, really? Is that really? I thought Rutgers was alright. Or am I confusing it with Tufts? You're probably thinking Princeton. Okay. Both New Jersey schools. I thought Rutgers was the public. Ivy. Okay. Sorry. Rutgers. I tried. I was getting a check back then. They're going to be so mad at me. I've hung out at Rutgers. I've been there, people. So you know what you're talking about? I know exactly what I'm talking about. Is it like the Detroit of New Jersey colleges or something that's not untrue. Okay. All right. You don't disagree? Boy, we're going to get killed. That's okay. So this study from Einstein College of Medicine found that just looking at a photograph of an ex partner caused the second sono. Somato sensory cortex and the dorsal posterior insula jeez in these areas process physical discomfort. They start lighting up. The same thing as happens is when you get physically injured, basically. Right? Like you are in actual legitimate pain as far as your brain is concerned in the midst of a breakup, at least when you're stuck in an MRI machine and shown a picture of your recent X. Which is a big deal now with social media, because every modern article I read about breakups and getting over them talked about what a deletrious effect social media will have on your recovery process. Are you taunting me? Because this stuff's everywhere now. It used to be easy. You could just throw everything in a shoe box and set it on fire. Set it on fire and send it down a river in a little boat made of rage, sure. But you can't do that anymore because they're everywhere. No, but that's tip number one from psychologist Guy Winch, author of how to Fix a Broken Heart. Stay the h off of social media. Do not stalk your ex on social. Do not check in. Like just separate. I imagine that would be really hard because in the old days, it was just left to your imagination to think about how much fun they were having. Now you can see pictures of the nine new boyfriends that she has. Right. But yeah, you're right. Maybe it helps some people. I don't know. I think it's imperative that you not do that to help. It's not like watching them on social media will prevent you from ever getting over it. I think no matter what you do, you're going to eventually get past this. Sure. But all you're doing is prolonging the process unnecessarily. Yeah. And then also when you were on the fMRI machine and they did brain scans from people who had been broken up with recently, they found that very much similar to people overcoming, like, an addiction to cocaine. And that same circuitry is of overcoming addiction, is just lighting up. It's that potent. Yeah. So far with this MRI study from Albert Einstein came up with is that you are in physical pain from the break up, and you're the same centers that are activated by addiction, cravings, withdrawals are activated by the break up as well. That's astounding. Yes. And this weird mental cycle happens basically when you do look at, like a photograph of what they say a former lover, right? Like the Burger King laying on a rugskin. Rug. But you'll see the photo, and the weird thing is you'll immediately get a reward. You will get a dopamine hit, like a pleasurable feeling by seeing this person. And then you realize, oh, wait. Well, then you get sad immediately afterward. And then that sadness. Sadness. Where did that come from? It is a little saggy feeling that triggers the brain ventral TEG mental area and the nucleus. Humans? I think so. I know we've run into that before. We used to talk about the brain a lot more humans. I think we figured out the brain, though, right? So we stopped. Yeah. We were like, done. But these two things working together, regardless of how I mispronounced them, they trigger the urge to see that person. So you get sad, and then your brain lights up in two areas, and then you go, hey, remember that dopamine hit you get from looking this picture? Why don't you just give them a call and see what's going on? Right. You want the real stuff? Go get them. Those two areas apparently also are analytical as well. So they're responsible for rehashing the relationship, but apparently they're not very realistic because most people, when rehashing the relationship, highlight the good parts and forget about all the bad parts. I kind of have tended to do that. I think everybody does. I don't understand why. I don't know. I don't agree with that. Emily we, of course, have been married so long, the subject never comes up anymore. But I was always like, oh, with the old girlfriend, what was so bad there? And then if I really thought about it, I would remember where she's always like, oh, that was awful. Oh, really? Yeah. Got you. Well, she's smart. Yeah, maybe so. And I'm a dumb dumb. Okay, so even if you're not dumb dumb, even like you represent a third of people or half of people who do, when rehashing, only think about the good stuff and forget about all the negative stuff. What is that? Why does that even happen? It's bizarre if you think about it. Yeah. Personality thing. Like, if I tend to be optimistic maybe. Yeah, I guess that's a pretty good explanation, to tell you the truth. What I was going to say is if you look at relationships or romantic love sure. As an evolutionary drive to pair and mate successfully over and over again and to stay together, that would bring you back to this person that you've already connected with rather than making you go look for another mate. That makes sense. So maybe it's kind of like a backstop or failsafe for breakups, evolutionarily speaking. Right. Like, I was so close to having nine babies, I really want to start all over again. Right. Which is funny because that means that Emily's more evolved than you. In that sense. Yeah, in every sense that's awesome. But the end of that mental cycle basically, though, is those areas light up that say, go back and see that person. Then you are immediately unsatisfied about the fact that that's not happening. That's when your prefrontal cortex trips into gear and that's when you get angry. And it's just that mental cycle that starts seeing that photo on a social media platform and ending up upset in the end. But the same study led by Helen Fisher found that over time, the same process is greatly degraded. Sure. I think they did a follow up in months. Congress found that the whole process in all of the neurochemicals and the brain regions are much less active, which, again, just time. Give it time. Right. But if you don't give it time and you do the thing where you do get back together, that can be great sometimes you can work it out and people can change, but there's a big caveat there. Well, right. Go ahead. No, you say yours. Okay. I think I'm talking about something else. What I saw was that if you get back together, rather than saying like, this is a fresh start, we're going to try this over again, we're going to really make a go of it. If you do that, all you're going to do is just walk right back into the same pitfalls and prat falls because the separation probably did nothing or virtually nothing to your individual personalities, which are the source of all of your conflicts. So it's not like you just magically worked your conflicts out and you're getting back together and everything's fine. That's just a charade. But if you get back together and say. I decided I love you the way you are. And I don't want to be away from you. And I just accept you for you. And I accept our relationship with all of its problems. You're probably going to have a successful reunion if you go into it like. All of our problems are solved because we broke up. You're just going to do the same thing again down the line. That's apparently a fairly frequent thing. That something like 60% or some crazy percentage of the younger generation, generation y, I guess the process of breaking up, the majority of them that break up involves getting back together multiple times, right? Not just once. So you're getting back together and just going through the same pattern. I think there's a field of thought in psychology called scripts. These are scripts that we're playing out one another scripts, and if you don't alter the script, you're going to go through the same script over and over again. You're working out the same things from your past or from your childhood against one another, and you're not doing it in the right way. So all you're doing is creating conflict. And that doesn't just magically go away because you spend a couple of months apart. You have to just say, I love you for who you are, and we're going to just keep going. Yeah. I think what I was going to say was, don't they think, though, that also depends on just what kind of person you are in terms of thinking either people can really make substantial change in their lives or they can't. That's how you deal with a breakup, which we'll talk about in a minute. That sounds like a good place for a break. I think so, too. All right, before we get to that, what we were just talking about before the split, this is one piece of data from the same sex couple community, supposedly from studies, they do think that same sex couples are better at staying friends. Yeah, I saw that after a break up, which particularly lesbian couples yeah. And then gay men and then straight couples are like, forget about it so long. Yeah. It's an interesting thing. Can you really be friends after and it all depends on how intense and how long and how kind of a person you are, but yeah, it's interesting when I meet people that legitimately are friends with people that they seriously dated years later, it's pretty rare, I think, actually. This, too. I think it seems less rare because you see it on, like, TV shows a lot, and it's also almost aspirational like, oh, look at how laid back and with it these people are, that they can be friends after this. I think it's pretty rare, actually. I think it's an idealized form. Right. You like to think that you're on good terms with everybody in your life. I think that's usually the person breaking up, though, there's like, I'd like to still be friends. Right, sure. Whereas the person getting broken up with is like or you could get hit by a car, right? Yeah. And that would solve the problem. Yeah. And then sticking with the whole same sex straight thing. Are we saying straight still? I don't know. That doesn't feel right, does it? It doesn't. So let's just say samesex. And there's a clinical name for it. Boy. So the time and marriage seem to be the two greatest indicators, at least as far as this one study I saw went. For the likelihood of staying together over long periods of time. Like, all relationships, same sex and hetero, man, woman, all of them are at the greatest risk of breakup within the first year or two. Right. And then it starts to drop precipitously. But I think married hetero couples have a fairly low rate of low chance of breaking up over time. It's pretty much flat the whole time. And then with same sex couples, the same thing happens. The chance of breakup is pretty high at the beginning, and then it starts to come down. And then it's basically tracks with hetero couples for marriage. So marriage is kind of the factor. Time is the second factor. But then time stops being a factor after like 30, 40 years. For unmarried couples, both hetero and same sex, they start to break up after year, like 30 or 40. Like the chance of a breakup increases. Yeah, but once you get married, once you get a ring on it over time, over like decades is what we're talking about. Your chance is almost nil of breaking up. All right. Like less than I think a percent. But that doesn't sound right because, like, half of all marriages ended divorce. Yeah. This thing was way off. But maybe that's when taking into account maybe that's front loaded by all the divorces that happened in the first five years or something like that. Yeah, okay. That would make a little bit more sense. Yeah, it does. They do find that your chances of getting over a break up or adjusting to that new post breakup life really centers around regaining your sense of self. That when you couple up with someone, it's not saying you can't have a sense of self anymore because it's very healthy, too. Sure. But there's an inevitable absorption and morphing that happens. And a little bit of your sense of self goes away when you couple. Yeah. All the same friends, the same phone number. Yeah. And the same address. Yeah. Boy. What about couples that share the email address? Yeah. You mean I have one? Really? Sure. Never had one. But you have your own, too. Yeah, we just have our own, but we have our shared one too. I think I'm talking about the people that just have the shared address. I've always found that interesting. Yeah. I'm judging. I don't know anybody who just has a shared address. I don't get why people would have the same one. I guess Emily sells a mindspring address. Wow. Is it Emily Atminespring.com? No. And that is the truth, because I'm not saying that just to keep people from emailing her, but she had it for so long, and I make fun of her all the time. Sure. Because she still pays like $20 a year for this. What? And she was like, I've had it for so long that I just can't give it up. Well, that's why people stay on Facebook. Yeah. Like, I'm not changing my email address. There's like so many memories there. It's like, well, even that's just her contact list and every email. I just think it's funny. I was like, where's that money going? Right? Who owns Todd Mindspring? The heir of the Mindspring fortune. He can count on $20 a month because of Emily. Oh, man. And then for recovery, the whole stress related growth thing, that can happen with recovery, which is and I think women tend to be more apt to do this than men, but like, alright, you know what? I'm free now. I'm going to do all those things that I lost while I was with him. Right. I didn't have time for my friends anymore. I lost connections with them. I didn't fly model airplanes or RC airplanes anymore. I'm going to drop some weight. I'm going to start eating healthier. The post breakup weight loss is a huge thing. It is. And partially from stress, but partially just because I'm going to make myself the best I can be. And I'll show her or him. I think it's also just as simple as more free time. Sure. Too. And something to do that exercise is also stress relieving. You might not be eating as much because your stomach is tied up into stress nuts. Right. So there are a bunch of reasons for it. But here's where that part you were talking about earlier I said we would get to kind of kicks in, is how much of the self you identify with does relate to how well you handle a break up, how much of the you is the we in the relationship. And what they found is that that's a huge part of it. But more significant is the amount of growth that happens while you're in a relationship. Like, you can share a tremendous amount of the same self with your significant other and grow as a person as a result. And if you do that, you're actually going to have a harder breakup because that we that super attachment that led to that personal growth is related to that other person who's now gone. Whereas even if you were totally enmeshed with another person but you didn't grow much personally, if you experience a burst of growth after the breakup, you're going to have the easiest breakup of all. Even though you were super enmested with the person, you weren't growing, but then you grow afterward. Now that period of non growth is related to that person who's gone. And you can be like, so long, zero. I'm going to make myself a hero. Yeah. Do you see? Sure. Did they come across yeah, because sometimes I'm not the best at explaining things, which is pretty funny if you think about it. It really is. In 2000, they did a study at Northwestern University where they did find out, though, that they asked people, I believe, how bad do you think this breakup is going to be if you're in a relationship? What if you broke up and then they found out that they weren't as bad off as they thought they would be? Which is encouraging. It is. But also think about this, Chuck. These vultures who are running the study were like, you're in a relationship, we're going to study just in case you guys break up. Yeah. And so they would get that info, that self reporting info about how bad the breakup would be, and then they swooped in upon the breakup. They're like, how bad is it? Tell us. And the person was like, well, this is as bad as it is. And it was almost across the board, not anywhere near as bad as the people thought it would be when they were in the relationship. Yeah. Which is pretty surprising. And what was even more surprising is the more in love you are, the easier it's going to be relative to how bad you think it will be during the relationship. Right. Which makes sense if you stop and think about it. Yeah. I thought the other interesting thing, too, when we were talking about getting over a break up and your sense of self, that's closely tied to how you feel about rejection. And there are more than a couple of ways, but if your reflection of your how you think about rejection is tied heavily into how you feel about yourself. So there's some people that might be rejected and it might devastate them because they start to analyze themselves and what did I do wrong and what's wrong with me? Right. There's a whole other camp out there, and I think this goes into personality and ego and all that stuff, but you call these people healthy or sociopaths. Oh, you think so? Maybe. Wow, we just put both of our cards on the table anyway. But the people that are like, yeah, I got broken up with and I got rejected, s happens. That happens in life. People get rejected. It's not because of me. I thought everyone you find this quote, sociopathic. I learned that two people can both be quality individuals, but that doesn't mean they belong together. That's sociopathic to you. Wait, it says you said that it was debt bundy patrick Bateman. No, no, I don't think it necessarily means you're a sociopath, but I think someone that is a true sociopath would probably be way more apt to be like, oh, yeah, well, it was them, not me. Yeah, it's fine. Break up. There's a subgroup to that sociopath, as you call it, camp. And they are like, well, breakups happen. I heard what the other person said, and there's some things I feel like I need to work on. Like, say I was a terrible communicator, so I'm going to work on becoming a better communicator as a result. That's called stress related growth is what that's called. Are you growing out of this horrific experience? And that's healthy. That's super healthy. But the key is what's unhealthy is to say this was all because of some fatal flaw that I have, right. That's part of my personality that I'll never be able to get rid of. And so all I'm going to do is poison every relationship from here on out, and I'm just going to build walls and keep everybody at a distance. That's what some people do as a result of a break up. And you can't do that even if your brain starts to go that way. This research says, stop it. Don't you have to disassociate yourself, become the sociopath, I guess, if need be, to say this is not because of an inherent flaw in me that's uncorrectable. Even if the person was right, even if they're like, you're a terrible communicator and you have serious mommy issues, that doesn't mean that you will always be a terrible communicator with serious mommy issues. You could work on those post break up and become a much better so to the next person or whatever. The key is not being a fatalist. Like, there's nothing you can do to change. Right. And then also you should evaluate whether the person was saying that in anger, how much faith you put in their opinion of you. There's a lot of factors that you need to take into account before you take on that kind of thing. That just puts you in the bottom of a well where you could conceivably hang out for the rest of your life if you're not careful. Without copious amounts of therapy. Yeah, agreed. Or turning to drugs and alcohol, which is a big gin. Yeah. Big thing that a lot of people do. Gin cuts both ways. Should we talk about some of these tips from this guy, psychologist guy Winch? Remember, number one is don't check up on them on social media. Good luck with that. Here's why. He says that this will reinforce your ex's presence in your mind and will make it harder for you to stop fantasizing about your broken relationship. You're basically just like, literally keeping them right there in front of your face through social media, which is why it's a bad idea. Number two, avoid creating mysteries about why the breakup happened. And again, this is along the same lines of just keeping your ex forefront in your mind, which is hard. It's going to take a little while. Sure. Pop up and just be like, well, they're out of my mind. That's sociopathic. Yeah. Even if you're the breaker upper, it doesn't mean that you don't have a process to go through as well. Sure, but that's why it says avoid creating mystery. It's probably going to happen, but be mindful when it's going on and be like, enough, I'm going to go work out or go drink some gin, or both. Number three, make a list of all the compromise. This is a good one. Make a list of all the compromises that you had to make that you don't want to make again. Start to think about, like, when I was with this person, I felt like I could never really have my real sense of humor out in public because they thought it was loud. That counters. That rehashing. That just focuses on the positive. It cuts the legs out from under. That cutting legs. What about number four? Do the things that used to bring you enjoyment is kind of what I was talking about earlier, even if they don't seem interesting now. That whole thing where, like, jeez, I used to really love pottery. Right. And throwing clay. Sure. And I just quit doing it once I started dating Josh. No clay throwing my house. And Josh hated it when Chuck went to the Potter's wheel because it reminded him of Ghost. And Josh hated that movie, so he wouldn't allow me to do it. But you know what? I'm going to reclaim that pottery wheel. Yes. Which is ironic because I was always walking around our house dressed like Patrick Swaysy in that scene, but I still hated that movie. I was more like the Chris Farley chippendale. Patrick Swayze. Version number five, remove reminders. This is the box that you will burn, which is now just throw your laptop in the fireplace right. In your smartphone, and then reconnect with your friends. Like, yeah, you left them in the dust years ago, but they're still alive, and they probably wouldn't mind hearing from you. Yeah. The problem here is if you truly do have a mix of friends that you both love sure. And it's not like I didn't leave behind all my old friends. Right. Or the worst case scenario is, like, all of my friends are from you now what do I do? Go down to the YMCA and make some new friends, I guess. So I found this one last study I thought was interesting. The best way to get over a break up, according to science. And this was actually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. And they tested a bunch of strategies for getting over a break up. 24 heartbroken people aged 20 to 37 that had been in at least a two and a half year relationship. So pretty significant. Some were dumping, some were dumpers. And they said there were three strategies. One is to negatively reappraise your ex. Just think about all the bad things. The other one was called love reappraisal, which is believe and read statements like, it's okay to love someone. I'm no longer with it's. All right? And then the third was distraction. Literally the ice cream. Click over here. Movies trick, the black mirror trick. And then there was the fourth prompt, which was the control, which was don't think about anything. Which, of course, means you're thinking of the safety Marshall. Don't think about anything. Really just undermine the science of that. Clear your brain. So those were the four prompts, then they showed everyone they hooked everyone up to an EEG machine, showed them photos of their exes, and they measured the intensity of emotion in response to that photo and then had them use these different prompts to see which one works best. When they looked in, the people who were not thinking about anything, they were bleeding out of their eye sockets. They were. And according to the readings, all three of the strategies significantly decreased their emotional response to the photos, really relative to the control. If you looked at your ex in a negative light, that first one, like they were such a jerk. You had a decrease in feelings of love, but you left in a worse mood like that. Dredged up bad feelings like you wasted your time or something like that, maybe. Or just like just really ticked me off thinking about all that stuff. Right. So now I did dump study. Got to go through some clay. That's right. Distraction made you feel better overall, but didn't that have much of an effect on how you really felt about them? Okay. You just didn't leave in necessarily a bad mood. You just got ice cream and watched funny movie Good Enough, which is fine, but they said that that doesn't do anything long term to help you recover. Okay, just like a temporary whatever does it prolong it, though, do you think? I mean, you know, as much as the people conducting it said it's a form of avoidance that is shown to reduce the recovery. Okay, so it would prolong it then. I guess. So everybody stopped eating ice cream and watching Black Mirror and then Love Appraisal showed no effect on your mood or how you feel about them, but it did dull the emotional response a little bit. So there's really nothing to do. Doesn't sound like it. I saw a couple more tips. One is you could write a letter that under no circumstances will you ever send. Yeah, that's a good trick for love relationships, like anything bothering her. It also really works well for Grieving, too. You just write a letter. Sure. And you can say whatever you want because you know for a fact that the other person will never read it. Dear jerk, you can say whatever you want and it's just like a cathartic process that can help hasten things. And then also, why do sad songs feel so good when you're going through a break up? Why do people seek out sad songs? And the best explanation I saw, the best theory is that a song is a little capsule of emotion. When you're seeking out a sad song, you're confronting the very emotions that you're probably stifling right then. And confronting it in such a raw form forces you to express those emotions. I E Cry and that helps you process them faster because you're not pushing them off any longer. You're expressing them. You're sorting through them. So that's what sad songs make you do. That's why people seek out sad songs when they're down, and it actually helps hasten recovery. Lady in Red. I don't think that's a sad song with me. That's the saddest song you're like. Sailing takes me away. Sailing by Christopher Cross, lady in Red and then Dan Fogleberg's. Same old Langston. Three set of songs. Jerry knows that song. Those are two Christopher Cross songs. He's got two of the three sets. No lady in red is not Christopher Cross. I think it is $5. Gary, we're all nodding now. $5 is on the table. All right, I'll look it up. Well, you guys will find out next episode whether I was right or not. I remember the guy's name. It's Christopher Cross. Oh, Jerry is doing one of her rare speaking parts. She says, Christopher Waltz. That's the actor. You know what's funny is I mistyped something, and it changed my search to lady in Red Wings. Like Red Wing boots. Must be a fetish site. I guess so. Yeah. Well, while Chuck's doing that, if you want to know more about breakups, go read about them, because that's way better than going through them. And since we said that, it's time for listener mail. Oh, no. First of all, that is Christopher. Who is Christopher? It's a manager. Christian de Berg. Oh, I got you. Not Christopher. I'm sorry, but I think he was a one hit wonder, probably. He's British. Okay. Art rock performer. Lady in Bed. Wow. So Christopher Cross did not have that song. No. He's crazy. Yeah, he is. So no listener mail. Let's get the how to Money guys in here. So here we are, everybody. As promised, we have a very special non listener mail, listener mail segment. Instead, we're going to hang out with Joel and Matt, the dudes from how to Money. So welcome, guys. Hey, thanks for having me. Yes, we appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for being here, listening to those voices. I know, right? They got podcasting voices for sure. We've been working on them. It takes a while to develop a voice this golden, but it takes time. But you get there. You guys know I've just learned the English language, so how this all happened was my friend from high school is a mutual friend of yours, Matt Keg. Stand Tot. He got in touch via social media and said, hey, I got these friends. It was sort of that thing that everyone dreads, which is like, they have a podcast. Would you have coffee with them? And then I listened to the show, and it was great. And I was like, you guys are sort of doing this stuff, you should know, approach to finance and would you join our network? And it was kind of that simple. Yeah. The thing is, it wasn't a mistake, right. I've been a fan of Sisk for years, and the approach of just talking about things that you're interested or that you find a curiosity in was a huge draw to finding a way to talk about money in a way that was helpful to folks out there needing help with their finances. Yeah, that's the key, isn't it? Just to be actually interested in what you're talking about. So what are some of the topics you guys cover? Typically? Yeah, so we cover all sorts of topics, really more than anything, stuff that interests Matt and I. We just realized that every time we got together, what do we end up talking about? Money related issues. That's just kind of what we care about. And so we wanted to help people figure out how to handle their money better because that's like a huge issue. Right. And so we talk about tax refunds, we talk about student loan debt. We talked about how investing is so much simpler than you think it is. There's this concerted effort to make it seem like it's a really hard thing. And people get their paintings in a lot because they don't know how to invest, and they decide not to do it at all because it's so hard. Right. And so we want to just help people make it easier. So it's like a public service, basically, you guys, for doing that because there is a lot of scary thought and just fear of the unknown, for sure, with finances, and a lot of people have problems with money. So to go out there and do that, to explain it, to whipping into shape for people, that's off. Yeah. There's just not conversation happening around personal finance. Like, fewer folks were talking about it then need to actually be discussing it. Right. It needs to be talked about more. And I think by example, to a certain extent, by talking about it and having conversations about it, that alone kind of demystifies these financial topics and principles. And if we can do that and encourage conversation through the show, through the podcast, and we see that as a huge win. Yeah, I think the danger for especially like, younger listeners and millennials that they just sort of shut it down because they might think it's boring or it's scary, and so I don't even want to go there. And you guys do it in such an approachable way that it demystifies it and makes it accessible and it really kind of is like a public service in a way. Yes. I think for Matt and I to do the show right first, it just came out of what we generally talk about. We're like, hey, what do we do when we get together? We drink a beer and we talk about money. And so on the show, we drink a beer too, which is part of our kind of approach, like, let's just be normal human beings that talk about money, that care about this stuff. And so, honestly, it's been super cool to see the listeners respond, to see them taking action to hear the sorts of moves that people have made in their financial lives already. And the cool thing, the best part about the whole thing is that at the end of the day, they've empowered themselves, right? They've made a change in their own lives that makes their future self so much happier and even, honestly, their self today. Because as you start to kind of take the reins of your own financial life back, there's something that's so free getting out from under debt. There's no better feeling than that. You feel like the man doesn't own you anymore. You're not indebted literally and figuratively at that point. Yeah, but it's like, how do I start? How do I even get the ball rolling? And that's what keeps people from sitting on the couch and not doing anything. We want to be that motivating factor, but also kind of explain some of those things that typically are shrouded in secrecy. Well, you said you guys talk about beer a lot on the podcast or it's a part of it. It's like a third host kind of another character. Right. It's the Jerry of House of Money or may not exist, I guess. I wish Jerry was a beer. Should be long gone by now, though. So what beer have you come across that is expensive but worth the outlay, in your opinion? One of the reasons we have the beer on the show is that it's an example of us focusing on enjoying life now while also balancing saving for the future. Yeah, that's important. Yeah, because a lot of times folks get too caught up in compounding interest calculators and they look ahead and they say, man, if I don't spend another $10 this month, like thousands and thousands down the road. And what happens is folks end up just depriving themselves of things that they enjoy now. Yeah. You're like gollum or something, but with money in general. Pretty much any beer that we know we want to have on the show, certainly there's some that are better than others, but we enjoy every single one that we have on because it's an example. It's an illustration of us taking time, taking time for ourselves. We don't do that enough. But really, it is a huge part of the show, and we felt that it was always important that we maintain that in the podcast. Right. The fact that you don't discriminate from beer to beer, I just love both of you. Hats off to you again. Well, I mean, you guys are demystifying the process. You're making finance interesting and funny, and I feel great that you guys thought of us as an inspiration for doing that. And I think you really are doing a great service, though. Like, if you're out there in podcast and finance scares you or bores you, like, listen to how to Money for Real because it can be a great sidekick and a teacher for you. Thanks, guys. We appreciate it and yeah, we're just glad to be part of the network and we love what you guys are doing. It's doing great too, man. Thanks, man. It's a lot of fun to be a part of the family, for sure. Yeah. And so they can find you guys. What on Apple? Podcast on iHeartRadio app everywhere. They get podcasts all the places. Okay, great. And when do you publish? Mondays and Wednesdays. What's your social? How to, Money Pod? Pretty much everywhere, I believe. Yeah. And the best part is our Facebook group. So if you want to join in there, there's over 1000 people asking each other questions, commenting and that's the community super fun. Yes. The fact that the community has sort of formed around the show and there's folks helping each other out, asking questions, answering other questions of stuff that they do know about, that is super cool. Between that and the emails that we receive of folks explaining how they have created a budget for the first time ever, I'm starting to set aside money towards putting money in my 401K, finally accepting the employer match, like just doing things like that, it's so rewarding and it's huge. I wish I would have had the show because I was a late bloomer in knowing anything about finances. So if I would have had to show in my 20s, I'd be a lot further along than I am today. Gosh, if only we could time travel way back. I'd be richer and slimmer. Thank you for coming by, you guys. We appreciate it. If you want to get in touch with me, Chuck or Jerry, you can shoot us an email to stuffpodcast@houseofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseupworks.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 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 Morgellons Disease Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-morgellons-disease-works | There is a condition that can cause people to feel bugs crawling beneath their skin so acutely that they will use tweezers to pluck them from their eyeballs. It's a terrible disorder made worse by medicine's insistence it is all in sufferers' heads. | There is a condition that can cause people to feel bugs crawling beneath their skin so acutely that they will use tweezers to pluck them from their eyeballs. It's a terrible disorder made worse by medicine's insistence it is all in sufferers' heads. | Thu, 31 Jul 2014 15:34:18 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=15, tm_min=34, tm_sec=18, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=212, tm_isdst=0) | 32422503 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry are with me. So of course there's a Stuff You Should Know beret I know that is false, sir, because this is probably the most interesting, weirdest podcast we've done in a long, long time. Oh, yeah, I thought it was. I had never heard of this. You sent it my way. I was like, all right, some disease, let's cover some disease. And then I started reading it and I was just like, what's going on? And I still don't know what's going on. It's totally fascinating. Well, you are in the majority, Chuck, about not knowing about it. Yeah, it's a mysterious disease of some sort, and there's a great battle going on. But is it even a disease? It's very controversial. That's the whole thing. Yeah. We're talking about it based on an article from How Stuff Works. What we're talking about is I say morglons. Chuck and Martin bashir say morgellons. I saw on some pronunciation site, Morgellons, but we're both going to make a hard g sound. How about that? G. We can agree on the hard g. Okay. But what we're talking about is this disease that was basically discovered first described in 2002. Yeah. Initially, that will make your radar go up, because that is super new, but the name itself is borrowed from a 17th century obscure French medical text. Morglons. Morgellons, however you want to pronounce it, was first used to describe some weird condition where coarse hair grew out of the backs of children. If you go on to any morglon's research site and research the origin of the name, you also usually see right afterward a sentence that says, that's not what this is. It's just this lady used the same name, the first person to describe it. Yeah, that's a good way to say that. Yeah. Because her son had it. Yeah. The lady in question's name was Mary Lateo. That's how I'm pronouncing her name. No hard g. No, but she had a two year old who at the time was saying bugs and pointing to his lip, and he had some sort of sores around his lips. And when she looked closely, she saw that there were some strange threads or string or some fibers coming out of these sores and his lips, and she became alarmed. She did. And almost every sufferer from this odd is it a disease or not? Since then has had a really hard time getting diagnosis, getting doctors to take her seriously. So much so that she formed a support group and a website, the Morgan's Research Foundation. And I guess we just need to get into it. I mean, it is one of the oddest things I've ever heard. It's dermacological. It's about the skin. There are sores. There's a lot of itching. And the most mysterious thing about it, though, is, like you said, these blue, red, black, and I think white fibers. And you can look up more gallons. If you type in more gallons, fibers and image search that, you're going to see these things and they just look like little threads coming out of your skin. Right. Or burrow beneath your skin. Yeah. So the thing is, Chuck, is fibers associated with sores on somebody's body weird, but not the most mysterious thing in the universe. Sure. The problem is there's a guy, a professor of pharmacology at Oklahoma State University named Randy Weymore, who took an interest in morgul on disease. He doesn't have it himself. Yeah. But he read about it and thought, well, all you have to do is look at these fibers. Yeah, it's probably an ingrown hair or something. And with the research carried out independently by Dr. Weymore, the weirdness, the legend began to grow. Yeah. Because it was first identified in 2002, and I think in 2005 he heard about it and started researching. So he got in touch with morgul on sufferers and said, hey, send me some of these weird fibers and I want to check them out. And apparently when he asked for some assistance in identifying what the fibers were, he found that not all of them could be conclusively identified. Yeah, like not as oh, well, I can't tell. Is it some weird animal hair or is it a cotton fiber? Is it nylon? They weren't able to identify them at all. As if it did not exist in the FBI database. It was not plant or animal, and it didn't match any of the 80,000 plus synthetic fibers that are in the FBI database. Yeah. So he brought one even to a specialist, I think, from a police department that does this for a living, look at under microscope. And he's like, I've never seen anything like this in my life. So the mystery took root at that point. Oh, yeah, in a big way. And the problem is, though, is the morglons or morguellan sufferers, we have no idea how many there are because the medical establishment has concluded that there is no such thing. Yeah, I mean, this article was written in, what, like 2010? 2010. And it said 14,000 confirmed. But if you're not being diagnosed or if you're told you might be crazy, which we'll get to in a minute, then yeah, who knows how many people. And man, it gets more and more interesting. It does. So in addition to fibers, there's all sorts of horrible symptoms that morgulon suffers report. So, first of all, you feel like you are infested with bugs. Yeah, that's the big the creepiest one is literally, they all talk about burrowing sensation and they all say bugs like, something is under my skin and it's moving. Exactly. A lot of them report feeling like a certain kind of grittiness under their skin and often on the underside of their eyelids. And a lot of people who have morgulon say those are eggs. They have all sorts of sores that it's, like, crazy from which fibers are pitted or come up from or whatever. Yeah. Those fibers can be anywhere on the skin. And the weird thing is they can pop up in places that people can't reach with their arms. Right. And you're going to start itching during this podcast. We apologize. Were you itching when you were reading this stuff? No, I was surprised. I wasn't. Oh, man, I was itching like, crazy. Were you? Oh, yeah. It occurred to me. Have we ever done one on itching? I feel like we have, because when I read some of that stuff we'll get to later from that one researcher yeah. It felt really familiar. It did to me, too. But I looked it up, and there's no podcast in our archive on it. I know we've done something because I remember specifically talking about it being a dull they thought it was a dull pain. Right. Spoilers. Okay. All right. That comes later. So, like I said, those fibers can appear anywhere on the body, and sometimes they move, too. So if you're a morgulon sufferer, you're pretty much convinced that you are infested with some sort of weird bug. Yeah. Some kind of parasite, maybe, that's inhabiting your skin. It's laying eggs, and you have basically a compulsion and obsession is how it's described by a lot of morglon sufferers to get these things out of your skin, wherever they are. Yeah. There is one person. There's this awesome article called The Itch nobody can scratch by Will Store. Highly recommended. Yeah, it's a long form article, and it's worth every minute you spend on it. And it's on medium.com, I think is where we found it. And there's one Morgan suffer who's interviewed in there who's talking about noticing a fiber, feeling it on their eyeball and then looking in the mirror with a magnifying glass because these are thought to be very tiny bugs and seeing this little fiber moving across the person's eyeball. So they took a pair of tweezers to their eyeball to get this thing out. This is the kind of suffering that these people are going through. Yeah. This other lady soaked her body in baths of bleach. People will get turned away from doctors or told they're crazy to the point where they contemplate or commit suicide because it's so maddening. And the itching is so maddening. And to not be taken seriously is so maddening to be told it's a psychiatric condition. But in 2008, after thousands and thousands of people wrote into Congress, people like John McCain and Hillary Clinton and at the time Obama, they urged the CDC to do a study. And we will tell you the results of that study right after this message break. Okay, so there is a disease, or is it a disease? Very mysterious in origin. No one takes the sufferer seriously or not. No one. But the medical community at large doesn't take them seriously. And we'll talk about why, but one reason why is because of the findings of the CDC, which said that there was no single underlying medical condition or infectious source that was identified. Most source appeared to be the result of chronic scratching and picking without a cause. Materials and fibers obtained from skin biopsy specimens were mostly cellulose compatible with cotton fibers. A substantial number of the participants in the study scored highly in screening tests for one or more coexisting psychiatric or addictive conditions, including depression. Somatic concerns which is an indicator of preoccupation with health issues and drug use. Yeah. Apparently 50% of the participants in the study tested positive for drugs. They demonstrated no infectious cause, no evidence of environmental link, no indication it would be helpful to perform additional testing as potential causes, and future efforts should focus on helping patients reduce their symptoms. So there you have it. The CDC loudly said, these are people that are just scratching themselves too much and becoming obsessed with that. Yes. And with that CDC study, the door kind of closed, at least for the time being, on any help from the medical establishment. Yeah. So let's recap. If you have mortgage on the disease, you have waltz all over your body from which there seem to be fibers of possibly an unknown origin, sprouting you constantly itch so you're constantly scratching. So those welts are getting worse and worse and worse, like stinging sensations. A lot of people compare them to being stuck with compass needles all over your body. And when you go to your doctor, they tell you that you're wrong to stop scratching yourself. This is all in your head. Yeah. One of the very few academic papers that wasn't written by a member of a morgulon's research organization said this is most likely all in their head. And what you should do if you're a physician and somebody comes to you with what they think is Morgan's disease is that you should give them an anti parasitic ointment just to basically get them to trust you and then prescribe antipsychotics. Right. Because what the medical establishment, and especially now that the CDC study came in belief is that this is something called delusional parasitosis. Yeah. The belief that you have bugs living in your skin, that everyone who has Morgan's disease is crazy. That's what the medical establishment thinks. Yeah, but they don't say things like crazy. No, they don't. But they're saying like, you are delusional. You have a false belief that you have bugs on your skin. But the thing is, if you look at morglon suffers, there's people from all different walks of life. Yes. The initial kid was a two year old Oakland A baseball pitcher, billy Cook. He left the game because well, for a lot of reasons, but this was one of them because he suffered. Joni Mitchell, you ever heard of her? Yes, I have. Famous singer. She suffers from it. In this Will Store article, there's a guy named Paul who is a successful seeming middle manager type from Texas. And all these people there's a doctor, a general practitioner who has it. We should talk about him. All of these people are reporting similar symptoms. So the idea is, if it's all delusional parasitosis, how is it possible that all these people think they have the same thing? Well, one answer that they think might be the case is the Internet. Because people start itching and they think, what in the world is going on with this sore? And they look on the Internet and they find Morgan's disease and then they self diagnose. All this came about in 2002. Is that a coincidence? I don't know. But I know that self diagnosis is a problem and I still don't know what to think about this. When you read these stories, you feel awful for these people. Yes. The science can usually crack the code at some point, though. Everyone is saying no one is saying that they're not suffering. Right. These people are very much suffering, but the medical establishment is saying it's all in your head. We have a name for it. It's called delusional parasitosis. The people who have Morgan's disease are saying, like, no, this isn't in my head. I've got fibers. Like some of them have trapped bugs. Supposedly. They're saying, you guys aren't listening to me. You can give me antipsychotics all you want, but it's not going to cure it. Yeah, and it's that also that you fall into the trap. I read the psychopath test by John Ronson. Fantastic book, by the way. But there's a guy in there that tried to get out of a jail sentence for an assault by pretending he was crazy, got sent up to the worst mental institution in England and was like, I'll be able to get out of here in no time. The more sane he appeared to try to be, the more crazy they thought he was. Oh, yeah. And that's the same thing that goes on with a lot of Morgan sufferers, is the more rationally we tried to talk about this, the more they were like, okay, let's just take it easy and we'll get to the bottom of this. And they point out, I think the author of the thing you recommended was called a chicken and egg thing. It makes them spin out of control and depressed and suicidal and not so, but is that which came first? Exactly. So are you suffering from these psychotic symptoms or mentally imbalanced symptoms? Because as a result and from not being listened to, are you suffering these physical symptoms because you're out of it a little bit? Yeah. And it is a chicken or the egg kind of question. But the idea of the fibers, that one is a big one that a lot of people with mortgage suffers point to. They're like, well, wait a minute, people have found that these fibers can't be explained by anybody. So is that the case? Well, your buddy Randy Weymore, he's really taking the mantle here. I really like, this guy has done this the first time. Like we said, he went to the police department and they found no known match in the database and couldn't figure out what it was. Later on, he asked for samples from sufferers and had them send them to him. He took those in and was pretty disappointed by the results when he sent them to a lab to identify because they found that they were some were cotton, some were nylon. He said it was pretty disappointing. One was a fungal residue, one was a human hair, one was a rodent hair, one was goose down. The author of this paper was saying, were you disappointed? He said, well, yeah, sure I was, but there was one that was unknown, and he said it was unknown. He said, well, they said it was a big fungal fiber, but they weren't completely sure. So he was kind of debunked a little bit. So it's weird. It's like sometimes these fibers are real things, and sometimes they seem like they're not, right? And with the fibers, there's a definite belief among the medical establishment that these are just ordinary, everyday fibers. And if you start paying attention to any spot on your body, right, you're probably going to be able to find fiber. And if that suddenly has some sort of significance to you and you fixate on that, then you can easily fall down this mental rabbit hole that morgulon suffers supposedly are under the influence of. Yeah. And here's a tip, and this is something I didn't know about. If you have anything on your body that you pick off your body or any just strange skin thing, and you put it in a ziploc back, take it to your doctor that's assigned to them. And I'd never heard this, but it's called the matchbox sign, right? And they've been calling it this since the 1930s. And apparently doctors, when they see you bring in a thing and say, hey, what's this weird thing? And they go, okay, here's another crazy person, right? So it's a huge catch 22 because morglon suffers. One of the symptoms of this disease are things that come off your body, whether it's some sort of colored fiber or little black specs that fall off en masse from the body. I forgot about those. They come off of your body. And if you're a morgulon sufferer, well, you think like, I need to show this to my doctor as evidence, clearly. But in doing so, as far as the medical establishment is concerned, you are immediately prima facie proving yourself to be mentally imbalanced. And that's your problem. All you're doing by bringing this evidence is supporting this diagnosis of delusional parasitology or parasitism. Yeah. And that's their go to. If you bring it in a little Matchbox or Ziploc bag. They think, all right, here we go. This person thinks they have bugs under their skin. Exactly. So I'm going to give them a little antiparasitic lotion that may or may not really do anything in real life. Could be a placebo. And then after they trust me, I'm going to recommend they try some antipsychotics. So there are a couple of more people we should talk about here, a couple of doctors, actually, that have some more interesting findings that we'll get to right after this break. Josh? Yeah. Let's chat about square space, 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. Yeah, 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 coder 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 riskfree 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 stuff to get that 10% off your first purchase. All right, let's talk about Dr. Anne Louise Oaklander, because the author I keep calling the author, who was it that wrote it again? Will Store. Yeah, Will Store got in touch with this professor at Harvard Medical School, and she is an Itch specialist, a neurologist, and he thought she would quickly dismiss them, but she actually had heard of it and was into it. And what she thinks is that it's a chronic itch disorder that isn't being taken seriously. Yeah. She feels like the medical establishment is mistreating, morglon, suffers by just completely discounting them as all crazy rather than doing any real investigation. Yeah, I'm sure he was stoked to meet her, at least. And that's the case also, I should say, the general view of the CDC investigation, that it was just basically them going through the motions or at worst. They were looking for evidence to back up their own ideas that it was delusional parasitism. Yeah. Sufferers, I think, said the study was junk going in. So what is it? Garbage going in? Garbage comes out. Right. So they didn't take much stock in it. But what we were talking about earlier, in 1987, a team of researchers in Germany found the itch wasn't what we all thought it was, which was a weak form of pain. And they said that an itch has its own separate, dedicated network of nerves. And she thinks that if your brain likens it to like a mosquito lands on your skin and you can feel it, you don't realize you're feeling it, but your brain picks up on it. So you go to itch it or slap at it. And she thinks that that's why we evolved to it, is to prevent insects from landing on us. Right. And that's all this is. Your brain doesn't differentiate. If you think there's a bug, then your brain thinks there's a bug, whether it is or not. Right. So her idea is that it's an itch disorder where there's not a bug, but your brain is getting those signals and it's driving you crazy and that this isn't being investigated. And as a result, there are tens of thousands, if not more people out there suffering, being treated like they're crazy and being offered absolutely no relief whatsoever from medicine. And then the doctor was the one that really blew me away at the end of the article. The doctor from the UK, the general practitioner. Yeah. His name is Doctor Nick Mann, and he didn't even know he was an author when he got in touch with Dr. Mann. A doctor? Yeah. He just thought he was just a regular morgue sufferer. Right. And he described his experience that his leg started itching after a walk. He was convinced something was on him. It got really out of hand. And he eventually stripped down naked in his kitchen and tried to dig one out. And he said, I stood there for three or 4 hours waiting for one to bite. As soon as it did, I went for it with a hypodermic needle. His wife came in, so I'm all bloody bleeding from the scrotum and other places. His nipple. His nipple. And was horrified, obviously, and got three of these things into a glass jar and said, look at these, look at these. And she couldn't see anything. No. She thought he'd just gone completely off his rocker. Yeah. But he did actually send these in eventually to a hospital. They couldn't identify it. And then to the Natural History Museum, and within one day they identified it as a tropical rat mite. So I thought, okay, well, that's the answer then. These are tropical rat mites. But I think this was the only case because I tried to look up more evidence of that and it didn't really find anything. Besides him. That's right. So is that unrelated? Do you think he just had a mite? I don't know. There are no answers to this. That's why I'm frustrated. No, and the big problem is there's nobody really investigating it. There's like a handful of ragtag people who are investigating it. And the problem is they're running into the structure of medicine and science, the scientific establishment, the establishment of both of these things, and where they cross and form this Venn diagram. This is what these people are running up against. So it's like if you're going to produce a legitimate academic paper on this thing, and you manage to get it published, and you manage to get another one published and then another one, and you're a real researcher, but you're the only person producing academic papers on mortals. Well, you just look like a crackpot who has access to a couple of academic journals and can get something published because you're the only one who's writing about that. And anybody else who is who's ever even paid any attention to it has just dismissed it as delusions of parasitosis. Right. Plus you're not going to get any funding. Well, you can. There's a few research organizations that do find that kind of stuff, but even still, it's in the eyes of the normal establishment. You're not going to be treated very seriously, so you're running into that. And then once science is made up, it's mine. Apparently, nobody's going to look into it. And so there's no treatment for it whatsoever because it's been determined these people are delusional and that's that. So why would we spend any more time looking into it? Well, why more even had a problem. I remember at one point getting labs to look at these fibers. Once they found out for this disease, they were like, oh, no, we're not going to touch that. Right. So I guess that would even if that sells a reputation of a lab, even no one wants to touch this thing. Right. And then a lot of morgulon sufferers aren't helping their case by just kind of supposing. What could be the problem? Mites and bugs. Since it feels like bugs are an obvious answer and that itch researcher says it's just totally sensible. If you have an itch disorder and your nerves are going haywire and it feels like bugs, why wouldn't you think it was small, tiny, invisible bugs? It makes sense. Yeah. But then there's been other ideas proposed, too, like it's nanotechnology or genetically modified organisms that have run amok and it's part of a government cover up. Nematodes. Yes. Then these things are like these suggestions are not helping the case in the public eye or in the eye of the academic or scientific establishment that these people are mentally healthy. Yeah, well, it's been linked to chemtrails, okay. And you're not going to get very far. But the thing is, if these people really do have something, whether it's an itch disorder, whether it's a bug that's not whatever it is, or if it's delusions of parasitosis, either way, they're still suffering and they still need help. Yes, but no one's giving it to them. Well, they are in the form of psychiatric treatment, but that's not good enough for a lot of these people because they say, I don't need psychiatric treatment because I have a physical issue. The complaint is they think I'm crazy. And I'm not crazy. Right. It is sad. I want to follow up on this. I bet you I'm sure there are things what bothers me about science is they may not think that they could discover some new it's just so easily dismissed. It just kind of bugs me. It bugs me. But I mean, there are some in science defense or medicine's defense, there's some evidence that it is fictitious or delusion. Supposedly in this Will Store article, there's one guy who's like, his welts were healing up, and the author asked him, what did you do that's different? That's making your wealth heal. He's like, I just stopped itching. I just stopped scratching. And that makes every doctor in the world go, see, there exactly. Stop scratching. You're going to stop getting the welts because the welts are produced by itching. Yeah, but then there's the other side. It's like, well, what about the welts? There are parts of the body where it's like, I can't reach. Right. How do you explain that? Yeah, so I guess we need to revisit it, like you say. Yeah. If we have a listener out there that's suffering from this, I would love to hear a first hand account of your experience. Yes. We won't judge you. No, of course not. If you want to learn more about Morgulon's disease, you can read that really awesome article, The Itch Nobody Can Scratch it's very compelling by Willstore. I think it's on medium.com. You can also type in Morglons M-O-R-G-E-L-L-O-N-S in the search bar houseofworkscom. And it'll bring up another article as well. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this MPAA follow up. Hey, guys. I'm a newcomer and have been loving the episodes. I'm also a PhD student in cinema and media studies. I was excited to see you do the MPA episode. You did a great job covering a lot of its current controversies and explaining the common misconceptions about Cara. I just wanted to add a little bit explanation to the X rating, which is such a strange portion of the NPA's history. When the ratings code was instituted in 1968, jack Valenti used an X rating for films, but he never copyrighted the X rating because he did not want to encourage the rating or come off as monopolistic. Midnight Cowboy accaimed for winning best pictures in X rated. Film actually self rated itself X and began a marketing campaign to exemplify its. Status as unique and artistic fair for adults rather than pornography. Soon, pornographic films also began self imposing the X rating, and newspapers refused to advertise for X rated films. Theatrical porn was booming. It's so weird to think about theatrical porn like going into theater and watching that with people. Very weird. Films like Deep Throat placed in the top ten of the year. While Hollywood pushed for legislation against theatrical porn, they also distanced themselves from the rogue X rating that they once controlled. The MPAA quickly expanded the R rating and rerated films to avoid it. West craven, even illegally, quote, unquote. I'm sorry? Quote quote illegally, end of quote sliced in an R rating banner from a different film into his 1973 film The Last House on the Left, because he cannot get the MPAA to grant him an R rating. It's a strange time and somewhat more fluid since big theater chains and multiplexes were not as ubiquitous as they are today. Sadly, the NC 17 doesn't seem like much of an answer to the X rating legacy, since its films only play to limited art house audiences. For the most part, you are right that VOD poses hope, though. What's that? Video on demand? Yeah. If anyone is interested in this and more in the NPA, just check out John Lewis's Hollywood V Hardcore. It's a fascinating read. Thanks again, guys. All the best. That is Dan from UCLA. Cobruins, nice. Thanks a lot. That's some good info. Yeah, totally. That's basically like a treatise on the history of the X rating. Agreed. Good going. Who was that? Dan from UCLA. Thanks, Dan. And go Bruins. Indeed, if you want to get in touch with us to give us more information about something we've talked about, we love that kind of stuff. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffynow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com and check out our website. What's your problem? Seriously. Go to www.stuffyouchenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com." | ||
4538056c-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-b3fc3c7e53d7 | Short Stuff: Unique Snowflakes | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-unique-snowflakes | Amazingly, it turns out that every snowflake truly is unique. Math backs it up. | Amazingly, it turns out that every snowflake truly is unique. Math backs it up. | Wed, 19 Dec 2018 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=353, tm_isdst=0) | 12110064 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry. And this is the abbreviated version of stuff you should know. Short Stuff. That's right in. We're going to talk about as dumb, hippie liberals. We're going to talk about our favorite thing, snowflakes. Oh, man. It's funny how that got co opted, because I think it's quite a compliment. I'm like, yeah, I am an individual. I am unique. You want to know what you do when somebody calls you a snowflake? You just smile and twirl to show them all you got. Yes. And say, who doesn't love snowflakes? Loving a snowflake. So here's the deal. The whole point of this 14 minutes that you're going to undertake with us is the old not wivesale, because it's true. The old notion that snowflakes are actually unique. Every single snowflake is actually unique. And the answer to that, we're happy to say, is yes. It certainly seems to be the case. Yeah, it's awesome. I feel like we've done something on this, like maybe in one of our short videos before or something like that. Maybe, but I wonder if we said the opposite. But now that we did this research, I'm like, how could we possibly have said the opposite? It's just not possible. Yeah, I mean, we should say that a lot of snowflakes and we're going to go through how they're formed. But in the very early stages, snowflakes can be pretty identical, and even in the end, sometimes they can be similar. But technically, they are all unique. Right. Because so many different things can affect each individual snowflake along the way that there's just no way that they could be the same. Yeah, it takes a mind boggling number of factors and inputs, each of which variables, I guess you'd call them, each of which can change and just change to one of them got a different snowflake, changed to a couple, got an even more different snowflake. There's just so many different things that go into making a snowflake that it's just not possible that they're not all unique. But to understand all this, you have to understand how snowflake is made. And by golly, Chuck and I are just the people who tell you, all right, so we did some I think it was our Happy Clouds episode, which was really terrific quite a few years ago, which you can refer to if you want a longer explanation. But when rain, or in this case, snow, falls out of the sky, it starts down on the surface of the Earth as water that evaporates from our lakes, our oceans, our rivers, rises up into the atmosphere as water vapor. And sometimes that can form a happy puffy cloud. It can. And then, depending on the type of cloud, and if it's cold enough, which it usually is, some of that water vapor will condense around, say, like a piece of dust or something like that. It will condense from water vapor, which is a gas into liquid, which is a liquid water. And usually it does it around like a piece of dust or something that nucleates it. But another way to say it is it reaches its dew point, the point or the temperature where it changes from vapor into liquid. And as it does that, if it's cold enough, it will then turn into ice. And what you have is basically the beginning standard template of a snowflake, which if you stopped and said, okay, right now are all snowflakes alike, you would say, yes, they're actually pretty similar. Sure, we'll go with that. But that's just like the beginning of the snowflake. It's the basis of it. Like I said, the template that all snowflakes start from. And it's usually just a little six sided hexagonal plate. Yeah. So you have these little tiny ice crystals. They start floating around in the sky and smashing and colliding with other water vapor molecules along the way. And every time it does that it collects. Well, yeah, I guess it collects. It sort of contacts these crystals and it sort of just starts collecting the stuff and getting little more solid and a little more substantial all around that little original nucleus where they were all similar to one another. Right. And then this snowflake, as it's kind of moving around up in the atmosphere, like I'm building, I'm growing, it runs into other water vapor. And that water vapor, rather than going through the trouble of moving from a gas to a liquid to a solid, which is an ice crystal, it goes through what's called deposition. It goes straight from water vapor into a solid and attaches to that snowflake template. And as it does so, it will start to form some of the more intricate details of that snowflake. And that happens again and again and again and again. And you get layer after layer after layer of ice crystals forming on this plate and all of a sudden you have like arms that stick out and those arms start to get detailed. Now the snowflake is starting to take shape. So you've got water vapor that freezes and starts to attract other water vapor that freezes onto it, that starts to give snowflakes their size and their shape. But there's lots more variables involved. That's right. And we'll take a little break here. We're going to come back and talk about the remaining formation of snowflakes right after this. All right? So you mentioned that it was hexagonal or did you say hexagonal? I think I said hexagonal like a dumb dumb. And so you got these little arms sticking out and sometimes on the edge of these arms, it's sort of like jagged, like a serrated knife. And these uneven areas is exactly what you think because they're uneven and stuff sticking out a little further, it's going to attract even more water molecules than it would if it was smooth in uniform. Like other parts of that same snowflake. So that's how you build out when you think of, like or if you see a microscopic view of a snowflake, those are what, those little arms and those little jagged crystals sticking off that make it so beautiful. That's what's going on there. Right. And like you said, because these arms are kind of like sticking out there, they're attracting more and more water vapor that's sticking to them, and it's building out and growing out into this larger, more intricate, more detailed crystalline structure. So once you have those arms, it seems to be almost like, I don't want to say a tipping point, you know why? But that is what happens. And all of a sudden the snowflakes starts to really take shape. Yeah. And here's where the environment comes into play, because depending on a lot of different factors, like temperature, obviously, humidity, like really cold temperature that will really vary what kind of snowflakes, like size and shape that you're going to get. Yeah. And I was like, why temperature? So temperature is the measure of the movement, the energy of molecules or atoms or whatever. Right? Yeah. But I couldn't figure out why the lower the temperature, the more intricate the snowflake got. Yes. What is that? Everything I saw was just basically like that's just the way it is. So that's what we're going to have to go with you. Basically, this is the way it is. If you understand why that is the case, please tell us because we want to know. Right? Yeah. When you think of those, they describe it as fern like arms, like those awesome looking arms with all the little jagged things sticking off. That's when it's like prime snowflake time, when it's super cold. Right? Precisely. So you've got extra moisture if it's a little more humid, that's going to affect the shape of the snowflake. It's going to make them fatter, usually, and then lower temperature. So if you got somehow higher humidity, lower temperature, that's when you get your true money. Snowflakes that people like, put on the cover of National Geographic. Yeah. Lower humidity is flatter, higher is fatter. Is that right? That's the rhyme that I was raised with. And like you said, if it's super humid and super cold, that's the rock star. Yeah. Okay. That's the physics of making a snowflake. There's all those different variables. There's some other ones, too, like snowflakes that are forming will collide with one another, then some of their arms will break off, so that will then attract even more ice crystals. So that's going to change the shape of it. The different conditions that form that are all factors and variables in the forming of a snowflake. All of those things change from cubic centimeter, cubic millimeter of air between one next to another. So it snowflake that forms in this one part or is passing through this one part of the atmosphere is going to be subject to these variables, but the same variables will be totally different, a couple of cubic centimeters over. So you've got all these different variables that are coming into it, and apparently, when you add these variables up, there becomes a mind boggling number of different possible combinations of snowflake shapes and crystalline structure. So much so that it just seems basically impossible that over the current age of the universe, certainly over the current age of Earth, that enough snowflakes have fallen that two of them could ever have been alike. Yeah. So they estimate as many as a quintillion number of molecules, or quintillion molecules in a single snowflake, and that the possible combinations of all these molecules and potential combinations are two times as many as there are atoms in the entire universe. So I looked that up. Could that be possible? That's what the article says. Yeah. The number of atoms in the universe is either between ten to the 78th Power and ten to the 82nd power total atoms in the universe, which is between 10 quadrillion vigintillion. And I made that up. No, I swear to God. And 100,000 quadrillion vigintillion. Adams so twice that. You literally just sounded like a ten year old. I know. Basically, there's that many different possible combinations of snowflakes, and that's just the structure. If you take into account the different water molecules that come together, what time span would it take for enough snowflakes to fall and enough of this snowflake formation to happen that all of those same water molecules happen to come together again? And that snowflake happens to take the same form because it's exposed to the same variables, it probably will never, ever happen. Yeah, I mean, a tiny flick of dust can change the crystals. The angle where we're talking about how they collide with one another, it's like a car crash. If you get T boned, your car is going to look different than if you get hit head on. Right. It's the same there. Depending on the angle in which they collide, it's going to change the shape of the snowflake. So it really seems true that there may have never been two snowflakes exactly alike. In the end, you may be the first human being to ever use a car crash to illustrate how snowflakes can be different. Oh, goodness. So that's why everyone you can go around and feel very confident explaining to all of your friends and coworkers and loved ones that it is true. No two snowflakes are like they're unique and different. And if you want to get in touch with us about this, you can go onto our website, STUFFYou know.com, check out our social links there, and you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-07-29-sysk-disco.mp3 | SYSK Selects: How Disco Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-disco-works | In today's SYSK Select episode, fly, robin, fly indeed. No musical genre has risen and burned out as quickly as disco, and historians are still trying to unravel the animosity aimed at it. Join Chuck and Josh as they dig into disco's underground roots and | In today's SYSK Select episode, fly, robin, fly indeed. No musical genre has risen and burned out as quickly as disco, and historians are still trying to unravel the animosity aimed at it. Join Chuck and Josh as they dig into disco's underground roots and | Sat, 29 Jul 2017 15:46:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=15, tm_min=46, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=210, tm_isdst=0) | 48148978 | 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. 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 Kilgara and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Hey there. It's me, Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I chose How Disco Works, which is one of my favorite all time favorite episodes. And you'll know what I'm talking about in a second when I say that I feel like if we all band together, we could still get Chuck to do that. How to video on the hustle. Also, don't miss Chuck's big presentation after his first trip to Max Funkon instead of listener mail. It's a very special treat at the end of this episode, which was first released in July of 2012. Enjoy. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant getting on down with his bad self. Get on down methycal doing the hustle. Oh, is that what you're doing? Sure. Actually looked up the hustle because I wasn't quite sure what it was specifically. Yeah, because no one who does it now knows what they're doing. Yes, but then I saw it. I was like, oh, yeah, sure. Like sort of the boogie nightstand they did. Was they're like a hand rolling? Yeah, there's a little step up, little step back, little like set side, 360, clap, clap. Little John Travolta. Saturday Night Fever. Hand action. Little hand roll. The little what do you call that? This would be much better visually. I'll tell you what, why don't we get you doing just a quick how to video and we'll post it. Sounds good. Yeah, sure. Okay. Well, you'll be held to that. I know. I'll do it right. I'm going to go start looking for clothes right after that. So, Chuck, you're doing well feeling invigorated by the Presidential Executive orders episode? Are you ready for this? Fires me up for disco. So for Disco, let's start at the end. I thought that Molly did a very good job with this. It's Molly Edmonds jam. Oh, really? Yeah. There was a night in 1979, it was July 12 in Chicago and there was a white socks playing the Tigers, and both of them were lousy at the time. Yeah. The night before, there had been 15,000 people for the Tiger Socks. There's a double header today and they expected something like $6,000, I guess. The owners of the White Socks had started to create these promotions, and one of them that night on July 12, had been created by a rock DJ named Steve Dahl. He was a Chicago DJ. Yes. I looked him up, actually. He was fired. This is why he was so angry. He was fired by a station that switched to disco. He got a job at the competing rock station WLUP 98 FM, which is why it was $98. The Loop. That was the loop, actually. The Loop, yeah. Not the Loop. The Loop. The Loop. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, he got fired and said, down with Disco. Well, he said disco sucks. There was a whole movement against disco T shirts that said, Disco Sucks. This is before memes. Yeah, this is the real. Like you had to run out of your house, go across the street to a neighbor's house, tell them this ghost sucks. They had to run out of their house maybe a couple of blocks over to their friends. That's how things spread back then. Yeah. And this thing was like virulent. Right. I missed those times on this night, even with this disco. Demolition Night is what they called it. They were expecting like 6000 people, but they were going to put on a heck of a show. In between the two games, dahl was going to take all the records that people brought. If you brought a disco record, you'd get in for $98 because that was 98 point something. This is before the point. This is when it was just 98 on your dial. Oh, okay. I mean, technically it was, but it wasn't digital, so no one knew, you know what I'm saying? And 90,000 people showed up. 90,000 people showed up. 90,000. Stadium held like 52. 52,000. So there's like 380 people outside the gates when you have 38,000 people who are there to see something destroyed, which Dahl was going to do these records in between games, they don't usually stay outside of gates. Fences don't usually contain people in that state in that many larger number. Yeah, they broke through. Apparently players on both teams put on their batting helmets because the crowd was getting crazy. Well, they were throwing the records like Frisbees. They were that's dangerous smoking weed in the stadium. Like Harry Kerry, a younger Harry Carrey, announced that he smelled marijuana in his broadcast booth. Wow. And they got loaded because they were mad. So angry about the form of music. Right. So the first game ends and I guess what you would call halftime comes and Johnny Fever, I mean, Steve Dahl compiles 10,000 and estimated 10,000 disco records and sets them on fire. Well, he exploded them first. Oh, he did. Which took out like a chunk of the field. Yes. I was wondering how they did that. Yeah. He was hooked up to fire techniques, and there was a big explosion and 10,000 discount records went boom. Yeah, pretty much. And the little fire started. People went crazy. They trashed the place. Yeah. They stormed the field, and the Socks had to forfeit the second game to the Tigers because they couldn't play. The field was just too trashed. And that was the night, July 12, 1979, that most people point to when they say, disco died right then. Yeah. Chance of disco sucks. Yeah. People smoking weed in front of Harry Carrie. And consequently, that was the last forfeited major league baseball game in the American League. Oh, is that right? The most recent. That is that is an amazing story. Yeah. And it makes a lot of sense. You can find video this on YouTube, by the way. That's awesome. Definitely. Even I knew, like, there was an anti disco disco stock sentiment. I remember it. That's how old I am. Well, I remember it too. Yeah. I was, like, eight years old when this happened. I was, like, three. Yeah. Yeah, I was three, actually. This is three days before my third birthday. This all went down. Look at that. I don't remember this happening, but, like, I knew people said disco sucked like an airplane when the planes like making that crazy land and they knock out a tower where the DJ is, like, saying where disco lives forever. Right. I knew people hated disco, but now reading this and figuring out that disco was this amazing cultural phenomenon and unpacking the story behind it and the motives of hating it and all that, it's really interesting. It's not as cut and dry as, like, Ted Nugent thinks. Disco sucks. Disco sucks. Maybe Ted Nugent is a homophobe. That's what cultural critics would say now. And we'll get into that. We will not Ted Nugent specifically, but anyone who thought disco sucks, it's not so cut and dry as Ted Nugent. Yeah, I figured. You know what? I would liken this to what? Zoot suits. Oh, yeah. Good one. The interesting history. Then it turns out there was, like, racial and misogynistic. Well, not misogynistic and zoosuits, but in the case of disco, yes. Yeah. Homophobic. Basically, the straight white establishment does not like flashy dressing. Yeah. And they don't like the New Yorkers. Yeah. Well, in their bars where they dance with their shirts off. Yes. That kind of thing. E. Gay clubs. Yeah. All right, so let's get into the music, and then we'll get into the politics. Okay, so what is Chuck the first disco record, do you think? Disco Duck? No. Dolly Parton? No. Disco Dolly. No. She actually did some disco pinged stuff. I know. Did the Grateful Dead. Everybody did. It sucked. Everyone. Carol King, Barbara Streisand. It's amazing the people that got caught up in this disco wave. Disco, Christmas, disco, star wars. Oh, dude. Yeah. Disco was huge. From when? From what? $0.19 when it was huge. Yeah. But some traced the beginnings of disco to the early parties in New York thrown by David Mancuso, these invitation only parties that he had at this place called the Loft. Legendary first party called Love saves the day. They were themed LSD. Yeah. And then there was a store in the East Village called Love saves a Day. I don't know if it's still there. Okay. It's like Brica BRAC, everything's coated in acid. Then kind of like junk lands here in Atlanta. Got you, that kind of thing. So a lot of people trace it to Mancuso in those early parties which later on was sort of the precursor to what Raves would be. Right? That's exactly right. And Mankusso kind of created this foundation that would become kind of the basis of disco, which was it was DJ driven. And the DJ didn't just like one song didn't just fade out and they're like, okay, it's time for the next one, and put on another record. Man Q's actually dropped a bunch of money on a sound system that allowed him to cut back and forth between records. And he also liked to basically just use all sorts of different music and create this whole really cool set. The music never stopped, basically. No, it didn't. So that was kind of the basis that you'll see turn up later in hip hop. But first, it appears, in Disco sure. Yeah. He started throwing these parts in 1070. But I've read sources that say it goes back even further than that. Oh, really? La. Club was opened in New York in 1965. Arthur was open. These are dance clubs. They were because they were DJ driven. And that's one of the basis of Disco sure is the DJ. And there's this guy named Terry. Knowl? And he went off and he became probably the first DJ. I know that name, don't I? Or do I? Maybe. He's pretty big. I mean, he's like the Godfather of DJing. I might know him. I don't know DJ so much, though. So he branched off and he started working at gay clubs. And gay clubs is where disco really started to emerge. Yeah. So if you go back far enough, at about the same time that Manquiso was throwing his parties, the gay clubs had, like, DJ's playing Philly Soul yes. In New York City specifically, which is where they think that this go originally came from. It's probably Philadelphia soul. Yeah, Philadelphia soul. If you listen to works by, like, some people claim that things like Barry Whites Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe or his Love theme from 1973. Yeah, those very much sound like disco even though they were R amp, B soul singers. The same with like Isaac Hayes. Right. But that is funk clear and simple. Right. Isaac haze is definitely funk. Sure. And a lot of people rightly. Attribute the death of funk to disco. Like, they both have this moment and disco just won out. Yeah, it's easier to dance to for one reason. Should we listen to the Barry White? Yeah. Which one? This is Love's theme from 1973. And you can hear like, the big orchestral sound with, like, the four on the floor beat. So people say that that may be the first disco one. Another one is Jerry Butler's. One night affair. And this song really shows that disco hybridized out of Philadelphia soul. If that's true, then this is the purest evidence of it. And then one more. Do you mind? No. So this one, this is from Cameroon. A guy named Manu dabango from the island of Cameroon. Is it an island? No, it's not. Well, you know, if it was mounted by waterfall, it would be an island, right? Yeah, but it's just camaron we're going with. His name is Manu Dubingo and he released a track called Sol Makasa and Soul Macasa is noteworthy because a lot of people say it's the first disco song. Well, it's here, so you hear it's like, very clearly Cameroonian. Yeah. Very African. It's got that tribal beat, but it's also Discoe. The reason why people point to that song. Which was released in 1972. Is because a year later. A Rolling Stone rock critic or music critic named Vince put a paper pen to paper and described that the reason behind this obscure Cameroonian songs popularity is because of this new thing that's going on out in Queens and the Bronx and all the hip kids are doing it and we don't know what it's called. Let's just call it disco. And that was the first mention he coined. The term disco is applied to this music. And it was the first written description of disco Vince. So I think we failed to mention that disco, obviously, is short for discotech, which is the French term for nightclub. For a nightclub where you listen to canned music right. Rather than a live, and you still hear that and see that when you go all over Europe, you still hear, like this go thick. Yes. Right, guys trying to get you in there. Yeah, it's pretty great. That was a pretty good impression. Some nameless country. I don't even know what that was. Eastern block. Let's just go with that. I would have guessed, like, Morocco. Okay, whatever it sounded like that's what I was doing. Hey, Chuck, it's summer, which means school is out, sun's shining, the daylight lasts longer. And best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story, isn't there? There sure is. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, you can tune in to the podcast series on Amazon music my favorite Murder from exactly Right media. That's right. Part true crime and part comedy, my Favorite Murder takes you on a journey through small town mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. That's right. Hosts Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstark banter with each other, sharing their favorite true crime tales, and explore unique hometown stories from friends and fans alike. And they're both great, and it's a fun show, and you should listen. So listen to new episodes of my favorite murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. 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.com stuff. That's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. You just kind of said something very important. That a discotheque. One of us just said it. That a discotheque is a dance club where there's no band. And this flew in the face of the rock establishment at the time. Oh, sure. We're still very much entrenched. In the 60s. They were Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. You went and saw them. That was the point. Like, you went and saw their show, and when they weren't touring, you listened to their records at home and sat on beanbag chairs. Yeah, and worshiped at their feet. Exactly. Disco was different. And the reason disco is different is because nobody cared. They didn't want to hear your live band. They went to go see the DJ. Yeah, and that had a big impact on record sales, because people weren't it was one hit wonder after one hit wonder, for the most part. There were quite a few that had multiple hits on the summer, but they were still, like, few and far between. Yes. And they were confined to the disco era. Right. Not too many lasted beyond, unless they were crossing over to begin with. Like Dolly partner, Carol King. Right. Got you, Barbara Streisand. But you will hear since 1974 with Rock the Boat by the Hughes Corporation, which, speaking of one hit wonder, a lot of people say that's when it really took off. I'm sorry. La Freak by Chic and Good Times by Chic. Good Times? Did they do that? I will survive. Of course. The classic anthem by Gloria Gaynor, Funky Town, casey and the Sunshine Band with their multiple hits. Yeah, they were another group, disco group. Get down tonight shake your booty classic songs I'm your boogie, man play that funky music wild Cherry song. I hate that song. No, I really do too. That's up there with Bad to the Bone for me. Hey, man, george Thoroughgood is AOkay. There's nothing that I did that stunk except for that god. Play that funky music I told you George Thurgood worked out with me at the YMCA in Hollywood. Yeah. Like, not with me. Last time we had this argument, you told me. Oh, really? Yeah. And you still maintain that he stinks even though he no, I don't maintain anything. I think George Thurgen, you still maintain his good. That's what I meant. Yeah. Okay. Well, you're wrong. Philadelphia Soul, Josh, is where it was born. We talked about that. I know. And Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Well, yeah. So, like, you didn't have groups generally that people followed or whose records they bought. You had one hit wonders. So singles were kind of big. And you had DJs. People went to specific clubs to see specific DJs and you have producers. People would find out what song a producer was making and then they go see they'd go listen to that. Right. Like Gamble and Huff. Right. I can't remember the name of their company, but it was Philadelphia something. And it was all about Philadelphia soul. It started in the Philadelphia Soul movement. Like previous in the pretty much dwarfed Motown for a little while, which was a big deal at the time. Yeah. Motown was too huge. Yeah. Barry Gordon Motown took a hit when disco came around. There was also Giorgio Moroter. He was huge. He was a huge disco. He actually produced Donna Summers. And then the KS, they created Sasso Records, which is a pretty big disco label. Well, Gamble and Huff, you know their work if you don't know their names. And they wrote songs like Ain't No Stopping US Now. That's a good one. Love Train. That's a great one. And the sound of Philadelphia TSOP, which you might not recognize by title, but you might recognize by the fact that it is also the Soul Train theme. That is a very good song. Very good song. That's surprisingly good. I remember Fresh Air played that when Don Cornelius died, I bet. All right. P. And also, can I just interject one thing? Yeah. If you're bored right now, I should say, of course you're not bored right now. Friends, after the podcast, if you find yourself bored, go check out Moonshoes Boogieland. I think those four words are actually just two words on YouTube. And you will be treated to an awesome new, I guess, acid disco track just laid perfectly over the sole train. Like the march, the procession thing, the lines they did. Yeah. Just clip after clip of that. That's great. You will be surprised to see a young rerun in the first couple of minutes. I think I've seen that clip. I think you have to. I've seen him on soul Train. Yeah. Where he just falls on his butt. Yeah, man, that stuff was good. I mean, how do you move like that? I couldn't do any of those moves. No, I couldn't either. Moonshoes boogieland. Yeah. And you know what, also, if you're a little young, but you're a Star Wars fan and you don't remember the Mecho, Star Wars and other galactic funk go check that out. It's on YouTube. It's pretty amazing to hear the Star Wars score orchestral arrangement to disco. And it was a big hit. Well, that's not the only one. Arthur Feedler from the Boston Pops. He did a night on Bald Mountain to disco. I can't remember who made it, but it's on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack at fifth of Beethoven. Yeah, sure. People love to take classical stuff and disco fight. They disco fight everything. Like you said. Dolly Carton, Star Wars, Disco, duck. Sesame street had not one, but two disco albums. Disco Christmas albums. Disco is everywhere. And even if you do say disco sucks, you cannot say that musically, disco sucks. Musically speaking, disco does not suck. It is difficult to play. It includes generally tough orchestral arrangements. And while it may be repetitive, and if you went and saw your favorite disco performer playing a club, they were just lip syncing. Yeah, it's still initially it was difficult to make. Yeah. I think where disco takes the biggest knock from rock music fans is lyrically. Right. And for good reason. Sure. So disco, we were saying, it flew in the face of rock, the rock scene in Manhattan at the time, in part because it was out in the Bronx, out in Queens. It was very popular among the working class Latinos. Yeah, Latinos, Italians. It spread out of the gay clubs. So white gay dudes in underground clubs dancing to music created by black people, black groups, and then mixed in with working class Italians and Latinos in that same club. That was disco. And that is not what the rich kids in Manhattan were doing at the time, rocking out. Well, yeah, and that's a point that a lot of people were misguided in saying at one point that disco was of the bourgeois. Because Studio 54 transformed from a dance club of the people to a dance club of the elite. Right. And everyone started grooming over grooming and dressed into the nine s and Spinella's money. Well, they did before, but once the rich people got involved, like, you can't keep up with that. Yeah, but it started out as very much a music of the people. And like we said, Disco Fever was like they were doing the hustle in retirement homes, like disco classes. My parents took disco dance lessons and my dad does not take disco dance lessons. Yet he did. That's pretty interesting. That's how big it was. If you go back and watch, like Sarani Fever, for example, that's some pretty good dancing in there. Yeah, of course. I'll bet your dad was, like 80% sexier when he was taking disco lessons. He probably was. So we've got this thing and it's weird. I think it bears repeating, Chuck. When you think of disco these days, you think of Studio 54, you think of cocaine, which is they were symbiotic. You think of the beautiful and the rich in Manhattan. Yes. Right. But like you said, that's not how it started out. It was working class across ethnic lines. Gays were involved and it basically was co opted and usurped. And then all of a sudden, now there's a division between it and the people who were criticizing it before really started to speak up, meaning the rockers. And they really had a point. Like you said, the lyrics fly, Robin, fly, who cares? And the other part of the problem was disco was meant for escape. Like, it was set in this time of economic hardship. New York City was hit, particularly about getting out there and dancing your frustrations out and forgetting everything. The problem is, while you're dancing, politicals don't dance. Right. And while everybody else is dancing, they're just doing whatever they want and no one's paying attention because they're dancing. Especially once it crossed over to the rich and became, like, divided by class, rockers really started to have some ground to stand on by saying, just goes vapid and politically and apolitical. And it sucks for those reasons. It started to become true after that point. Right. Have you ever seen Summer of Sam? No. Good one. Yeah, that's the spike we went about the Son of Sam killings, but beyond, it's more a movie about that time and period in New York City in that summer than it is about I mean, some of Sam figures in, like, huge, but it really just captures that time period nicely. It's good. And plus that John Linguizamo. Saturday Night Fever changed everything. Josh, great movie. Did you read the article? Yeah, I read the article and I've seen the movie probably five or six times. So I read the article recently. Like, yesterday. Yeah. It's called the tribal rights of the new Saturday night. It was written in 76 by a guy named Nick Cone and was the cover story of New York Magazine. Right. He made it up. Oh, really? Did you know that? No. Apparently in 1994, he came out to the Guardian and said, like, I fabricated everything. Tony didn't exist. Wow. No, vincent, the main guy, didn't exist. He said he made up practically the whole thing. Like he just got into New York and just started hanging out and just wrote the thing. Wow. I can't believe he made it all up. He did. Crazy great movie, though, and famous for not only the dancing, great story, coming of age story. And the suit, the white suit with the black shirt. The black shirt. It wouldn't have popped nearly as much without that black shirt. No, in the white vest, which Jean Siskle owned for a while. Yeah. It's now at a Museum of Music in, I think, New York. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, Syscall cleaned up on it. He bought it in 78 because he was such a huge fan of the movie. Bought it for two grand, sold it in 1995 for $145,000. Nice. Yes. That fat cat. And he's no longer with us. I know. Okay. But the clothing was a huge deal. The fashion of disco was arguably as important as it was just all a part of the scene. It was all intermingled. Yeah. The polyester, the spandex, the tight clothes revealing as much skin as you can jewelry, leopard prints. It was, like, out of control. Yes. And it's kind of come back, of course, like all fashion does. Yeah. Well, especially with that early 80s throwback that's going on, or that was going on now. I think we've reached mid to late 80s. Like the Fresh Prince years. Yeah. Would it take 20 years? Supposedly, or something like that? Supposedly. So. Grunge next, I guess, will be flying the final. Not looking forward to that. I still got my final. I'll be covered. You're like. Hey, I'm here. You talked about Studio 54, which is now still called Studio 54, but it's a theater, another popular club. If you live in New York, you might be walking by these places and not even realize it. Yeah, like the sanctuary which became limelight made famous in Party Monster. That's now like a church that you can shop in. Well, Paradise Garage. Very famous on King Street in New York. Very famous. Discotech is now Horizon. Is it really? Yeah, man. Xenon on west 43rd. Xenon was a huge discotheque and it is now the Stevensonheim Theater. Okay. Well, you can do worse than that. Exactly. So if you're walking around New York and you see these places, just remember there was a lot of drugs and sex and dancing going on there 30 plus years ago. Yeah. People forgetting their economic turmoil, troubles. That's right. A 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. 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. Well, you said that the record industry kind of took a hit because of disco. Yeah. People are not buying their albums by their favorite artists because there were no favorite artists. No, it took a little while for the effects to show up, but from, like, 1978 to 1982, record sales dropped by 200 million units. Yeah, that's a lot. That is a lot. The record industry turned on disco eventually. This thing that had created this kind of vapid, very quick, very attractive, sexy movement, or help promote it and push it out into the mainstream, like, and shove down everybody's throats were the ones that turn their back on it. Right. I don't think people were quite ready to yet, but the record industry was. And that probably more than anything, led to disco's demise. More than this Kaminsky Park thing. It was symbolic. It was very symbolic. But if the record industry is no longer agreeing to produce disco records, there's no disco record. That's what it doesn't matter if people want it or not. And, you know, looking back, it was bound to be a fad. It's not a lasting thing, although it's come back around now with stuff like Sister, Sisters and, well, not just that new disco. The reason why the title of this episode is in present tense is because maybe the name died, but that four on the floor beat and then now a company with, like, electronic music that never went away. No, you're right. It may have fit in the background. Now it's, like, all over the radio, like Katy Perry stuff and Brittany Spears stuff. I'm told they use the same stuff. It's just disco. It's just a different name for it. Yeah. At its peak, Josh 1979 disco was a $4 billion industry, and they claim more than 15,000 discos in the United States. That's a lot. So they spread from the cities, clearly, to the Bible Belt, the Rust Belt, the heartland, and as we'll get into now, it wasn't very accepted by the white male establishment. Aka. Rock and roll fans. Exactly. And people just kind of on the surface, it's just because just go and rock. They don't go together. But there's a lot of, like we said at the beginning, cultural critics who say, you know, people who are into disco didn't think about rock. They didn't care about rock. No, they were high and dancing. People who were into rock hated disco. Yeah. Why? It was a threat, they claim. And they were probably very right to their what they thought were good American values. They didn't like gay people, didn't probably like black people and Latinos or women divas hogging the spotlight. Yes. Because rock and roll in the 19, unless your name is like Patty Smith, it wasn't a big haven for female singers. Right. Or like Grace Slick. She was backed up by an all male band. It was very rare for a female lead. And even then, the one girl and a guy band, unless the Runaways, I guess. Right. Which is like they made a movie about them. It was such a big deal. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point, Chuck. But for the most part, disco represented everything that was a threat to the white straight establishment. That's right. And that's why a lot of people think that this whole disco sucks movement came about. So if you are one of those people who just like disco sucks, maybe you should reevaluate exactly why you think this goes sucks. Is it really just the music? And if it is, hey, man, I'm sure that's the case. But there's probably a lot of people out there who think this goes sucks and don't even know that disco is pretty gay, and maybe that's why you don't like it. Or Cisco is pretty black and maybe that's why you don't like it. Or maybe you just hate women. Maybe you should go work on your relationship with your mother and then take another listen to disco and see if it sounds any sweeter. Well, it was the whole lifestyle. It was hedonistic. You had the Village People as sort of the cartoonish face of the gay movement at the time dressing up. And it was not accepted in these rock and roll circles in the Midwest and in the south, and it just was not cool. But even in New York or London or wherever, you got punk, punk people hated disco, but at least they, for the most part, had a legitimate leg to stand on, which was punk tended to be political. And disco was not political at all. Like Mark, mother's Brawl is a Mother's Ball. Or Mother's Brawl mother's Ball. Okay. He apparently went to Studio 54 and had a crazy experience on PCP, but he said that disco was like a dumb girl with good looks and good body, which is kind of like it's an app description, I guess, of disco, in a way. Yeah, that makes sense. So this guy who wrote this book. What's it called? His name is Peter Shapiro. He wrote turn the Beat Around the Secret History of Disco. Yeah. He argues, and he makes a pretty good point, that disco was the most democratic musical form ever in the history of music. Yeah. He said it's the most democratic form of popular music ever conceived. And it really brought about the gay culture into the mainstream. Yeah. Even though it wasn't super accepted in all circles, it was the first time it was like, in your face, out in the open, we're dancing, and here's the Village People. Exactly who I used to draw pictures of. I still have one. Did you really? Yeah. I still have this crayon crayon drawing that I did of the Village People. And I wore that album out, and I'm sure my parents were like, what's going on? Especially, like, stone out in Georgia in 1975. You're like, Can I just like a leather daddy for Halloween? I thought the biker guy was the coolest one. I was like, he's so tough. Yeah. Look at that Mustang. I know. Oh, boy. It's funny. It was such an innocent time for me, at least. Yeah, it was. That was a good time to grow up, on a way. It's great if you could just love disco, eat another on cocaine and Quail Oohs and doing all that stuff. Exactly. What else you got? I think we'd be remiss in mentioning disco's role in hip hop. Like we said earlier, you may have noticed that the whole DJing thing kind of crossed over. And if you doubt this go as a foundation for hip hop and rap, you need to look no further than what the Sugar Hill gangs rappers delight. Yeah. That's almost all chic's good times. Yeah. Cisco anthem. That's right. You are dead right, sir. And then, of course, it's influenced on, like we said, all dance music to come, really electronica. It never stopped. It can't stop the music. And I imagine it's going on now. There's probably some very cool underground parties that you and I will never, ever, ever know exist that are really doing the same thing. Well, Sister sisters. I mentioned them. I know there's a lot more bands, but they're really, like, riffing on that old disco thing. Very cool. Yeah. Hercules and Love Affair. That's a good one. I don't know them. Anthony and the Anthony of the Johnson. Yeah, his side project. Oh, really? It's very disconnected. I love that guy. Well, he does such, like, Moreau's orchestral downbeat stuff. Not like that. Really? Yes. It's like he's got to get out his happiness so he can go do the Anthony and the Johnston's thing. I'm trying to imagine him happy. That'd be so weird. Anyway, I'm a fan of his. I'll check that out. Yeah. New disco. It's all over the place. It is? If you want to oh, wait, quickly. We should say rip because we lost two disco legends recently to cancer. Oh, yeah, that's right. Donna Summer and Robin Gibb both passed within the past like a month. Oh, yeah. Who will be the third? The disco third? Well, there were four, not disco, but four musicians with cancer in the span of six weeks was sad. Well, adam Yank and Levon Helm. Oh, yeah. Donna Summer and Robin Gibbs. Four in a row. So then who will be the other two? Yes. Jeez, I hope nobody. I hope not, too. Yeah. So we're done with disco. We are the nights on Broadway and we are done with disco. Very nice. Which sucks. I didn't like the music. You didn't like disco music? No, I was listening to rock and roll pretty early on. I like it. I like it all. But then also I was listening to the Smith Death of a disco dancer today. Great song. Great song. And it makes you wonder, like, exactly why did that disco dancer die? That's right. If you want to learn more about disco, you can type that in, surprisingly enough, to the search bar how stuff works. And it will bring up this article. And let's see. Since I said article, it's time for Chuck's presentation. Yeah, Josh, in lieu of listener mail, I just got back from MaxFunCon and I'm going to do a little presentation called Max Fun Plug because great people are involved and we need to give them their due. Okay. Firstly, I want to thank Jesse Thorn and recognize Jesse Thorndo stuff. You should know the Godfather, great guy. He has an empire out there in California, a podcasting empire. And you can podcasting and knock off wallets. Yeah, he's a fashion icon. Jesse, you can go to maximumfun.org to look up his bag. It used to be the sound of young America. Now. His main show is called Bullseye Interview Show. It's really great. We've been on it. Yeah, we talked about Mexican wrestling on it. Was that on Bullseye? Yeah, it was, isn't it? I thought it might have been on Jordan. Jesse, go. Oh, man. Okay. Well, Jordan Jesse Go, since I mentioned it, is one of his other shows with his partner Jordan. That's a funnier one. Although they're all funny. But thanks to Jesse, he has this concept that he's built the Maximum Fun Empire on called New Sincerity. And it's just great. It's nice people. It issues cynicism and this ironic crap. Oh, that's cool. That everyone does. And. It's called New Sincerity. It really says it all. Did. He found New Sincerity. Is it like a lightning bowl or light bulb that he had? Yeah. That's cool. I mean, you Google New Sincerity and it comes up as Jesse Thorne's mantra. I'm going to start taking him as more sincere then. I always assumed he was making fun of me. No, of course not. He's a very sincere guy. And his wife Theresa and little baby Simon are all there and they're all doing great. And they're wonderful people. So Rift Tracks was in the house. Yes. Formerly Mystery Science Theater 3000. Josh Rose, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. Tom Servo and Crow t robot people. They are fans of stuff you should know. Yeah. And I flipped out emailed, Josh, and beyond that, they are literally the two nicest guys I've met so far in show business. You said that in the email. Yeah, I can vouch for that. They are the nicest dudes I've ever met in show business so far. That's awesome. And that includes John Hodgman. Hodgman is not going to like that, but maybe he'll step it up. I would say Hodgman will take that as a challenge. You can go to rifttrax. Riff t r axcom. You can buy their stuff. You can buy look out for Rifttracks Live. They're awesome and funny, and we're supporting for sure. Yeah. My brother my brother and me, we are on their show. The McElroy brothers, justin, Travis and Griffin hung out with them a lot. Really super cool dudes. They had their wives and girlfriends with them, and they were all sweet and funny and nice and great people. And they have a great podcast called My Brother, my Brother and Me. New episodes out every Monday. You can find that@maximumfund.org Travis, who is the middle bro, co host the show, also called In Case of Emergency. That's very funny. And then Justin and his wife Sydney have a show called Satellite Dish that's about TV shows, and they're both really funny. Okay. It was like literally all six of them were six of the funniest people I've hung around. That's really cool. Man, christmas must be a blast around the map. They don't even give each other presents to sit around and, like, delight one another. Mary Roach was there, author of Stiff, which we've plugged. Stiff spook bonk spook spook and hacking for Mars. Yeah. What does she like? Cool. Yeah. I didn't meet her, but I heard her, like sure. On Science authoring and cool stuff like that. Oh, so it's like a workshop. Yeah. Very cool. Susan Orlean was there. She was great. Orchid thief lady. Yeah. You know her as Meryl Streep. I did not meet her, but she was great on stage as well. Josh Beerman, who? I met Joshua Beerman. He's one of Hodgeman's buddies. Yeah. He is a writer and you can find his work in Rolling Stone. Wired Harper's this American Life McSweeney's HuffPo He's like, all over the place. And he is genuinely one of the delightfully weirdest dudes I've ever hung out with in my life. Like one of those guys just like, man, you are so odd, and I want to hug you, talk to you for hours, that kind of dude. Hudson has another friend like that named David Reese who I met. He's next on you met David. Yeah. Okay. He's awesome. I have a David Reese story. May I? Well, let me set up who he is first, David Reese. He was formerly the cartoonist that you might know from Get Your War On. Yes. Great political cartoon during the Bush years. He is now an artisanal pencil sharpener. And you heard me correctly. He sharpens pencils by hand. He goes on tour teaching this. He has a book that you can buy called how to Sharpen Pencils. And you can go to artisanalpencilsharpening.com. You can send them your pencils. He will sharpen them by hand and return the pencil and the clippings. And the clippings. Because the clippings belong to the client. Yeah, and it's not a joke. But it is a joke. It's funny, but he's really serious about it. Oh, yeah. I mean, he'll really sharpen your pencils and he really wrote a book on it. I'm glad you met him. I didn't know that. He's a cool dude. He's awesome. So let's hear the story. You and I went and saw his, I guess, book tour show in Brooklyn when we were there a couple of weeks ago. And before the show I was talking to him and hodgman, and we were all hanging out and I was like, well, break a leg. And I turned to walk away and he goes, you too. And I turned around and he was just glowering at. Really? Yeah. He's a pretty cool dude. Yeah, he was funny. He had his video on Reddit the other day and he was posting comments that people are making, like, is this dude serious? I can't tell if this is a joke or not, but it's both. It's like, funny, but he's really serious about pencils. I think it's just one of those things. You just no need to explain it, man. Take it however you want. Agreed. His class was one of the most popular ones there, though, actually. Really? His pencils? Was it like a bring your own pencil or did he provide them? He provided the pencils and the equipment. But you took home everything nice. So yeah. By David's Book. How to Sharpen Pencils. It's excellent. He sent one to me yesterday, actually, to buy mine. Really? Yes. You mean I each bought one. I told him I was going to plug it. You should need to work it. Roman Mars was there. Yeah. Did you get to meet him? Huh? I didn't what? I couldn't find him. Yeah, that's right. I meant to tell you. He tweeted that the low point was that he kept missing you. Sorry, I forgot to it's so weird. I looked around for him and I guess we just missed each other. Yeah, I emailed him the other day. He was sad. So Roman has a design and architecture podcast called 99% Invisible, which is great. Yeah, he did a cool one about the Twin Towers on the anniversary. And it was like he got his hands on, like, a recording of the sound they made, like swaying. Wow. And creaking. It was really cool. Well, and the cool thing about that show is you don't have to be into design or architecture to think it's an awesome show. Yeah. I just encourage you to listen to it. And then the comedians there Maria Bamford, who is a stalwart at Maxwell Cons. She's great. mariabamford.com Cameron Esposito did the morning trivia with me. She stepped up and co hosted she Sports the Side Mullet, which he has coined that term, like, all shaved on one side and hangs down on the other. Yeah. And she is super sweet and very funny and I'm really rooting for her in her career. It is therealcameronespazito.com. Wcamalbellbell.com, he has an upcoming show on FX this fall. His brand new TV show premiering after Louie. Oh, wow. So he's like he's set kind of crap in his fans right now, I'll bet. But very exciting time for him. And it was cool to meet him at this stage. And the name of Kamal show is totally biased. Nice. And it premieres August 9 at 11:00 PM. On FX. That's a huge plug, Chuck. Yeah. Steve AG. Did you watch the Sarah Silverman show here or there? He was one of the neighbors. The two guys, the two gay guys. He was like, kind of a big slovenly dude. Oh, you're thinking of Steve AG. Okay. But he's very funny and like, all the other comedians are doing this very, like, not avantgarde, this very interesting, sort of different style of comedy. And then he gets up there and starts making like, poop and marijuana jokes, which is refreshing for me. You can follow him on Twitter at steveag. That's A-G-E-E or SteveAge Tumblercom? Chrisfairbanksperformed. Chrisfairbanks.com. He was really great. Didn't get to meet him, but he was super funny. And, of course, John Hodgeman. Yeah. Follow John at Hodgman. Listen to Judge John Hodgman. Can buy his books. The areas of my expertise, more information than you require. That is all. And what's his website? I don't know. It's not that is all. It's areasfoyyexpertise.com, I believe. Okay. And John stepped up, as usual, and we did a fun pub trivia together. And it's just a great time, you know? Hagi. Oh, yeah. Good dude. He's a great dude. I'm glad you had a good time, Chuck. It was fun. It wasn't quite. Last year with Upright Citizens Brigade and Andy Richter. Like, that was huge for me. Just personally, this probably would have been bigger for you because of MSC Three K. Yeah. But they sent me an email and they said to say hello and that you guys are great. That is really something. Yeah, that is very nice. So support all these people. Support Jesse Thorn and his empire. They're all good folks doing great work. Couldn't support nicer people. Yeah. The next time you see a knock off, greet your wallet being sold on the street to purchase it because the funds probably go to Jesse Thorne to provide for his family. That's right. Let's see, I don't even know what to call for. Best disco song ever? Sure. How about best overlooked disco song ever? Because we've all heard by Robin Fly and all the other ones that we mentioned in this episode, nights on Broadway is mine. Okay, you can tweet to us. Well, you can tweet this podcast. You can join us on Facebook at facebook. Comstagenow and you can send us an email. Right, right. I'll give you the email address in a second. But, Chuck, I want to play us out with what I think is the greatest disco song of all time. All right, let's hear it. A taste of honey boogie yogi yogi. So you got that playing right now? Yes. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Hey, everybody. 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a6870342-5462-11e8-b449-1bcb3953428a | What is colorblindness? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-is-colorblindness | Being colorblind doesn't mean you see in black and white, although in severe cases it can look a bit like that. The condition is on a spectrum ranging from dulled colors to shades of grey. Learn all about what colorblindness means in today's episode. | Being colorblind doesn't mean you see in black and white, although in severe cases it can look a bit like that. The condition is on a spectrum ranging from dulled colors to shades of grey. Learn all about what colorblindness means in today's episode. | Tue, 25 Sep 2018 14:34:33 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=14, tm_min=34, tm_sec=33, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=268, tm_isdst=0) | 34396025 | 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 there's Jerry over there. So this is stuff you should know about colorblindness. That's right. Which I didn't know a lot about. I guess I didn't either. It's one of those things you just kind of assume you do, but there's a lot more to it than you realize, right? Yeah. I kind of wondered about myself, though, because Emily is always telling me that I'm getting colors wrong, so I took an online test. I did, too. How did you fare? Normal color. I took one of those what's it called? The scope one. Anomalous scope, yes. I took one of those online, and it said I had just very weak color blindness, which I wasn't very surprised by because dark colors are kind of hard for me to differentiate sometimes. They said that you don't see black or white. You're like Michael Jackson. That's right, man. I've always said that. But no one ever listened. Until now. Until I proved it on the Internet. Yeah. Thank God for the Internet. So you want to talk a little history? Because, believe it or not, there is colorblindness history. And I should say also, Chuck, I looked up the more politically correct term for colorblindness, and there really isn't one. Oh, yeah. Well, that's great. Yeah. So you can feel free to use colorblind when you're in good conscience. Okay. Fantastic. So back in 1794, john Dalton, who came up with atomic theory, he was a pretty important early scientist. He presented his first scientific paper, and it was on color blindness. Did you know that? No, I never heard of the guy. Yeah, so it was, from what anybody can tell, the first scientific paper on colorblindness. And he wrote it about himself. He and his brother were both colorblind, and he posited that he had some sort of blue fluid in his eye that was affecting his color vision, and he will that when he died, his eye be dissected. And when they did, they found that, oh, it's pretty normal. There was no blue fluid in there. And later on, they preserved his eye tissue. And in 1995, he was diagnosed with something called deuteronomia. So he was a deuterin in the parlance of people who are colorblind, meaning that he lacked functioning green cones or medium wave cones in his eye. Interesting. So he was the first dude he was the first one to write a scientific paper on it, at least. Good for him and bad for him. Well, yeah, I think so, too. I don't want to overstate how bad I feel for people who have colorblindness, because I know they're like living life and enjoying it and everything, but I would not want to be colorblind if I had my druthers. No. And I'm sure most people who are colorblind would feel the same way. John Fuller used to work with us. I believe he has some sort of color blindness, or maybe calling it color vision deficiency. I saw that is a better term, because colorblind a lot of people that don't know anything about it might think, well, if you're colorblind, then you see in black and white, which is a form of color blindness, but that's the most extreme form. There's definitely a gradient, appropriately enough, between full color vision, which is called trichromacy, and complete color blindness. Yeah. So let's get into the vision a little bit. Okay. Have we done one on the eye? Dude, a lot of this sounds kind of familiar, and I looked high and low and could not find anything on vision, on seeing on the eye, nothing. So I don't know if we did, like, maybe a video on this once or something, maybe, but some of it seemed familiar, but I couldn't find an episode on it. All right, so we have a retina in our eye. Like everyone knows the retina senses light, deals with color and vision, and there are rods and cones. They're called rods and cones because of their shape. They look like cones or rods. So rods help you see in low light, and the cones are where the detail and the color come from. So the cone malfunctioning or not being there at all. If you don't have three cones, you have to have at least two to see in any color. But if one of those cones of the three, if you do have three is malfunctioning, then you will fall somewhere on the scale of color vision deficiency. Right. So there's like something called like I said, if you have normal color vision, you have trichromacy. If you have anomalous trichromacy, it means that one of those cones is not functioning properly, although they all still work. It's just out of alignment a little bit. Yeah. And the way that it can get out of alignment is those cones. Each of them has a chromophore, I think is what it's called, which is like a little molecule that is attuned to a certain type of wavelength of the visible spectrum, and those wavelengths that it picks up kind of overlap depending on the cone, like red and green cones. What they pick up on the visible spectrum overlap big time. Green and blue kind of overlap, and the red and blue overlap the least. But if the alignment of the wavelength to the visible spectrum within that cone is just a little bit off, you're not going to see colors like other people see colors, but you're still going to see something. Right. And that's called anomalous trichromacy. Well, I mean, there are so many different subcategories. I guess we should go through some of these for sure. If you have that analysis trichromacy, some of the stuff is so hard. You do have your cones, so that means you have three cones, but one of those cones is defective. So if you have the deuteronomaly, this can be funny. Deuterony. No, wait, that's a Bible book, right? What is it? Do Duran. O'Malley, that's right. It just sounds weird. Yeah, I think so. I'm really bad with Emily's. I think he just nailed it, man. Yeah, but it was clumsy. But that's fine. Duter anomaly. It's a really not a word. It's an anomaly of your duters. That's right. So that duterte anomaly, you're just talking about that's if your green cones are out of alignment, all right, and there's proto anomaly or pro anomaly, and that's your red cones being out of alignment and then tried anomaly is blue. Right. So if you're missing a cone altogether, that's for malfunctioning. You have three, but one of them doesn't work quite right. If you're missing one altogether, you have di chromatic vision. And then we said, of course, that the worst, is monochromacy. That's basically seeing in black and white in sort of shades of gray. Right. But if you are a dichromat or a person with dichromatic vision, maybe that's the PC distinction. It's to not call someone a dichromat. Maybe you think maybe I saw, depending on your condition, there are abbreviated terms for it, but I saw people being referred to as di chromats all the time, but it really flies in the face of that whole thing of describing people by their condition rather than like, a person with dichromacy. You know what I mean? Got you. Yeah. Well, within the dichromat, though, there are the three different subtypes, which are the deuter, the proto, and the trita. That's the easiest way to say it. Right. So that's what those fall under. Yeah. And so the big difference between anomalous trichromacy and dichromacychromacy says it all. It means you have two functioning cones. And because of all that overlap Chuck, with all of the wavelengths that the different pigments and your cones catch, that's a huge pallet of colors that are produced in the human brain when we look around. But if you remove one of those cones, there's an enormous reduction in colors. Supposedly, each cone multiplies the number of colors by 100. So if you start out with just one cone, let's say you can see 100 shades. Just by adding a second cone, you can now see 10,000 different colors. And by adding a third cone, you can now see a million different colors. Right. So if you remove one of those cones, you're suddenly down to 10,000 colors. That's a significant difference. And that's the thing about dichromacy, is it's not that your cones are misaligned. One of your cones just is not producing at all. And so you're lacking a whole range of colors that other people with all three functioning cones can see. Right. And like I said earlier, with monochromacy, that's when you see basically in black and white and gray. And there are two types. There rod monochromacy and cone type. And if you have the rod type. You also have very poor vision, and you're very sensitive to light. And you might also have something called nystagmus, which that is when you have they call it dancing eyes. That's when there's a horizontal version, which means your eye basically darts back and forth to the left and to the right constantly. Like Pruitt. Taylor Vince, does he have that? You'd recognize him? He's just well known for he's the actor with oh, I know him. I just never noticed his eye. Oh, really? Yeah. You can tell the directors, like, all right, let's really get that going for this scene. Okay. Oh, wow. So when you think about the color wheel red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, green, violet I set them out of order. I don't know what that would spell. Doesn't spell Roy GB, though. But if you're colorblind, like, everyone wants to know, what does it look like if you're colorblind and it's a little hard to describe because it's very subjective when you think about how each person sees color, because I imagine everyone see things a little bit differently. But if you're color blind, that palette is just not as varied. It's more muted. Yeah, for sure. Because, again, those different cones are interacting. They're overlapping to produce a huge pallet of colors. It's not like we just see everything in red, green, and blue. Those things mix together and interact to produce colors beyond those three. So, yeah, if you're missing one, you're missing a lot more than just green or just red or just blue. Yeah. And things it doesn't mean it's altogether gone either, because it's on a spectrum, and it depends what kind you have. Like, it could be redish, but very muted, or green could look a more green gray, but it's just not that sort of robust, standard color wheel that you're used to seeing with what I guess you would consider normal color vision. For sure. Like, if you have one of the opiates, if you have, like, protein opia, which is your red cones don't function at all. The reds are brownish, the purples are bluish. Your yellow is totally normal, but the green is also kind of like a weird kind of khaki brown itself, and that really overlaps with duterte opiate. The big difference between those is that your red what would look like a dark dark brown to a protenope for a deuteronope, it would look kind of like a kind of a drab, brownish olive, which is not what you want to see when you look at, like, a bright red apple olive. Look at that huge olive. Right? It looks delicious. And then you take a bite, and you're like, that's no olive. So let's take a break, have some olives, and we'll talk about animals and testing for colorblindness right after this. All right. So I think a lot of people have always heard, growing up on the playground that animals see in black and white, especially dogs, and cats see in black and white. Some animals see in color, some see in black and white. It kind of depends. Dogs and cats, they actually do see color. They just don't see the whole Roy GB of color spectrum that you and I know. Apparently, apes and monkeys see the same way we do. Then you have really colorblind animals like black and white types, like raccoons, seals, whales, black and white types. I love it. And then birds apparently see more color than we do. Yeah. And there's other animals that see things like ultraviolet. There's a visible spectrum, but that's what we humans see. Where technically, if you had some sort of chroma force and an opson that worked together in a cone to produce the red, green, or blue, if you had one that was attuned to gamma rays or X rays or ultraviolet or infrared, we would be able to see in those, too. But we don't have that. But other animals are attuned to other things. And yeah, from what I saw, two birds seem to really see colors like nobody's business. Those birds and dogs, I think, tend to see blues and yellows, just like us, and a little more robustly. And the other colors on the spectrum are more muted or just don't show up like we see them at all, are more like browns or something like that. So if you get your dog a ball, you want a blue ball or a yellow ball, they'll be able to spot those a lot easier. Well, it doesn't mean they can't see it. It just means they'll see a grayish ball. Right? Yeah, for sure. But who wants to play with the gray ball, I think is my point. I always wonder how they test for that stuff in animals. You just ask. Yeah, blue. That's a good Scooby impression. All right, so testing for this, you can go on the Internet, of course. And you took one of the anomalous scope tests. I took what is known as a pip, which is a test called the Ishihara plate and pseudoisochromatic plate. So this was a doctor in Japan. He developed this test for the Japanese army. Doctor ishahara and if you go and look at it, it looks really kind of cool, slightly psychedelic looking. It's a circle composed of a bunch of little colored dots. Back in the day, he would just hold up cards, like a Rorschach test, like Watercolor cards. Yeah. And it's a circle with a bunch of little colored dots in the middle. And then within all those dots, there is the shape of a number composed of different variations of colors. So there will be, like, a circle with a bunch of dots that are mainly red and shades of red. And then within that will be like a number four. That's really close. And it depends. Some of them really stand out as obvious, and some of them really blend in or camouflaged almost, and you pick out these numbers and say what number you're seeing. And then after you go through this whole series, they'll be able to say, like, you're pretty good on the reds, but you obviously have trouble with the greens or something like that. Yeah, because depending on what color scheme they use, if you are like a protonope and can't see reds, you're not going to be able to pick out the red three that's embedded within these dots because you can't see red. It's all just going to fade together and just look like a field of dots to you, whereas somebody else who can see reds would just see it clear as day that there's a three in the middle of that circle. Yeah, it's pretty ingenious test. And that was like the test for a while, but it's definitely advanced by leaps and bounds since then. There's more tests than just showed up in this article. There's one, I can't remember the name of it, but it's made of you have four rows of something like 20 or 30 tiles of varying shades across the spectrum, and you're supposed to basically put them in order to match a control line. And it's kind of like an anomalous scope test, but it's more hands on. Yeah. And then there's one that I think the coast guard and the navy and the air force use called the fallworth lantern test. Sorry, Farnsworth Lantern Test. Yeah. My brother in law is a Marine, and he's a pilot, and he had to take this. So this is an additional test. Basically, if you fail the pip test, then you will use this. The FAA also uses it because if you want to be a pilot, you can't be colorblind. So it's basically a backup. And it's like a little box that shows you colored lights. And you have to identify these colored lights as they come up from a distance. They'll show two at a time, maybe one at a time, and you just have to pick them out and identify the colors. But they do dim. They use a filter. So, like, you can't cheat your way through by knowing that something is bright. So it might be yellow. Right, because when you start looking at colored lights and stuff like that, it does become clear that some are just brighter than others. Which is why I think people who have yellow blue color blindness or triton ops, they tend to be very sensitive to bright light, which kind of makes sense in a weird way. But a lot of this stuff, it was like, wait, how does that happen again? Like Deuteronopia and Protenopia, they overlap so much that they call both of them red green color blindness, and they both see reds as browns and they see greens as browns. But it's just bizarre to me when I really kind of drill into it. The actual details of it are really fascinating because you just are raised your whole life to think, like, oh, this person can't see red. This person can't see green. This person can't see blue. And it's as simple as that. And it's the exact opposite of as simple as that in reality. Right. There's so much nuance to colors that are produced by these three RGB cones. Yeah. I imagine diagnosing a kid. We'll talk a little bit about living with color blindness in a bit, and I'd love to hear from people. It's not like it might hamper you, I don't think, to the point of danger. I guess maybe if you were a monochromat, that might be possible. Sure. But it seems like more an inconvenience than anything else. Right. You'd be like, what is this black liquid pouring out from a major artery in my arm? I don't know what this is. If it were red, I would know. It's blood. That's right. Yeah. As far as how it's caused, it is largely genetic, although there are some drugs and diseases and conditions that could cause it later in life. But it's generally genetic. Yes. Especially red. Green color blindness is what is it? Sex linked recessive. Yeah. And way more men and way more caucasian men get it than women. And I'm not quite sure about the caucasian part. I couldn't find any explanation for that. But there's a very clear and easy explanation for why more men have it. Something like 8% of caucasian men and I think like 5% of asian men tend to have red green color blindness of some varying degree. Right. And if you have red green color blindness, 50% of people are going to have mild, and the other 50% are going to have it so severe that it would basically be protinopia or deuterinopia, which, again, means your cones aren't functioning like one of your cones isn't. But the reason why there's way more men than women, I think something like zero 5% of the population in the US. Of women have colorblindness is because it's carried on the x chromosome. That's right. And since it's recessive, men only have one x chromosome, and they have a y chromosome, which means that all of their color vision genes are just on the x chromosome. And since it's recessive, if that one gene is defective in that you don't have normal color vision, the man is going to have color blindness. But for a woman, it takes two defective x chromosome genes, right? That's right. So that makes it sex linked recessive, which is kind of there could be an okay album name. I don't know about a band name. Sex linked recessive. Sure. Yeah. And I talked about diseases and conditions. Glaucoma is one, diabetes, alzheimer's, parkinson's, leukemia, ms, sickle cell alcoholism. If you literally drink yourself color blind, that sounds like something made up. Yeah, it does. You wouldn't be able to detect the pink elephant anymore. Yeah, that's true. You say, who's that gray elephant? And they say all elephants are gray. Drinking yourself colorblind, man, that's nuts. That's a Tom wait song. It should be, for sure. There's also, like, some drugs that can do it, too, right? Yeah. I didn't get to look into these as much, though. But it says that digitalis and cloroqueen. Yeah. The second one is a malaria treatment, and the first one is a reckless heart treatment. Yeah. But I guess both of them can cause color blindness. The thing about color blindness, if it's acquired, if it's genetic, it's probably red, green, you're probably a boy, and you're probably Caucasian boy, the likeliness. But if it's acquired, it's likelier that you're yellow, blue, color blind. Right? Yeah. And that can actually get better. If it's acquired, it can get worse. But it can also go away depending on, say, if you stop using the drug that is causing colorblindness. Or maybe you give up drinking. Right. But there is no cure for colorblindness genetically. So you can't take a pill or get a shot or get any kind of treatment. There apparently are corrective lenses that they have out there, but I don't know about that. That doesn't sound like a great idea. I'm not sure how effective those are. Supposedly they kind of work for color, but they also affect depth perception, too, which it's kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul in that sense. Maybe even worse than that. Interesting. And I looked them up. They don't seem to be any further along than when this article was written. But there's gene therapy. It just hasn't been tested in humans, but it's been shown to work in monkeys, where they inject genetic material directly into the eye and hope for the best. But apparently it works in monkeys. Again, same thing as what you were saying. How do you know? How do you test for colorblindness in animals? I want to know. It's fascinating, just the idea of it. I bet someone out there knows. Sure. Hopefully they'll write in. So let's take a break, and then we'll come back and talk about living with colorblindness. Chuck, how about that? Yeah. All right. So like I said before, and I do want to hear from people that are color blind. It seems like more of an inconvenience than an actual danger or a threat. It could limit, like, maybe what kind of job you might want to get. Like I said, you can't be color blind if you're a pilot or if you want to be a pilot. It's funny, they mentioned in here if you're an electrician, like, color coded wires are never really thought about that, but that's probably a pretty good point. Or I guess if you may never work for a bomb squad. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. That's your life calling. That's sad. I also saw if you're a meat inspector, you probably can't be color blind. Oh, sure. Looks good to me. It's all gray instead of it's all good. Oh, God. Gray. Similarly, if you have a red color blindness, you can't tell whether steak is cooked or not based on color. And similarly, if you have a green color blindness, you might have trouble with ripe fruit, whether fruit is ripe or not. Luckily, anyone that knows what they're doing with the steak, you could be blindfolded and cook a steak. Right, sure. And plus, even if you don't know what you're doing, there's meat thermometers. That all you have to do is get to, like, 160, I think, and you're all right. Yeah, but we've talked enough about cooking steak in here. Sure. It's a time thing, a temperature thing, and at the very least, you can touch it and know what's going on. Sure. If it gives your thumb false bite, probably not done yet, because if you're cooking a steak by color, that means you're cutting into the steak to see if it's done right, which is the worst thing you could ever do. It's a sin. Yeah. I'm horrified at that whole notion. I am too. Choked. What about little kids getting dressed and coloring crayons? That's why crayons are labeled. Right, but, I mean, if they use some names that don't really mean anything to the color, that's not very helpful. Sure. Yeah. If you have crayons with the labels peeled off and you're color blind, that's not good. I also saw diamond appraisers interesting casino dealerships colors, but now they have things like software that can actually change colors on the Web so that you can see them more clearly depending on what kind of color blindness you have. Interesting. So that I think it used to be, like, a real problem, and then they came up with a lot of different software that you can buy and just run on your computer, which that's got to help quite a bit. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. I figured in the olden days, it was just like, well, sorry for you, but now there are so many different things that they can do to help people out with various slight conditions like this. For sure. And I think a lot of the worries were kind of overblown. Like the FAA used to say, like, you have to have normal color vision to be an FAA employee, and they repeal that 99 to six because there are so many other ways you can design things other than colors. Right. And it's still a problem. For what, I can tell. Like with color blindness. The same light will be used on an electronic thing to show it's fully charged or to show it needs charging. Whereas if you just have a light blink to show that it needs charging. That would help tremendously. Rather than just using a green for fully charged and red for needing charging to help somebody with color blindness. Because it just looks like an ugly brown light to them. Yeah, I never thought about that. A lot of things blink now, though, that I've seen. Right. And I'll bet that's why, actually, because it's just a better design. Yeah. Not using different colored chalk for emphasis in school, using for graphs rather than just colors. You can also use cross hatching or dots or something like that to indicate differences. And then the reason I said why it seems like people are coming around to the idea of it being unsafe to be colorblind in this world, being overblown. Japan had a real, like, bias against people with color blindness for many years. Did you read that article I sent? I didn't see that one. Man so back in, I think, 1920, the crown Prince Hirohito was about to marry a woman, and it turned out that she had color blindness in her family. And one of the royal family stepped up and was like, I don't want him marrying this girl because her family has colorblindness in her lineage. And the marriage went on anyway, but the publicity involved really got people's attention, and they really took it to heart. And for decades, up until a few years ago, there was discrimination against people who are colorblind. Like, you could not enroll in some high school courses or college courses if you were tested as color blind. And all kids were tested at a young age to see whether they were colorblind or not. You couldn't get some jobs and not even where it was conceivably, safe or unsafe. It was just, like, discrimination against people who are colorblind. In some cases, people who are fully blind could enroll in some courses that people who are colorblind could not. So there was, like, no scientific basis to it whatsoever. It was strictly like, this kind of distasteful color blindness that had been in the culture since 1920 and finally fading away as time goes on. They stopped testing kids in Japan in the last year or two for color blindness because they're like, we understand it better now. And you're not a monster for being color blind. Yes. That's amazing. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. There's something you should know. Something I should know? So color blind is Chucky got anything else? No. Well, actually, that one little interesting tidbit that apparently people that are colorblind can pick out camouflage better. Oh, yeah. Because they look more at texture than the actual color. Yeah, I saw that. They make better spotters for sniper teams. Nice. Yeah, I guess so. All right, what about now? You got anything else now? Nothing else. So if you want to know more about colorblindness, go ask somebody who's colorblind. I'm sure they are going to have some fascinating stuff for you, and we want to hear from color blind people, too. So please let us know what it's like to live as somebody with a color vision deficiency or color blindness, or let us know exactly what we should say. And since I said that, it's time for listener mate. All right, I'm going. To call this little Price is right follow up. Okay. We just released our live game show live in Denver, Colorado, where we had a lot of our stuff. You should know. Army members travel then and met each other for the first time. Yeah, it was pretty cool, which is really neat. We had a backstage hang and you know who you are, folks. So it's great to see you as always. We'll be back to Denver because we did two sold out shows there. Yeah, it's a great town. It was really good. All right, so here we go with a little bit about the prices. Right. Hey, guys. Fairly new listeners started in July. Wow. Well, welcome to the show, David. But he's working his way backwards, which is great. So he listened to game shows and he said, I'm a child of the like, Chuck. My summer and home sick from school days were built around a plethora of awesome daily game shows. When talking about the Prices right, chuck mentioned trotting out the very tough Cliffhanger game. And this might throw me to the dork category, but I'm obsessed with getting on the show. I've been to three tapings in the past year and I've studied tips and tricks. So he's like what's his face? Man, I wish. The guy who beat? Yeah. Michael Larson. Yeah, Michael Larson. Except he's the Michael Larson of Cliffhanger. He said he claims this is a 100% foolproof way to win. So listen up, everybody. Every time he's done it, it's worked. Here's the trick. For the first item, bid $20. Okay? Whatever the actual price is, it doesn't matter. Add $11 and make that the bid on the second item. Okay. Then whatever the actual price is for that item, add $11 to that. And he said, it works every single time. Weird. I wonder why. I don't know. Well, they're probably going to change you, because as everyone knows, Drew Carey listens to stuff you should know religiously. I'm sure Drew Carey does not care one bit who wins and who loses. Uncle Finger. I don't know, man. I read this, I think, a GQ or Vanity Fair article about this guy who was accused of cheating on the prices, right. And Drew Carey was mad about the idea. Well, sure, if you cheat, I guess that's true. Yeah, that's a big distinction. And then he says this my other interesting tidbit is regarding the Japanese game show that you discussed to Catch These Castle. Starting in 2003, Spike TV took old episodes and dubbed them in English, and it totally transformed it to one of the funniest things you'd ever watch. If you have 20 minutes to burn, hop on the YouTube and catch an episode. Thanks for the great work. That is David Mills. I have a cousin named David Mills, and I'm assuming that is not you. You never know. Surely he would have just texted me Cousin Dave. He's the formal type. Yeah, he doesn't like to take shortcuts. Hey, man. Because he's a cliffhanger. Yeah, well, thanks a lot, cousin Dave. We appreciate that. If you want to get in touch with us to share your tips and secrets for game shows or for getting through life, whatever, we want to hear from you. You can hang out with us on socials by going to our website, stuffysheno.com and finding all the links there. Or you can send us a good old fashioned email. Send it to stuffpodcast@housetofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by 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 freedom free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
12122a02-361f-11ea-91d6-2bac7d666814 | Short Stuff: Centralia Coal Fire | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-centralia-coal-fire | An old coal mine in Pennsylvania caught fire one day in the 60s and it’s been burning ever since. What’s crazy is this happens all the time. | An old coal mine in Pennsylvania caught fire one day in the 60s and it’s been burning ever since. What’s crazy is this happens all the time. | Wed, 15 Jul 2020 11:46:39 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=11, tm_min=46, tm_sec=39, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=197, tm_isdst=0) | 13857902 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. We're chosh for Jack. It doesn't matter. And this is stuff you should Know. This is short stuff. Yeah. Short stuff you should know. Now, man, my mind. Chuck, you all right? No. Okay, let's continue. Okay. We're talking about Centralia. Yeah. Which we've talked about before. I don't know if it was in an Abandoned places episode. I think that I don't remember what else we would have talked about it in, but we have definitely talked about it. Yeah. Unless we talked about coal. Maybe. But that's the Vin diagram of abandoned places in Coal, centralia, Pennsylvania. Right. The very smallest municipality in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. That's right. And it is a former mining community a couple of hours northwest of Philly that it was always a small town, a small mining town. I think it only had about 1400 people there in the early 1960s. But now there are less than ten people for one very scary reason. What is that? Well, the scary reason is that when you're walking around centrally, the earth may open up and swallow you into a fiery pit at any given moment without any warning. How is that good way to say it? Thank you. Yeah. So what happened? Well, we don't know exactly what happened. There's a few different versions of this story that we'll go over in a second, but the end result of each of these stories is that in 1962, there is still burning from that year, a coal seam fire, literally coal on fire underground, under Centralia in the surrounding area of centralia Pennsylvania. Right. That's a very alarming thing, because I think any person who hears that says, well, how would you put one of those out? And the answer to that is by the time it's been burning for 70 years, you don't it burns itself out. And then an average reasonable person would be like, there's a lot of coal underground. Can it just keep burning indefinitely? And the answer to that reasonable person is absolutely. So these seams are naturally occurring coal deposits. They're called seams in the industry. They are sort of like veins that run through the earth that are made of coal, and they can it's not like this is a rare thing. Coal seam fires happen a lot and can happen and do happen all over the world. I had no idea. I've known about Centralia's Fire for many years, but I had no idea that this is a very common thing. It's very alarming, really. Centralia. What did I say? You said Centralia, and you don't want to anger those ten people. It's like saying Nevada. Which way do they not like it? They say only people in Nevada call it Nevada. Okay. Yeah. Everybody else calls it Nevada. Really makes them mad. Right. Don't want to do that to the people of good people of Centralia, all ten of them. So I'm just going to call it seattown then, to cover my bases. Yeah. Okay. Because now if I just spend time thinking about it, it'll just totally derail this whole episode. Let's go back to coal scene fire. Okay, so they're very common, like you said, apparently in China, something like well, there's a 3000 miles stretch of a coal mining belt around China, and I guess at any given time, a pretty decent proportion of it is on fire with these coal seam fires, which is problematic. There's a town in India called Jaharia and it has had a coal seam fire going on since 1918 and has lost something like 41 million tons of coal to this fire just up in smoke, quite literally. Yeah. Obviously this happens more often if the miners didn't do the right thing when they left. So they're down there mining and they've got these tunnels and you got to take care of that stuff when you leave, you can't just say, all right, we're out of here, and put the gun fishing sign out front. Well, unfortunately, a lot of mine owners have done that for a very long time. Yeah, absolutely. So if you don't have the right supports to keep the ground from collapsing, that can be a fire risk as well. So you got to fill them in. I saw also, Chuck, that there's this company that developed what they call a cellular foam. It's actually a mixture of Portland cement and fly ash, which is a very difficult waste to get rid of and some other stuff. And it's a foam you can spray on whatever coals left over and it will prevent these fires from catching, which is a really great thing. And also it gets rid of, like I said, that fly ash waste, that's tough to remediate on its own. So you're killing two birds with 1 st. But one of the reasons that you would want to seal off whatever coal seam is left after you abandon the mind is because it's not just dipstick humans who set coal seam fires. They can happen quite naturally, too. And because that's a very tantalizing thing to say, I suggest, Chuck, that we take an abbrek right now. All right, let's do it. All right. Now it's the payoff, everybody. Coal seam fires can start under natural circumstances. Go, Chuck. Yeah. They can even spontaneously combust. And once they get going, especially this anthracite coal, it is very hard to put out, produces a lot of heat. And that self heat, it just sort of is a cyclical thing. It just sort of stays on fire. And that's why when you're shipping coal, it's dangerous to ship coal. When they get on those big steamer ships, it's dangerous. Yeah, because as the coal oxidizes, I think pyrite inside the coal, as it oxidizes, it starts to heat up. So the coal can heat up from inside out and it can get hot enough that it can actually self ignite. Spontaneously combust, like you were saying. So imagine having like, a tanker ship full of coal, and you're a sailor on that ship and you are fully aware that coal can spontaneously ignite. Wouldn't you be nervous? That'd be a little nerve wracking. Especially because that ship is on fire in San Diego, the Navy ship right now. Right? Yeah. And they were saying that it's reaching temperatures of about 1000 degrees Fahrenheit and it was melting steel. It was that hot. Well, friend, the coal seam fire in Centralia did I say it right? Centralia, man. It has been shown to reach at least temperatures of 1350 degrees, which is something like 732 degrees Celsius. So if that happened on your ship, it would definitely burn a hole right through your ship and you would be sunk down to Davy Jones locker. Yeah. So how this thing started, there are a few different versions. My money is on probably the most popular version, which was on May 27, 1962, they burned a landfill on purpose. This was something that would happen regularly as you would burn the trash, literally, and that this trash burn kind of got into that coal seam. And boom, there you have it. And it started a fire that has never been put out to this day. Other versions of the story was that it was another garbage fire, and not that one on May 27 lit by a truck driver. And then another one is that it started in the 1930s, I think, and has just been around. And then in the 1960s, it was kind of noticed for the first time. Yeah, I like that one myself. Yeah. The idea that it was kind of smoldering and then all of a sudden, maybe a flapper through their cigarette. I could totally see that. Sure. That might be sexist, though. So let's just say it could have been flapper or a boy toy. Okay. Either way, though, that thing caught on fire, started sweeping through those tunnels. We're talking 100 to 300ft. Down below, the Earth is still on fire. You can still see it today. There's some cool little short version YouTube documentaries where news crews have gone out and stuff about Centralia. And on rainy days you stand there, especially on rainy days, and you just see that steam and smoke coming out from the Earth itself. Yeah, which is one reason why I gave rise to the video game. And then later on the movie Silent Hill, it's just this creepy abandoned town. Although the astounding thing is that it's not fully abandoned. Like you said, there are some people there still. I think there's ten people that live there still. And they live there because they basically said, I'm not moving. And so the government of Pennsylvania finally said, fine, you guys, you lifelong residence, original residence of Centralia. You can stay here until you die. What did you say in Chill? I said Centralia. I don't care anymore. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. People of seatown. I'm mispronouncing your name. I'm offending ten people right now. Well, the government tried to get them out of there. They took away their zip code in 2002. They were like, sorry, no zip code. I don't know if they were like, we need that for somewhere else, or we're just retiring it. It's quite a burn, a big burn. No pun intended. None. They took away Route 61, or part of it at least. It ran through there. And some people say it's closed for other. Other people say, like, it could reopen again one day. I don't think it will now. Who says it could reopen one day? That's ridiculous. And one of those documentaries. The idea was, if this thing gets under control, they could rebuild the road. No, centrally. One reason why they decided to move everybody out of there and it was done with taxpayer funded, basically like moving fund. Everyone has given up hope. Well, the reason why they started moving everybody I think in the early 80s, some kid was playing in one of the streets and the street just collapsed under him and he was hanging by his fingers above this burning pit that he was about to drop into. And they're like, okay, I don't think centrally is safe to live in. That was 40 years ago. So the town has done nothing but get more unstable since then. So at the very least, that highway is not opening back up. They've also demolished like 500 buildings there, too. You know what actually happened to that kid? What? In 1982 is he went to investigate some smoke and the thing exploded and shot him 50ft up into the air. I think it was a different kid. Was it? I don't know. I don't like the idea that I got something wrong, though. And it just so happened to be on the same day that a bunch of news crews and local politicians were there, and that was not a good look at all. No, for sure. The kid lived, by the way. Great. Well, the kid lived in my version, too. Yeah, that's good. They've tried a bunch of things over the years to extinguish it. They put vent pipes in. The idea there was not to put out the fire, but to direct these noxious gases, because there's all kinds of nasty stuff being put into the air to vent those at least away from the town. And some people said that's not working, and in fact, it's feeding the fire with oxygen. So they seal them up. Right. So where does that leave us, Chuck? Well, they've also tried to put it out altogether. They dug sort of like a fire break. They dug a trench down to try and reach that seam in front of the fire. But the fire went so fast, they didn't go far enough ahead. It beat them to where they were digging down and they just went nuts, right? But apparently that's kind of par for the course. They're just really tough to put out. You can kind of understand how that would be the case. From what I've read, you have to stay on top of it immediately after you notice this and then continue monitoring it basically indefinitely because it can just keep flaring up. And in fact, there's something called Burning Mountain Mount Wingin or Wing in New South Wales, Australia that they think has been burning for 6000 years now. Really? Yeah, really, man. Well, that's scary stuff. I think so too. But that was a good one, don't you think? I think it was great. Great. Well, we hope that you think the same thing too. And since we've run out of stuff to talk about, centralia short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts from My heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Burlesque Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-burlesque-works | What's old is new again as far as burlesque is concerned. Come explore what was an old-timey outlet for empowering women that later gave rise to the striptease once men started running the show. Now, women have reclaimed the art and it is benefiting. | What's old is new again as far as burlesque is concerned. Come explore what was an old-timey outlet for empowering women that later gave rise to the striptease once men started running the show. Now, women have reclaimed the art and it is benefiting. | Thu, 17 Apr 2014 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=107, tm_isdst=0) | 46562395 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and with me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Yeah. And over there is Jerry. You know, there's a name for that song for the burlesky Stripes. Yeah. Is it called baba boom. That's called the stripper by David Rose, who also did the Little House of the Prairie thing. Oh, really? That was all about keeping your clothes on. He's actually like, one of my favorite dudes instrumental easy listening stuff. That's right. He does soft rock versions of no, he does instrumental easy listening versions of soft rock songs. So he makes soft rock softer? Yeah. Wow. Like you can't even slip through your fingers. Right. But yeah, the Stripper is what it's called. And I'm sure you've probably heard it at burlesque shows because we should come out and say, I've never been to one. But you have. Yeah, I went to one in New York City, kind of the home of burlesque. Sure. It's certainly one of the capitals of neo burlesque, new York and La. Or where it started in the mid ninety s and had a lot to do with where it started in the late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds. You're right. That is absolutely true. Yeah, I went to one. It's fun. I like throwback stuff and I appreciate people trying to bring stuff back, especially like really old school stuff, not like 80s clothing. Are you referring to my swatch? No. What about my ocean? Pacific windbreaker? Wow. Didn't notice. No. I love ads clothing. I'm just saying when I'm talking about bringing it back, I mean, like the pantaloons and the whole burlesque thing. No, they definitely have totally gone all in and as a result, it's been successful. It's been a very successful burlesque revival. Yeah. It's like a movement. Yeah. You can throw a stone in America and you're going to hit a burlesque troop. Yeah. Just throw it. Close your eyes and throw it. You don't even have to throw it. Well, it'll hit a burlesque trooper, and that's a pretty recent phenomenon, but it's kind of taken off like a rocket. But you're saying it's true to form, true to the original. Yeah. The one I saw was very much so. It was sort of body and had some humor and of course, strip tease action, but not like the strip club type of thing. It's supposed to be like kitschy campy strip teases, typically. Right. Yeah, like titillating and body, but not it's not like a strip club strip. No, not at all. It's like dancing and fun and it's a good time. People are laughing and having a good time, whereas strip clubs are kind of like scary to me. They are, at least. Right. So stripping actually came out of burlesque and then just kind of went off on its own direction. But it's still associated with burlesque. We'll get into this well, now okay, let's talk about the history of this. I should say Chuck, but if you look into burlesque, especially neo burlesque, there's a real discussion about whether or not it's pro feminist or counterfeminist, basically. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. If you speak to a neo burlesque or read their words or writing or whatever, you're going to find that they most likely identify as a feminist, or at the very least with feminism. And that doesn't always jibe with how feminists think of them, though. Yeah. And especially these days with the new stuff. These are productions by women, costuming by women, produced by women, performed by women, which follows women in the audience. Right. So it's empowering for a lot of women like that's. Part of the attraction of it is women doing their own thing and they're doing it and they're doing it well. You're right. There's a couple of schools of thought, period, about that. It's like, does a woman take her clothes off for money? Is that exploiting her? Or is that a woman who's very comfortable with her body and sexuality exploiting men for their dough? Right, but you just said the magic word to men. It seems to be like the baseline argument is whether or not burlesque is for the male gays or for woman empowerment. Yeah. Well, I think when we look at the history, we'll see that it was generally run by men back in the day and now is more run by women. Right, but originally it wasn't run by men. No, it was originally women producers back in the 19th century. And that's where you get the association of women doing this stuff on their own. That's a true throwback to the original founding of it. So let's go back in time, then. Let's go to the history of burlesque. Let's go over to Great Britain where it started. It's 1840, and here we are in England, and ladies are very well covered up. Yeah, it's the Victorian era, like neck to ankle and skin is not in fashion. And so to see a woman show a little skin, even if it's an ankle, is a very big deal. Right. So imagine that if you went to a performance of a show and it was kind of this weird satirical spoof of maybe a Greek comedy, but it was lampooning current cultural and political items. But it was an all female troupe and the producers name was a woman's name. Right. And the troop was wearing tights, their legs weren't covered. Right. That's what you call a cultural explosion. And people went nuts for it. Yeah, they did. The word burlesque comes from the Italian burlesque, or even further back, burla, which means to ridicule. And basically, it's what these days we'd call satire. They were spoofs. They would spoof the upper class and spoof operas and plays and Shakespeare and all those snotty snots that had hang ups in the upper echelons of society. They would make fun of them. Yeah. Like you were a monocle. You're going to get skewered in a burlesque show. Yeah. And the burlesque show itself was lots of song and dance and musical numbers. But there were two aspects of it from the beginning that survived, even to today. There's humor to it. It's supposed to be funny. And there was nudity of some form. Both of those were found in the first burlesque shows. Yeah. And depending on what nudity meant back then, today nudity could be wearing tights. Yeah, exactly. Here's my knees. Right. Like faint. Prepare to faint. Because this was very buttoned up Victorian era. So it was a pretty big smash in Great Britain, and the earliest plays made enough money that they shipped over to America. And in America, the first one technically was called The Black Crook, and it was a very big success. Yeah. The Black Crook. Like I said, it was Broadway. It was the 1866 at this point. And they had pantaloons on, but the pantaloons only went down to their mid thigh, which is a big deal. They're wearing shorts, in other words. Yeah. The big puffy pantains from the midside down. They had nothing. They had no sleeves. They have the bodices with no sleeves. It's another huge deal. It sounds like exactly like the French illustration of, like a can can dancer. Yeah, pretty much. Except more skin, probably. Okay. And then the reviewers that went nuts for it, like, some of them went nuts in a bad way and called it, like, filth, but other ones said remarked about there were no clothes to speak of, but they'd never seen something like, so amazing in their life. Yeah. It was like, just quite a spectacle. Yeah. And the reviewers they reviewed positively felt the ire and pressure of the Puritanical sect, which was pretty loud back then. And they changed their tune. So then you had nothing but bad reviews of these things. But they were loud, bad reviews. And that just drew more audiences. Yeah, but they were, like, noteworthy. People were going to these shows early on, which was a big deal. It did go back underground, but at first, like, Mark Twain went to one called The Four British Blondes. It was a troop. And he said, the scenery and legs are everything. Girls nothing but a wilderness of girls stacked up, pile on, pile away, aloft to the dome of the theater, dressed with a meagerness that would make a parasol blush. Yeah. He can turn a phrase. Sure. Mark Twain, he was a great writer. But another show came along after that, too. That was a really big deal. Right. This is technically, I don't know, I guess it was maybe the one that really maybe The Black Crook proved that this thing could be lucrative. And then the one that followed Ixion was the first true burlesque show to arrive in the US. Yeah, I think Black Crook, it was a Broadway show that just titillated. And so people said, who was the lady? Her name is Lydia Thompson. She was a burlesque producer. I think she's a Ixion. You guys want to be titillated? Yeah. Check this out. Let's do it for real. And she dropped a burlesque show on them, which, now that we're talking about this, I just realized I have been to a burlesque show in Vegas. Oh, yeah. It was at one of the older casinos. Circus Circus? No. Golden Nugget. No, not that old. I can't remember. But it was called Jubilee. It was boring. Well, the one I went to was in, like, a tiny little bar like New York. This wasn't neo. This is, like, straight up. I think it'd been performed ever since the 60s or something. Yeah. I kept waiting for them to stop in the middle and be like, we're just kidding. Here's the real show. But they didn't. It was so strange. I think everyone should go see Jubilee and just it's bizarre. It sounds like one of those old Vegas shows. Yeah. Okay, so Ixyoung comes along, and it's one of those Greek comedies updated to lampoon contemporary society and culture, and people love it. And you said Mark Twain went to one of these things. I bet he went to more than one. That's really saying something, because originally, burlesque in the 1840s was created for the lower classes and the middle classes to make fun of the upper classes when it comes to America. It's not just attracting the lower classes. It's attracting the middle classes. It's attracting upper class society, possibly in part because it's still making fun of the British. I don't know if it would have been quite as well received by the upper classes in American society if they come to make fun of America. But in very short order, within just a few years, lydia Thompson's success with her production, which, by the way, netted six or gross $6.6 million in $2,012. Wow. And it's one first season. That's awesome. It was like 370,018, $70. But based on her success, americans started making their own very quickly. Yeah. And it was in the 1880s, a short time later, that the male managers and producers kind of took over, because, of course, they were already doing producing things, but they saw that there was definitely money to be made. Right. They like, Lydia. Oh, hey, women. You guys are living the dream. You're doing your own thing. You're being empowered now. We're taking over. Yeah. But it was still to Titillate and to Spoof. But there was definitely a little more attention paid to the striptease part of it. Well, right. I mean, the showing, the leg, the costuming just kind of shimmering around on stage definitely started to come more towards the four, but the stripes hadn't been introduced yet. The first stripper was a woman named Little Egypt, who did the first public strip at the 1893 World Fair in Chicago. Yes. What was it called? The Hoochie. Seriously? Yes. And that caused quite a stir. You could find a striptease there, but it was underground still. Yeah, like stag parties and stuff like that. Right. So burlesque was still there. You went to a burlesque show, you're going to be titillated. But still it was the lampooning, the hilariousness of it. They were stand up comics. Yeah. Well, things really changed when a producer named Michael Levitt levitt, yeah. Okay. When he started he sounds like a modern producer, Michael Levitt. Yeah. Well, he kind of was. He claims he coined the term vaudeville, although if he claimed it, then it's probably not the case. Right. I made that upset. But when he started producing, he basically put it in a three act format, like the three act minstrel shows of days before, with act one being just an ensemble entertainment skits, gags jokes, fully dressed in formal clothing. Then act two, which was like a hodgepodge of comic skits and singing acts and things like that. And then finally act three, which was what they called a Burletta, which was a full one act musical burlesque. That's when they would usually like spoof Shakespeare or somebody. Right. So that format became the format for all burlesque shows to follow. What was that, the 1880s? Yeah. Okay. And what he did was he took what was traditionally the burlesque show, which was the spoofy play, and condensed it into one act, the third act, and then added this other stuff. Yeah, exactly. So vogueville and burlesque are kind of co evolving at the same time. Apparently this man was patient zero. I hadn't heard that. But the vaudeville for some reason had a little more of a better reputation than the last because they weren't taking a close off. I guess so. But you found a lot of the same elements, especially stand up comedy. And there were some really great legendary comics like Jackie Gleason and Bob hope. Yeah. Red Skelton, WC. Fields, fanny Bryce, funny girl who started out in burlesque, graduated to vaudeville and then went on to TV. Just basically followed the media as it went. But some of those people vogville looked down on burlesque. But they still have money. Exactly. When they needed money, they would adopt a pseudonym and they could do a little burlesque tour. Because burlesque was a lot steadier income. It was virtually guaranteed income. Vaudeville was a little more respected. But burlesque was guaranteed work. Yes. And this writer named Herb Goldman wrote a book called Fanny Bryce the original funny girl, where he pretty much came out and said, like, by the time you got to vaudeville, you were seasoned. Burlesque was the proving ground if you wanted to get in show business. Right. Yeah. For ladies and men. Men were the comics at the time, typically. Yeah. And we can thank burlesque also for the word top banana and second banana had to do with the comics and like a comedic group, the guy who is the straight man or whatever, like mo, he would have been the top banana. And then Larry might have been second banana, and curly would have been third banana. I thought you were talking about the simpsons for a second. Mom would be the top banana. Yeah, probably. I wonder who is the top banana in the senses? I don't think they follow that schematic. No, not at all. God is so early 1905. There began to be vaudeville style circuits going around, sort of like a traveling circus. And they played in rotation, so they became known as wheels. And they had the columbia wheel on the eastern us. The empire wheel on the western us. The mutual wheel, which I'm not sure where that was. Probably the midwest. Midwest? Sure. And then there was a fourth wheel called the independent that actually went bankrupt because they were too dirty. Oh, really? They refused to change, so they would get shut down so much they just couldn't hang. Yeah. And that was the thing that would happen with a burlesque house. And these wheels were basically just circuits that involved burlesque houses around a certain region. And they were so established, and these shows were so guaranteed to draw a crowd that these wheels where they would last for 40 weeks. So you get in a burlesque troop and you had steady work for 40 weeks out of the year, that's your life. That's your livelihood. And this went on for, like, 30 years like this. Think about it. In showbiz, there was for three decades a place where you could go and get steady work and basically make your career for your life. Yeah. Especially as a woman at the time. Right. Yeah. Well, we're in the 1009 hundreds. But from the 1880s forward, like you said, comedy was mainly working class. And it kind of occurred to me that that laid the groundwork for sitcoms. Oh, yeah. Because in the family sanford like sun, maybe not most, but well, maybe most sitcoms are kind of aimed toward, like, working class regular people. Right. King of queens. Not everything is the fresh prince of bel air. Well, that kind of follows in the burlesque tradition because they're making fun of the upper class. That's true. By insinuating somebody from the lower middle class totally right into the upper class to point out all of the foibles of the rich. Yes, I guess you're right. I never really thought I was trying to rack my brain for sitcoms based on rich people and most of silverspoons. Well, that's what I was just thinking. But they kind of mocked them as well. I don't remember silverspoons being mocky. Yes, I guess you're right. But think about it. Most incomes involve the working class mash. Those were working class doctors, and you took something from the upper class and put them in the battlefield. That's working class. Now king of Queens, Archie Bunker. Jefferson. They were all sort of middle class to working class because no one wants to sit around watch funny rich people different strokes as rich people. But they pointed out the Foibles a little bit, too. Two poor kids, though. Yeah, man, we are smart dudes. We just cracked the sitcom enigma. Everyone's like, we knew this. Right. So one of the big parts of the comedy bits in Burlesque was wordplay. And this is where Abbott and Costello, even though Who's On First wasn't invented in Burlesque, it was definitely honed there. Oh, I thought it was invented there. No, that's where they really got their stuff down. Yeah. But it was very often a lot of intricate wordplay, misunderstood words. And I think we should do this bit, the Cohen and Cohen bit. Okay. Are you prepared to do that? I am. Okay. You'll be the caller. Okay. And I will be the person who answers that. All right. So I ring you up. Ring, ring, ring. Hello? Cohen cohen cohen and cohen Let me speak to Mr Cohen. Oh, he's dead. These six years. We keep his name on the door out of respect. Well, then let me speak to Mr. Cohen. Well, he's on vacation. Well, then let me speak to Mr. Cohen. He's out to lunch. Let me speak to Mr Cohen. Speaking. That was pretty good. That was really good. We hadn't even practiced that. You should go on the road. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah, we should. What do you think about doing some sort of stuff you Should Know tour? I think we totally should. I mean, we already have done variety shows and all we need is a striptease act and we're burlesque. Well, let's do a variety show or maybe a trivia tour or something like that. Let's hit the road, man. Did we just birth an idea? I think so. All right. Okay. People can be like, come to Minneapolis. Come to Kansas City. Man, you better not be wearing monocles because you are going to feel the sting. I think if we do Tour that we should go to all over. Yeah. Not just like New York and La. No worries. We'll do, like, a little tour. Yes. Okay. We'll do the Mutual circuit or the Mutual Wheel? We'll do all three wheels. So burlesque developed to the point where they had their own language, basically, like many industries in the entertainment business. I bet you can guess my favorite. A jerk. Yeah. A jerk was an audience member. A yuck was a big belly laugh. Yeah. Think about it. The yucks that came from that. Of course. That makes sense. Yeah. If you make a funny face as a performer, that's A Skull a Mountaineer was a brand new comic that apparently came from the Cat skill circuit up in the mountains there and then. I thought this was interesting. The Boston version was a cleaned up version of the routine. Yeah. Because the sensibilities of Boston nights are famously touchy. And then there's a whole list of vocabulary here, but we don't have to go through it all. Yeah, but I mean, like, some of the terms that we use again, top banana, yuks, jerk. This came from burlesque. Yes. The way to go, burlesque. So there's like, kind of this heyday. Burlesque is enjoying its first wave in the United States, and then all of a sudden they have big competition. It's called movies, and then worse than movies talkies. And burlesque is like, what can we do that the movies can't do to get people in to take off even more clothing? Exactly. Strip. Yeah. And that actually did it, because not only did that save burlesque and make it competitive against the movies, it actually kicked off the heyday once the burlesque performers started taking off their clothes and doing strip teases. Like real strip teases, that's when burlesque saw its golden era. Yes, but again, these are 1920 strip teases, so it's not like going to one of those filthy places these days. Like a strip club. Yeah. We're talking Gypsy Rosely and Sally Rand doing, like, the fan dance where they're so good with that fan, you can never quite tell what's going on behind the fan. I know. Have you seen a fan dance? Yes. They're like very just keeping it placed and moving it as you move around on stage to cover yourself. I mean, that takes work. No, of course it does. Yeah, because if you show too much, you got busted. Right? You gave your reveal too soon. Yes. And by busted, we mean, like, the cops would put you in jail, perhaps. Oh, I see what you mean. And that was actually, like, pretty common, apparently. Like, the burlesque houses would be shut down. The person headlining would be arrested for corrupting moral sensibilities. Yeah. There were these dudes, the Minsky Brothers. Abe, Billy, Herb and Morton. And they were big time burlesque producers. They were New York. Yeah. They were rated a bunch of 1925 became famous because they wrote a book and made a movie about it. What was it called? The night they raided Minsky. But they said it just became popular because of the attention. It was basically a cycle of covering up too much audience dwindles, revealing too much audience. Booms, you get rated. So you start covering up again. Oh, I see. And it just kind of kept going like that. There was a law in New York that you could be topless at that point, as long as you didn't move. Supposedly that law is still in effect as long as you don't move. I don't know about as long as you don't move part, but you can legally walk around New York topless man or woman and not be breaking the law. Really? Yeah. So Splash was actually factually incorrect. The movie Splash. Yeah. Although I think Darwin was, like, all the way naked when she comes out of the water the first time, remember? Yeah. They arrested her. Yeah. I loved that movie when I was a kid. That was a good one. I thought it was pretty great. So the Minsky brothers are pretty infamous. So much so that Mary LaGuardia at the time, who was a moral reformer, he's the early Giuliani, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. Like, let's clean this down up. He made a law where you couldn't publicly advertise using the word burlesque or the word Minsky. Yeah. So they were pretty infamous. They made the mayor of New York, man. Well, they, I think, were the first ones to apparently the first rate. In 1917, there was a performer named May Dix, who, as she was leaving stage, was accidentally absent mindedly removing her clothing for the next act and just did it before she was off stage. And the dudes went nuts. So she turned around and went back out, and I think it was Billy Minsky was like, hey, let's see if we can make that accident happen every night. Oh, yeah. That was the beginning of the whole thing, the beginning of the full nudity. And that's what led to that first rate. So let's go back to the strip teasers themselves. Okay. You mentioned Gypsy Rose Lee and Sally Rand, whose names are still pretty well known in the popular culture. And the reason why is because these ladies were superstars. Like, they catapulted from their burlesque routines into starring roles in movies and culture and society. They were written about, they were lauded. They were big deals. Like, they came about at a time, and burlesque stripteases came about at a time when a significant portion of society was ready to love it. Yes. Gypsy Rose Lee too. She was a smart lady, and she didn't mind being smart on stage. She would perform these monologues that were very high brow with a British accent or not a British accent, but like an upper class accent, like a finishing school accent is how Julia Layton puts it. Yeah. And she would tell jokes, like, really intellectual smart jokes and super witty, and she would do her strip t's. It was the first time that the strip t's and comedy were married at the same time. Like, she would just kind of go around the stage, and she'd come out and, like all of these layers, petty coats and all that stuff, and then she would just kind of tell jokes or make witty observations as she was slowly revealing these things. And then by the end of her act, she had basically pasties on, and it just wowed the crowd. And I want to see Gypsy. Have you ever seen that movie? No. I think a Broadway show, too, wasn't it? Right. I think it was her memoir as a book. And then they made it into a Broadway show, and then they made it into a movie. And I think it says it was Natalie Wood, who played her in the movie. I want to see it because she sounds like a pretty interesting person. Yeah, I haven't seen it either. And then one of her probably the next biggest superstar of her exact era, which is the 30s, was Sally Rand. And you can thank Sally Rand for inventing the fan dance. Yeah. And the Bubble Dance. Those were her two big ones. She had a bunch of axe, but her two big acts were the Fan Dance is just two huge ostrich feathers that she used to cover up and just maneuver around. And then the Bubble Dance is like a five foot balloon that she just kind of rolled around. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yes. And dudes were like, what's behind the balloon? Pop. Yeah. So we'll continue on in the 1920s right after this message. All right, so we're kind of back to the thought we were in the 30s. We're jumping around a little bit. A very cool thing happened in the 1920s with burlesque, which was it was no longer all white. It wasn't integrated, of course, at the time, but there started to be all black burlesque clubs, all Latin clubs, all Chinese clubs, and really kind of spread. Like I said, though, they weren't sharing the stage. Right. But at least they were representing their cultures. All right. By taking their clothes off the money. Right. Well, you said something a little while ago, before the break, that the men were like they wanted the balloon to pop. With the advent of the strip TS coming front and center in a burlesque show, the male audience increased tremendously. The ratio of men to women in an audience really skewed toward men. Yeah. It became more about the striptis and less about the comedy, I think. Exactly. And so the audience became increasingly men and Randy men. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why burlesque still today has this kind of body implications to it. You know what I'm saying? Because at that point, it kind of shifted some. It became a little less intelligent, a little less comedic. And then the strippers themselves were funny. They were trying to get yucks and stuff themselves. But you'd have, like, a stand up comedian and then a striptease. And that was what the burlesque show kind of evolved to during his heyday. And that was sort of the beginning of the end, because a lot of the comics moved on to, like you said, TV and film. Right. And took those X with them. If you look at the comedy at the time and still today, they're like elements of burlesque all over the place, for sure. But, I mean, again, we're talking like burlesque had a heyday even more than its first wave from about the what's interesting is the women involved. Like, Gypsy had a movie made about her. Yeah. Another one who came a little later in the 50s. She was huge. Her. Name was Blaze Star with two Rs like Brenda Star and Blaze Star. Have you ever seen that movie Blaze with Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovich? Yeah. That was about her. Okay. I thought so. And she did this really well known strip, Teas, where there'd be, like, a SETI and she would just kind of maneuver around it and everything and do a striptest and end up on it. And then smoke would come out and streamers would come down. Smoke would come out from between her legs. The one I saw, it didn't. Okay. But it was for TV, so she may have altered it some. Got you. It looked like it was for TV. Right? But it was pretty good stuff. Yeah. May west famous Screen star. She started off in burlesque and she's one of the early ladies who embrace her sexuality and say, hey, man, look at me. Right? I'm a sexy lady. So it's extremely popular. It's about as mainstream as it can be. And then it's also kind of maybe hastening the sexual revolution along a little bit. And then it basically is killed. It's eaten by its own offspring. So the reason burlesque went away in the 60s was because access and availability of pornography became much more widespread around that time. And guys didn't need to go to burlesque shows any longer. Yeah. I guess you could call it the natural progression of things that continues to this day. But, yeah, hardcore porn was available and it really died out pretty quickly after that. For a while. Right. Like, for a solid, like, 40 years. Yeah. And there was the one noteworthy throwback or aspect revival of it. I guess it was a 1000 979 Broadway show that was pretty successful. It had more than 1200 performances. It was called Sugar Babies, starring Mr. Mickey Rooney and Ms. Anne Miller. Classic. And it was a period piece, a backstage period piece set in the 1930s during the heyday of burlesque shows. And it was about a burlesque troop in its performance. Yeah. Things come back around and people become fascinated with the old stuff. That was like the late 70s was the perfect time to revive a 1930 style thing, I think. Sure. It was a really big hit. Yeah. And they were into the 50s then too. Remember the Greaser thing with Greece? Oh, yeah. Shannon yeah. Performing at Woodstock. Did they? Yeah, they did, didn't they? Yeah. It always baffled me until I sort of realized that ten or 15 years after something's popular, people are into it again. Like happy days and Shawn. And that wasn't happy days. Yeah. Good stuff. So Chuck right about here seems like another good time for a break because we're about to go into the neo burlesque revival. Agreed. Back. So we'd say sometimes that something didn't really go away. It just went underground. Yeah. I don't think it's necessarily the case with burlesque. I think it went away. I think you would have been hard pressed to find a burlesque show in the United States. Yeah. But in the mid ninety s, two different groups independently revived it. And there were two people who are basically at the heart of it. Billy Madlyy in New York and Michelle Carr in Los Angeles at about the same time in the 90s revived burlesque. Yeah. And it certainly didn't hurt that people like Deeda Vontisse were marrying Marilyn Manson and becoming internet famous for their throwback 1930 style. But now you had tattoos to that equation. Yeah. It seems to be a lot of that tattoos. Yeah. With the burles seen now the new burlakine. Yeah. So let's talk about the neo burlesque scene. You got to keep in mind that burlesque already had this like I said, this is kind of a body reputation because the striptease was introduced and pushed front and center. And so there's certainly an element to that. Like the striptease is definitely still part of the neo burlesque scene. Oh, yeah. But there's also, as Julie Leighton points out, you could call a lot of it more performance art, or there's certainly elements of performance art in the modern neo burlesque act. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And they're also with neo burlesque, they are shining the light on people who may have not been on stage before, like plus size women, or they would play with gender. There's a performer called World Famous I want to say Bob, or is it just Bob? I think. B-O-B. Whenever you spell your name with an Asterisk, capital B-O-B and an asterisk, you're kind of calling attention to it. Yeah. And Bob was a former drag queen, even though she was a woman, so she called herself a female female impersonator. Yeah. So just basically messing with these conventions, there was a male performer named Tiger with a exclamation point. Yeah. He's still around, is he? That's what I figured. And he had a very famous striptease routine where he would be a priest courting an altar boy. So they're definitely, like, pushing the boundaries still. Oh, yeah. And that definitely is the heart of burlesque as it was originally created. I mean, it's satirical, it's biting, it criticizes the powers that be. Yeah. And there's one out there now. There's a lady named Honey Wild who does a Margaret Thatcher routine. I've heard of her. And at one point, there's a man bent over and on his bottom is the word labor, of course, with the you like the Labor Party and Margaret Thatcher spanking it with a riding crop. So this is like it's burlesque as it was originally conceived by the women in the 19th century who produced the earliest shows. But it's melded with the heyday from the where there's strip TS and there's different acts. There's comedy elements to a stand up comedy as well. Yeah. But it's also contemporized. So, like, you got Margaret Thatcher. Sure. Well, fairly right. It's more contemporary than, say, like, Greek comedy. And then I saw one by the Devil's Playground troupe. They do a Star Wars burlesque? Oh, nice. Complete with slave leia, of course. Job of the Hut makes an appearance really very disturbingly. There's like stormtroopers, I'm sure. Nerd Heaven. Oh, yeah. You're marrying several different things there. Yeah. And you mentioned it when you kind of see a lot of tattoo culture involved in this. It does seem like the neo burlesque movement pulls in from a lot of different fields, like tattoo culture, feminist porn, the original burlesque stuff, performance, drag queens. All these different cultures kind of come together and are created, put into acts. Now, neo burlesque axe. Yeah. It's a cultural movement even more so than just a performance. It's bigger than that now. And Chuck, I said this Neil burlesque kind of incorporates drag queen aspects to show, like, the fluid gender. It makes an appearance a lot. And that's kind of appropriate because drag clubs and drag queens and just drag acts definitely grew out of burlesque, either as a parody of burlesque or just from it as its own thing. Yeah, totally. So it had a huge cultural impact. Yeah. The drag shows I've been to definitely just smacked of true burlesque. Right. Camp out the YinYang. It's kind of neat that neo burlesque takes all of the things that burlesque spawned and just kind of brings it back together. Yeah. I think burlesque is about acceptance. They're not a very exclusionary group. That is neat. A neat way to put it. You just summed it up. So anytime you have a cultural movement, Chuck, that means that you are going to have cultural critics about it. Well, no, I mean, we talked about it running a file of feminism. Sure. And that certainly I don't necessarily have a lot to speak to on that because I don't really know what the answer there is. Right. From what I've seen, it seems like the burlesque performers are like, you're not getting this. This is not about titillating men. If that's really what you think it is, go to more burlesque shows and you will see right. And feminist critics of burlesque say, it doesn't matter how you dress it up, you're still stripping and there are still men who are justifying you. Yeah, in the audience. But who wants to hear what two stupid middle aged dudes have to say about it? I feel like we shouldn't even have an opinion. Well, there you go. I think that's what I was trying to say. This is more just bringing up, like, there's a discussion going on, and from that viewpoint, it doesn't seem like it could be rectified. It's more just like, enjoy it or don't. Yeah, I agree. That's an opinion. Well, I've already said I agree because I've gone to a show or two and it's fun. Yeah. Well, there you go. The other thing that happens when there's a cultural movement going on is you learn that you can make a little dough off of it because it's gone mainstream to a certain degree. Yeah. And if you live in a major city or maybe even a minor city, you'd likely have some sort of burlesque class or school situation going on there. Right. Atlanta's got a burlesque school. They're all over the place and basically just encouraging ladies to get out there and have a little fun. There's one teacher named Vivian Vivoom that says she teaches a room full of librarians to bump and grind, and I bet it's a blast. And that's another those are two more words that we can bank verask for. Bump and grind. Yes. Those were original terms for part of the act. Right? Right. Grind is making a circle with your hips. I wish people could see you moving your pelvis back and forth. Bump and Grind came from burlesque. If this were just a video podcast, there's a burlesque performer named Michelle Lamore whose work is cited in the introduction of this article. She does something called Battoven's Fifth Symphony. I watched it. Yeah. It's pretty impressive, where she comes out and, like, coat and tails, nothing else? Pretty much, yeah. And sits in front of a sheet music stand on, like, a nice piano bench yeah. With her butt facing the audience. Right. And then twerks the Beethoven Fifth. And she actually has an instructional DVD called Booty Camp. I believe. Twerk? Is that a new word, booty lab or an old thing? The DVD is called Booty Labellab. No, it's a new thing. I don't think it's an old thing. No. People have been twerking forever. They used to call it, like, backing that thing up or whatever. Twerking is not a new thing. Are you sure? Because twerking is like doing individual cheeks. Yeah, I'm positive. Cheeks is another word that came out of burlesque as a euphemism for bottoms. Yeah. Cheeks. No, it is definitely not new, since there have been cheeks have been manipulated for entertainment. Okay, well, then, yes, it's a new word for it. Okay. And there's some people who excel at it on the Internet. Like Carmel Kitten. Look her up. She is hilarious. I guess, in a way. It's like superhuman. Yeah. She has predominant natural control over her bottom muscle. Muscles. I keep saying bottom. Like, there's two year olds that listen to our podcast. I feel like I have no control. You can work at it. All right. I can do it. Yeah, I can wiggle my ears, too, as you know from the National Selection Podcast. No, but check out Carmel kitten. She's hilarious. All right? She twerks in random places, and then she'll say the place that she's twerking at as she's twerking. So she'll be, like, twerking in the library. Library. And when she does the twerking library, she looks at the camera and goes she puts her finger up to her mouth while she's twerking. She could probably make some money. I think she's made a lot of money forking it subway twerking at McDonald. Oh, yeah. I think she's making it through YouTube ads, but, yeah, she probably could. She could replace Jared on Subway Boys. Used to. Why? What's wrong with Jared? Well, that whole thing came out last week when he was defending them for putting that stuff in the bread. Toxins in their bread. Yes. But I mean, he kind of has to. He's a very rich man because of them and a very fit man. It's lean good for him. He's still a nerd. Well, sure, but he knows he is. He's Jared. I'm not a fan of Jared. No? How do you dislike Jared? Disliking a friendly horse or something. Like, what the heck did the horse ever do to you? I just debugged me. Jared. Yeah. You are the first person I've ever met that didn't like Jared. Although I don't really talk about them a lot, now that I think of it. Yeah, if I saw Jared on the street, I would punch him in the face. And I'm a nonviolent person. Well, Jared, you're clear of Chuck because you do something to him that he doesn't like. Actually, I'd meet him, I'd go, oh, dude, can I get my picture? Made you a selfie with Jersey. He's like, I heard what you said about me. I doubt that. So I guess it's burlesque. If you want to know more about it, again, throw a rock. Go talk to the person that it hit because it's probably a burlesque trooper. Apologize and say, hey, where are you guys performing? And go see a show. Support neo Burlesque unless you are critical of it. In this case, don't go. Yeah. And if you want to know more about burlesque, you can type that word into the search bar athousofirst.com. And I have one more point. I was wondering, what's the difference between cabaret and burlesque? I don't know. They're virtually one in the same cab. Well, which was first? Burlesque? I think they co evolved, but I think burlesque was yes. I think burlesque was technically first. Maybe cabaret was the French version. No, it's not. I think the big difference is the cabaret is a little more focused on singing and dancing and like, the band got you, but it's almost the exact same. Burlesque was more about comedy and skits. And so I did say search for a little while back, which means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this inquisition statements sexy. No, not sexy at all. Hey guys, recently listened to the Inquisition show and I had a story. I'm a reformed Jew, and in my high school, my rabbi told me a story about visiting Spain. She was there on a scholarly trip of some kind and defended a local Catholic woman. My rabbi eventually talked about shabbat and the lighting of the candles and the prayers. The woman said she had a similar family tradition and invited my rabbi and her peers to dinner on Friday. Before dinner, she and her family went into the basement of the house and basically performed a Shabbat service. The prayers were Jewish prayers, though the woman performing the service didn't know that. All she knew was that on Friday the family went to a hidden place that was sort of secret. After looking into it, they found research saying Spanish and Mexican Crypto Jews aren't uncommon people who had converted during one of the Inquisitions but kept their traditions secretly, which we talked about. This woman had no idea why she was doing what she did, but she continued to do it. And that is from Brittany. And she says, PS. While I do love your show, everyone else in my life hates that I listen. It's like we're Jerry to those people. I recently visited the UK and went to Warwick Castle with my boyfriend. Oh, yeah. We're despised at Warwick Castle. They keep vultures there. And I would not shut up about defensive vomiting, sky burials in Old World and New World vultures. I'm surprised my boyfriend didn't lock me in the dungeon. Huh? That is from Brittany. Brittany. Keep on keeping on. Yes, you just keep on siding. Stuff you should know eventually all these haters will fall away and cycle out of your life and you'll get a good boyfriend. Exactly. If you want to tell us why your boyfriend or girlfriend stinks, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyoushouldnow. You can join us on our YouTube channel to search Josh and Chuck. Send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And as always, join us at home on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. 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 weight. 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." | ||
8a5a0e4e-4a58-11e8-a49f-f3e7a8cd91f1 | SYSK Selects: What's the deal with Voodoo? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-whats-the-deal-with-voodoo | Voodoo is a religion found in parts of Africa and Haiti that's often misunderstood. In this episode, Josh and Chuck separate the faction from the fiction as they explore how Voodoo really works. | Voodoo is a religion found in parts of Africa and Haiti that's often misunderstood. In this episode, Josh and Chuck separate the faction from the fiction as they explore how Voodoo really works. | Sat, 25 Aug 2018 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=237, tm_isdst=0) | 32373959 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You weren't about to let any cyberatch 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. 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. Hi, everybody. I've got my Voodoo doll out because it's Saturday. It's time for a Saturday select. And I went with what's the deal with Voodoo? From July 6, 2010. You know, I picked this one because I just remember it being a very interesting episode. Voodoo is well, we talk all about it, not just in a pop culture way, because Voodoo is so often misinterpreted on TV, sitcoms. Go figure. But we get into the real Voodoo and the history of it and what's behind it all. Very interesting stuff. So here we go. July 6, 2010. What's the deal with Voodoo? Welcome to stuff you should know from houseteporkworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always. It's Charles w chuck Bryant. How do you like your chair? I hate this chair. Dude, do you realize that in the last eight podcasts, we just complained? I know. At the beginning. We're probably so tired of it. Yeah. So let's instead chuck, instead of complaining, as is our usual way these days, let's go back in time. Oh, yes. I'm going to take us back. You're ready? Okay. So, chuck, this is 1791. August, 1791. Little place that we now know of as Haiti. And what's just happened is a slave uprising. Actually what is the only successful slave uprising in the world. Good for them. Yeah, that's what I say. What happened was earlier in August of 1091, a group of slave leaders and maroon leaders and maroons were runaway slaves who made it to the hills and were basically staging guerrilla warfare against plantations and white colonists. Right. They got together and there was a ceremony that was performed in a place called Alligator Woods or Blockman. I've been there. Have you really? No. Oh, wow. We're about to go there now, right? There's this voodoo ritual that took place, and all the leaders basically pledged their support and dedication to this rebellion. And a week later, all hell breaks loose. Okay. Thousands of slaves revolt. They murder every white person they can find. Apparently. They paraded around from settlement to settlement with a white human baby impaled on a stake I might draw the line there. But burned every plantation they could find. And just basically held a slave uprising. It's like you can only hold somebody down for so long before they turn on you. The human spirit wants to be free. Exactly, yes. And that's essentially what happened. The Haitian slaves. Rose up. They were unsuccessful, actually, in 1791, but historians say this is the point that started at all. And by 18 four, Haiti was a free republic. Awesome. But that meeting in the woods, that started it all. The Voodoo ceremony, that instance, and other slave rebellions that were kind of based around Voodoo have kind of given the religion a bad rap among whites. Yeah. Lots of things since then. Sure, it's kind of weird to think of, but our conception of Voodoo is almost entirely Hollywoodised fictionalized, and here based on this kind of collective, white, distant memory of, well, this is what Voodoo is. It's babies and pale on stakes. What happens when you let people practice Voodoo, right, yeah. Chuck actually, that slave revolt is a successful slave rebellion is what Pat Robertson was talking about, obviously, after the Haiti earthquake, when he said a long time ago, and people in Haiti don't like to talk about it, but they made a pact with the devil to get the French out, and they said, we'll give you our souls if you'll get the French out. And the French got out. So basically he was saying, it's devil worship. We do this devil worship. And the successful slave rebellion is proof positive of it. And that's why the earthquake happened, in his opinion. And then Haiti, they were probably like, who's this devil you keep talking about? We don't believe in that, dude. Yeah, this is going to be a lot of debunking going on today. Let's debunk, dude. Let's start talking about voodoo. Okay, let's write Voodoo is a religion. A lot of people think it's just a bunch of hocus pocus, which is more like Voodoo, which we'll get to later. All right. But Voodoo is an actual religion. There's one God. It depends on where you are. If you're talking Voodoo and even generationally speaking, there's a lot of differences. Yeah. Because there's no definitive holy text. It's an oral tradition. And it's a very subjective religion, too. Right. It's like, very personal and it governs your day to day life. And it also has a different impact on every person. Right, yes, it does. So there's like I said, there's one supreme God, and depending on where you are to be different name, if you're talking Haitian Voodoo, we're basically going to cover, like, African and Haitian and parts, I would say, wouldn't you? Yeah. Okay, so Haitian Voodoo, you're going to call this supreme God bongi. But in Voodoo, you can't talk directly to the main guide. You have to go through one of these spirits called the loa. Right. And there are many loa. They all have different functions, but it is hierarchical. It is and they're based on dead ancestors, ancestral spirits. Yeah. Which it turns out to be, and we'll get to that more in detail. But that's a big part of Voodoo is the ancestry and dead people, basically spirits of the dead people. Right. And you're talking about comparing it to, say, Christianity or Judaism or something like that. It's much easier to compare, like, a pagan religion like Voodoo to a pagan religion like Druidism right. Than it is to compare either one to Christianity or Judaism. Although there are some similarities. There are. Especially in Haitian voodoo. But in African Voodoo, it's much more difficult to compare it anthropologists still kind of put it in this context of ways we can understand, like gods. Right. But they're not gods. Two Voodoo practitioners. These are not gods. They are ancestral spirits. The spirit world is as real as this world. Right. So we may hear their call them gods accidentally, but that's just as close as we can come. You could compare them to Greek or Roman gods. Right? Yeah. They have different personalities and different things, but it's kind of that shared pagan worldview that different parts of the natural experience are associated with different gods. Yes, right. Good point. Thanks. It's basically so white Christians can understand exactly what we're talking about. Yeah. So African and Haitian Voodoo, in both cases, it's really not a bunch of evil doing and spells cast upon one another. It's mainly used for good and to be a better person. In fact, you're counted on as a practicer of Voodoo to be a good community member and a stand up guy or gal. Right? Yeah. And remember, we said that it was a personal and subjective religion. So when you're practicing Voodoo, when you are interacting with, let's say, like a Voodoo priest or priestess right. You're seeking advice, guidance, and you're living your life by that. Right, yeah. So there's actually, I guess, kind of the whole evil aspect does exist both in African tradition, right? Yeah. African Voodoo. Yeah. That's the dark side of African voodoo. It's called Bo. Right. And Voodoo practitioners. A Voodoo priest is called a Hogan, right? Yeah. An African Voodoo priest. Right? Yeah. And an African and Haitian Voodoo priest. This is called a Mamba, right? Yes, mamba. So the Mamba and the Hogan are not charged with carrying out boat, which is evil spells. Hexes basically magic that does harm. Right, right. And they do use Voodoo dolls. They do, yeah. But this is not to say and this is where it kind of gets a little prickly, like a little hinky, where the Voodoo priests and priests may not actually practice Bo, this black magic. Right. But they're familiar with it. They have a working knowledge of it. So they can oppose people who practice bow. Yes. You have to understand something to fight it. That's the belief there. Right, right. Sure. Okay. So, Chuck, let's talk a little more about ceremonies and some of the characteristics and traits that make Voodoo Voodoo. All right. Are we going to Africa or are we in Haiti at this point? Let's do Africa first. Okay. I mean, this is the cradle of Voodoo, right? Yeah. Like 6000 years ago. That's where the word comes from. It comes from the Fawn language, which was the kingdom of Fawn, and that means sacred spirit or deity. Right. And I think it was like northwest Africa. It's north central West Africa. So it's West Africa. We're talking Ghana, benin and Togo are like the areas where these ancient kingdoms of Fawn and Congo congo with the cay, were located. And this is the cradle of Voodoo. Yes. And I actually got a stat for you. They say that 30 million people in Togo, Ghana and what is it? Benin. Yeah. Still practice Voodoo today. And just to gauge where that falls in world religions, it's about double the number of Jewish people in the entire world. Wow. Is it really? Yeah. Wow. I mean, stats vary because depending on if you're, like an active practice practitioner of Judaism, or if you're just, like, born Jewish, but yeah, it's about double. Wow. So it ranks it's also an official religion in Benin. Yeah. They say 60% of the people of that country follow Voodoo. Right. Still. Right. So this is an established religion, but one of the foundational tenets of Voodoo is that you can communicate with the spirits and you communicate with the spirits to find out what you should do from the almighty deity. Yeah. The Supreme God. Right. They're the medium. Right. One of the other founding tenets of Voodoo is you communicate with these people not in your head, not through prayer, but by the loa, actually possessing someone who then gives commands or says, what are you doing? Why aren't you spending more time with your wife? Things like that. Right. Yeah. We said that it's different in African and Haitian and all over the world and in different time periods. But that's one of the main through lines in all Voodoo is possession, spirit intrusion. Possession. Right. The person who's being possessed at the time is known as the horse, and whatever loa is possessing him or her is known as the rider. Right. Yeah. That's in Haitian Voodoo. Oh, did I get ahead of us? No, that's all right. We can kind of jump around. Okay. Well, that's really one of the big bridges. That's really the bridge between Haitian Voodoo and African Voodoo. Right? Yeah. Is that spirit possession exists. That's how you find out what you should do in your day to day life. Right, right. Back in Africa, on the African side, some other commonalities between the two. Because again, or maybe not again, but possibly the first time. Okay. Haitian Voodoo is African Voodoo with creolised. Yes. Right. Yeah. So let's get back to talking about African Voodoo. I did screw us up, and I apologize, Chuck. Apologize to our fans. I'm so sorry, fans. Please forgive me. You never owe me an apology, buddy. So the ancestral spirits make up the loa. Okay. You can take any object and consecrate it, and it becomes a ritual sacred object, right? Yes. Which is where the dolls come in. Right. Which, as you said, are not used for harm. Right. Well, they can be if you're talking about but it's definitely not like you see in the movies, right, or The Brady Bunch. There's a lot of ceremonial dance songs. Spirits are invoked through music, percussion, that kind of thing. Yeah. I know that in both Haitian and African Voodoo, there is a gatekeeper, and his name in Haitian tradition is Papa Legba. Right. I love that name. Yeah. And Papa Legba is the gatekeeper between the spirit world and the human world. Right? Yeah. And he's invoked at the beginning of every ceremony because you have to get him to open the gate so you can absolutely start communicating at the low end. So people can be possessed. Right, right. And actually, Papa Legba is also one of the black men at the crossroad who bears a striking resemblance to our friend Mashamon. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. The crossroad, aka the Christian cross in Haitian tradition. Yeah. Right. We should go ahead and talk about that, probably if some of this sounds familiar. If you're thinking Papa Legba sound sorta like St. Peter and the Crossroads sounds sort of like the Christian Cross is a very good reason for that. It's because once again, we go back to our friend Christopher Columbus, Hispaniola, and the fact that they brought slaves over to Hispaniola to work on the plantations. They brought voodoo with them. And the problem there was Columbus said, no, if you're going to be a slave over here, you have to be converted to Christianity. That was the code. Noir. The French actually did that one. Oh, really? Baptized. Forced conversion. So what they did was, in order to keep practicing voodoo, they incorporated and this my mind was blown. I didn't know they did this. They incorporated parts of Catholicism to kind of mask the fact that they were practicing voodoo, and it got all mixed up in what's called synchronization. Yeah. So Catholicism and Voodoo working together. Right. Crazy. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets you call IBM to automate your It infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule of their own slaves, IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comitoimation. 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. 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 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. A lot of the loa. Well, there is a lot of ready similarities between these ancestral spirits and Catholic saints. Right? Right. So, like, St. Peter is associated with Papa Legba because Saint Peter is the guy who's outside the gates to heaven. Right. Papa Legba is the gatekeeper to the spirit world. Right. So they associate him with him. There is a God who is pretty powerful. He's a warrior protector god called Ogu, and he's associated with St. James, who was a warrior protector saint. Right. So it's not a leap all the time now. Sometimes it's a stretch. Like St. Patrick members drove out the snakes from Ireland. Yeah. He's associated with snakes in the Haitian tradition. Right, but yeah. So when you look at the underlying tenants, the really overarching narrative of being able to communicate with spirits, invoking spirits, through percussion, song, dance, being possessed and objects being able to be consecrated and become sacred, then that's voodoo across the board. The voodoo. We're familiar with that's Haitian voodoo, which is kind of mixed up with Catholicism. Right? Yeah. It said that they even incorporated Catholic hymns and prayers. Yeah. Crazy. Who knew? Tracy Wilson. Yes, she did. So, Josh, you brought up rituals that they would perform to invoke the gods. And one of the tenets of voodoo is the gods will give you advice and all, but you got to take care of the gods, the spirits. Yeah. And one way that you can do this is by animal sacrifice to appease the spirit yeah. Again, this is another ticklish aspect of voodoo, isn't it? This is like, oh, they sacrifice animals, they're evil. It's like, well, you got to sacrifice animals part, right? Yeah. Well, they used to sacrifice humans, too. Did they? Yeah, it's been like at least 100 years since any of that's gone on in Africa, they say. Chuck there's actually with the animal sacrifices, there's actually a process, as you can imagine. There's a process where you're going to sacrifice a chicken, right? Okay. And this chicken is washed in leaves to be consecrated, right. And then it's fed from this ritual dish. And if it refuses to eat, then that means that the loa has rejected that sacrifice and the animal is set free. Really? If it eats, then it's like, okay, you're dead. Chickens always eat, though, from what I understand. I guess they don't. But it's not just chickens. I think this applies to goats, pigs, whatever, sacrifice. Right. And so if it eats, then it's like, okay, you're dead. If it's a goat or a pig, its throat, it's slit. If it's a chicken, it's neck is broken, but it's quick. It's a quick death. It's not tortured or anything like that. Right. The blood is mixed in this calabash like a big chalice bowl with rum and syrup and salt. And then people will either take a sip or they'll make a cross on their crucifix, on their head in blood. Right. So that's the blood sacrifice. That's where the blood sacrifice ritual stands today. Oh, really? They still do it that way because Haitians still practice voodoo right out in the open. It's not so, like Westerners might think it's like some weird hidden thing, but it's not like that at all. No. You also talked about when they invoke or when you're possessed. I know. There's a dance called the dance of the hooded gun gun. And apparently what happens is when someone is like the spirit overtakes them and they are possessed and they're dancing around. If you touch them, you die. That's what they say. So you got to stand in the circle and witness all this and take part. But they're running all over the place, so you got to keep your distance. And also while you're possessed, you are impervious to pain. You can't be injured. Yeah, good point. And today I was reading an article from, I think 2002 or 2004, and this guy was talking about witnessing a voodoo ritual in West Africa recently, and these guys were possessed by ugu, remember, the warrior protector spirit. And they were cutting themselves with their knives, blood lighting. Right. And weren't wincing or anything like that. Because apparently one aspect of it is like, you can't feel pain while you're possessed. Interesting. Yeah. Well, and since you brought that up, we should probably go ahead and talk about why Westerners view voodoo as some sort of evil, awful thing, right. In addition to the slave uprising. Right, yeah. Exactly. One of the reasons you just mentioned was there's a lot of self injury that goes on. Yeah. And so Westerners see that and they think people are crazy. Look at them. Well, not just that, but blood making a real appearance, anything dealing with death, the fact that they believe that death is like necessarily a bad thing and the spirits are still living among us, guiding us, that's not westerners aren't typically down with that either. No, westerners don't have a stomach for real blood, which is why wine is used in place of it or as a metaphor for it. And like the Christian tradition, of course. And death is something that we don't like to think about or talk about in the west either. Again, though, in the voodoo tradition and in a lot of other traditions, death is just a part of the natural order of things. And it's certainly not the end. I think in the west it's kind of viewed even by the religious, in some cases as the end. And we don't really like to think about that. No, that's a good point. The other thing Tracy mentioned in here was from 1915 to 1935, the Marine Corps occupied Haiti. And during this period there were a lot of books and movies all of a sudden being written about and portrayed like Haitian Voodoo as these crazy blood letting people. So those became really popular. One of them was called White Zombie in around the same time it had spread to New Orleans and kind of houdoo became popular. Right. In the 19th century, there were two women named Marie Lavox, and they were the most powerful women in voodoo culture in the US. In Orlands. Right. And one was the mom and one was the daughter. Mum retired and died. The daughter disappeared. No one knows what happened to her. Right. But after the second one disappeared, the followers split into factions and one of the factions became Hudoo, and voodoo became very powerful. And Hudu is a mix of bo black magic with voodoo or in the voodoo tradition, I guess. Right. So now we have hoodoo. And that is what most people think of when you think of voodoo in the US. You think of New Orleans, and then what we're actually thinking of is hoodoo, not voodoo. They should have named it something else. They should have, like chimichanga or something. Exactly. So these misconceptions still abound. There was a paper in that apparently this physician who wrote it, or researcher who wrote it still takes flak for, but it was titled Night of the Living Dead. Two colon do necromantic zombieist transmit HTLV three lav during voodooistic rituals. So basically, do necrophiliac who are into zombieism and are voodoo practitioners, are they the reason for the spread of AIDS in Haiti? Well, actually, there is a certain element of public health. That's what I was going to say. That's one of the real concerns. It's not all these Western misconceptions of, like, taboos. Real concerns are that there is bloodletting and that they freely bleed on one another, or sharing the blood of an animal sacrifice. Drinking. That can be bad stuff. Yeah. So that's a real health concern. Another really practical concern is a lot of and we failed to mention this, the priests and priestesses, one of their main gigs is to practice folk medicine on the practitioners of voodoo. Right. Because, again, we said everyday life, like voodoo, is part of your everyday life if you are inherent. And some of these folk practices kind of fly in the face of real medicine. So that's sort of a concern here and there. I think we should replace the word real with Western medicine. Yeah, you're right. You're definitely right. Thanks. Because I believe in a lot of, like, Eastern medicine. Sure. I might look into voodoo. Might clear up my sinuses. Yeah. My sciatica. And like we said, death is a big, big part of it. And just the culture of fear that it creates is something that is a big turn off for a lot of. Well, it creates a culture of fear in the west. It is. But again, I think even informed, educated people have misconceptions about voodoo because it's been harangued so long in this country that people in the US. Just really don't understand what it is that's going on down there. And there's so many misunderstandings. Well, they think it's who do? Yeah. They see Angel Heart. But even beyond that, even if you don't think it's, who do you're like? Okay, well, they're turning people into zombies. We did the how zombies work thing, and it's real down there. But that's not voodoo. That's Beau. Right. Yeah, exactly. So it makes me sad for voodoo, I guess. A little sad for voodoo. It makes me sad for the Mambas. Well, it definitely has a stigma about it, and until I read all about it, I probably fell into that same trap. But then you start realizing, aside from spiritual possession and a couple of the other things, it's not so different than other religions when you look at it. And I think Buddhist, actually, I think there are times when Buddhism when there is spiritual possession going on there, too. Right. Christianity now, yes. There is a good example in this article of spirit possession happening in the Buddhist tradition. Right. Oh, really? Yeah, that's where I heard it. Yeah. All right. There was in 1959, the Dalai Lama was speaking with an oracle that was possessed, and the oracle gave him advice on how to escape the Chinese army successfully. Right. That's spirit possession. But it's Buddhism, and they don't sacrifice chickens. Right. I think that's kind of it. There's a lot of blood and death in voodoo, and people are afraid of it. Right. But I read it or saw things on NPR today where one guy went down and spent some time with the voodoo practitioners. And I think Haiti. And he said Wade Davis. No. Maybe it was IRA Glass. People are crazy. That's more Woody Allen than IRA Glass. But he basically like, in the dark side, even the bow to the concept of heaven and hell and Western religion. And he said, quote, the whole point is to manifest the darkness so that goodness can overwhelm it. And it's the same in voodoo as it is in Christianity. And actually, I said that Christianity, they don't believe in possession and all right. Not quite true. Oh, yeah. Some Southern Baptist and Pentecostal believe that the spirit can overtake you. Sure. In such a way. So I was not quite right there. But again, think about how those people are looked at from the same people who look at voodoo as unseemly. Good point. But what's going on now, though? Is there's sort of an outright war on voodoo by missionaries still going there to convert them from what they say is a cult? Right. Or associated with the devil? Well, yeah, they associated with Satan, which is ridiculous because nothing about voodoo has anything to do with Satan. Right. I don't even believe it exists. So this is Western Christians kind of just putting all their stuff on them. Lots of hang ups. Yeah, we Anglo Saxon descendants really like to hang our hang ups on other people. Right? Yeah, let's stop that. Well, I mentioned Angel Hart. We should mention the movies real quick. Angel Hart, great movie. Who do? Serpent and the rainbow. Great movie. But again, that was Way Davis, the anthropologist, and he's done a lot. Oh, that's who that was. Bill Pullman playing him. But he's done a lot, actually, to cloud voodoo to continue these misconceptions rather than clear them up. Oh, really? Yeah. But he's made a lot of money along the way. Yeah, good point. And then, of course, live and let die. We like to talk about Bond. I love that one. There's some who are doing that. Best Bond ever. Roger Moore. Oh, God, it's so true. Roger Moore was awful. Dude. Dude, Roger Moore was great. I grew up with Roger Moore, so I like, I have a certain affinity for some of those films, some of his earlier ones. But it got to the point where it was just like a cartoon of himself. He was never the butt kicker like Connery was, or the new guys, whatever. Dalton who's the new guy? Craig Sufficient. 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. 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. Yes. 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 athletic 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. All right, well, if you want to learn more about James Bond and voodoo, you can type James Bond and Voodoo into the handysearch bar athouseofworks.com if that doesn't work, which I can pretty much guarantee it won't, just type voodoo. Try that one. And since I said handysearchbar@housetofworks.com, it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this Ghost prisons for reals. Did you read this one from Will? Hey, guys. Just thought I would drop a line about my interaction with your recent Ghost Prisons topic, which we have yet to get a lot of flak for. We've gotten zero flack. I'm ready for some flak to come our way, though. Some way people stop listening. A long time ago, Chuck, I have met on several occasions a man by the name of I'll go ahead and say his name, mom. Du Habib, who is very prominent in the Australian media for being an Australian citizen held at Gitmo or Gitmo. Gitmo. Gitmo. All right. Guantanamo. Through my conversations with him, it was clear that he had not only been tainted at Guantanamo, but also was subject to extraordinary rendition. He was captured by the US and Pakistan, sent to Egypt, where he was held for six months and tortured. The torture, however, was ineffective because of the misadministration of drugs by US agents, which rendered him almost above feeling for most of the time. So they doped him up so much he couldn't even feel the torture, basically. Almost as if he was under the power of a voodoo spell or under the power of Morphine. Right. After six months, he was dumped back in the Pakistan before getting picked up again and taken to Gitmo. So it was apparently common policy for the US to first torture, then imprison in Guantanamo Bay in order to use the torture findings. However, mainly due to the tireless campaigning of his wife, he was released from Guantanamo and returned to Odds. However, judging from the times I have met him, the experience will never leave him in regards to the I wouldn't think so. I was tortured, I forgot all about it. But you want to come over for a bobby for a slab of stubby? In regards to the perception that Obama is better in terms of this stuff, it is unfortunately not the case. Why did you say that? Gitmo has been replaced by Baghrom Airbase in Afghanistan prison even further from the public. Guys, keep up the great work, guys. Hope this finds you in good health. There is no way to end that softly. We're just going to stop here and keep up the great work. So that comes from Will and he says peace. Right on, Will. Peace to you too, my friend. So what do you want to call for, Chuck? I don't know. Something interesting. Yeah, how about if you are a practitioner of voodoo? That is excellent, Chuck. We want to hear from you. Yes, please do. Let us know if you're a practitioner of voodoo. We would love to hear from you. Let us know what's going on and what we got glaringly wrong or omitted. Because this one could use filling out, I think a little more what are they called? Voodooers voodoo practitioners. Voodooists. Voodooists. You know the line in blazing sounds. Now go do that voodoo that you do so well. Yes, the late Harvey Corman. Yeah. You can also follow us on Twitter. S-Y-S-K podcast. We have a Facebook page that we like to hang out on sometimes. It's called Stuff You Should Know website in parentheses and you can send us an email if you are into voodoo, at stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Want more housetofworks? Check out our blog on the Hastofworks.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. There's a perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. 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." | |
8d9e45aa-ba8a-11e8-a624-8bac9c69112a | Short Stuff: Dare Stones | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-dare-stones | What happened to the Lost Colonists who disappeared from Roanoke Island in the 1580s remains a mystery to this day. But it’s possible a carved stone a man vacationing in North Carolina found in the 1930s may have solved it – if the stone isn’t a hoax. | What happened to the Lost Colonists who disappeared from Roanoke Island in the 1580s remains a mystery to this day. But it’s possible a carved stone a man vacationing in North Carolina found in the 1930s may have solved it – if the stone isn’t a hoax. | Wed, 25 Sep 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=268, tm_isdst=0) | 14947096 | audio/mpeg | "Hey there, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles of each O'Brien. And there's Jerry Jerome Brown over there. Yeah. The only reason he stopped out that notice, because you saw me draw it to a close like a conductor. I know you conduct me. That's a T shirt. So this is a follow up, everyone. We do these occasionally. About five years ago, five and a half inch, five and a half ish we did five and three quarters. We did a full length episode on the Roanoke colony. The creepy, spooky crowatoan mystery of Roanoke. So good. And in it, we spent just a few minutes talking about the Dare stones. But when I went back and listened to it again, we didn't go into nearly enough detail. And so we're going to do that right now. We are. So just to kind of bring you guys back up to date real quick, growing up as an island, it is, and it still is, as a matter of fact, off in North Carolina, near the North Carolina Virginia border. It was the first attempt, I believe, in an English colony. There was a first wave of 1585. It didn't work out. And then a second wave, maybe it was even the third wave, technically came along in July of 1587. And this ship carried 90 men, 17 women, and eleven children. And it was led by a guy named John White, who was named the governor of the, I guess, Roanoke colony. And he had his daughter, Eleanor Dare with him. She was married to Ananias Dare. I think that's how you say that name. It's a great 16th century name. It sure is. And Ananias, I just want to say that all the time. And Eleanor had a baby, the first English baby born in America, whose name was Virginia Dare. Now, do you know if they did it in America? Was this conceived in America or just born in America? I don't know. Actually, I'm just kind of curious. It doesn't really matter, because what really matters is this is the first English baby born in the New World, and it was a very big deal for little baby Virginia to come along. It was. So, in short order, Virginia's grandfather, John White, the head of the colony, says, hey, guys, I'm kind of bored. I'm going to go back to England and I'll get some supplies. I'll be back within a year. You guys sit tight. Just keep building this colony up, and it'll be all good. BRB right? But he did not BRB he beat a long time from coming back, and about three years worth comes back. No one's there. His daughter's gone, his grand, little Virginia is gone. Everybody's gone. The buildings are dismantled. And as you learned in that episode, the word crowetone was carved, and that was I guess it was a tree, right? Yeah, they carved it into a tree. And Crowtone was the name of a friendly nearby tribe that the English had been in contact with. That's right. So what was not there was across. And White said, hey, listen, if there's some bad stuff going on and you guys have to split just to take some time to carve a cross into a tree. So I'll know that bad stuff happened. That cross was not there. So there's always been a big mystery about what Crowatoan was all about, why there was no cross and what happened to the 118 settlers. Like, that was it. That was the sum total of the evidence. And John White asked around a little bit, didn't try all that hard to find them, actually, for it being his daughter, his son in law and his granddaughter. And the first American. Right, exactly. First English American. Sure. You want to get us killed? So he goes back to England and the mystery just sets in. When Jamestown settlers come along, they ask around, they hear rumors of tribes that are made up of light skinned people who speak English and live in two storey thatched roof houses. But none of it is ever confirmed. There's no evidence whatsoever what happened to these lost colonists at Roanoke. And that's the way it was for 350 ish years until the summer of 1937, when a guy from California named Le Hammond, which, as I've found, is not to be confused with the Hammond Inferno, which is a synth band that I came across today accidentally. Are you into them now? Kind of. They're pretty good. His name was actually Lewis Hammond, but he was a produce dealer from California and he showed up at Emory University and said, hey, I'm on vacation in North Carolina with my wife, looking for hickory nuts, as you do. Sure. And I found this weird stone. What do you guys make of this thing? Yeah, so Emery is right here in Atlanta and it was inscribed with a message, and he said, can you guys tell me what this says? And I'm going to read it right now in full. Good. This is the sort of modernized version because it's sort of like reading Jeffrey Chaucer or something, so it has to get translated. So here's what it said. Father, soon after you go for England, we came here. Only misery and war for two years above. Half dead these two years more from sickness. Being 24, a savage with a message of a ship came to us within a small space of time. They became frightened of revenge and ran all away. We believe it was not you. Soon after, the savages said spirits were angry. Suddenly they murdered all saved seven. That means all but seven, my child and Ananias. Two were slain with much misery. Is there any other way to be slain is my question. Buried all near 4 miles east of this river upon a small hill. Names were written all day on a rock. Put this there. Also if a savage shows this to you, we promised you would give them great plenty presents. Right. So there you have it. Yeah. And it was signed, right? EWD. Eleanor White Dare. That's what you would think, yeah. And so the Emory professors are like, where did you get this? You may have just solved, like, a 350 year old mystery. And Lewis Hammond was like, somewhere about 50 miles inland. They went, what did you just say? He said about 50 miles from Roanoke Island. And they said, Well, John White, the governor, famously reckoned that the Roanoke colonists had moved 50 miles into the main, so that would definitely coincide with that idea. So they went back to this area where Lewis Hammond found this rock, and they could not find the spot. He couldn't find the spot where he originally found it to show them, but he left it with them, I think sold it to him, I think is more accurate, and then went back to California and was scarcely heard from again. That's right. So we're going to take a break. We're going to come back and tell you, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story. So here's the deal with that original stone. Depends on who you talk to. Some people say it was authentic. Some people still say it's authentic and may have solved the mystery. Some people say, no, it was not. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. But what happened was the whole country started talking. There was a professor at Emory named Haywood J. Pierce, Jr. Who published that paper, published a paper talking all about the stone in the Journal of Southern History in 1938. He had his father, haywood JP senior. Dad and daddy owned a college, Brunel University, which is in Gainesville, Georgia. It was Brunel University now, I think Brunelle now catch the fever. That's probably on a shirt somewhere. So they started to have suspicions because, like you said, when they went back, they couldn't really find exactly where he found it. They got, I guess, a private investigator or somebody in California to look into this Hammond guy, and they really couldn't find much to corroborate a story or even who he said he was other than his name and address. I saw an Internet sleuth explained it by saying, you know what? This guy was married before in 1920 census. He has two children, and by 1937, they were still under age. So he may have been laying low and keeping away from publicity so he wouldn't pay child support. Oh, interesting. I thought that was a clever, interesting explanation for it, because what I found was there was nothing to indicate that this guy was actually a fraud, just that they couldn't really follow up with them very easily. Yeah. But at the very least, Pierce and Pierce were still very intrigued by this original stone and said, here's a reward offered for any additional stones that pop up $500. And all of a sudden people are like, oh, I got some stones. You want to give me $500? I'll show you some deer stones. Specifically a man named Bill Everhart who was an artist. He was a stone cutter from Fulton County right here in Atlanta, and he was paid $2,000 for 42 forgeries that he turned over as dare stones. And it's not like they said, hey, thanks for these forgeries. Here's some money. They thought they were real at the time. But on the stones, the series of stones, it basically tracks Eleanor. It's like Eleanor's little breadcrumb diary that goes all the way down to Georgia, almost to Atlanta. And along the way she marries a chief from the Cherokee tribe, has another daughter named Agnes, possibly becomes romantically entangled with Tom Hanks over email for a little while, and then ends up dying in a cave in Georgia. I just love the idea of this stone cutter, like inventing the storyline, right? He's like, this is the life I wish I had had. You know? You could have been a screenwriter. Bill Everhardt. Yeah, I wonder if he's got to have family here. So this is just like the late 30s in Fulton County. Oh, man, I hope somebody's listening. They're like, stop talking about my Uncle Bill like this. I think it's great. Good man. Awesome, I guess. All right, so this is the flash forward to April. The Saturday Evening Post said you know what? These Norman Rockwell covers are great, but what we really want to do is run an expose on these dare stones and basically shut it down as a complete forgery. Yeah, they did some real leg work to just totally undermine the dare stones, which really kind of goes to point out how much the deer stones had totally captured the imagination of the entire country. Yeah, this was a big, widely publicized deal. And Saturday Evening Post came along and said, oh, look at this crack and this crack and this crack. And basically by the end of the article had just completely revealed the whole thing as a hoax. And definitely everything after that first one that Lewis Hammond found is most decidedly at hoax at best. The Louis Hammond stone is, like you were saying, up for debate, but The Saturday Evening Post said, no, there's anachronistic language in there. Things like reconnoiter would not have been used. There's a problem with the fact that they use Arabic numerals, which didn't come into use until later on. It's weird that she made, like, these instead of U's, which is kind of like Roman lettering a little bit. And at the time when The Saturday Evening Post dropped this article, I was like, oh, well, that's it. It's a total fraud and a total hoax. But as the years kind of went by and Brunell University suffered a tremendous public relations crisis as a result of this, a lot of people looked really bad for verifying the stones as authentic and then just being totally undermined by The Saturday Evening Post. Bruno and everyone related to the stones almost literally buried them away in a basement and then later on in an attic in Brunel and tried to forget about it as much as possible. Yeah, Pierce and Pierce had egg on their face, and it was no good. But people today say again that it's possible that first one might be, like, for real. It's different rock than these other ones. Right. It's this really bright white quartzite interior and has a dark exterior. So it would have been something really good, like, almost like a chalkboard for her to use. So that sort of makes sense, and it doesn't have this anachronistic language that those other stones do. The sign off is a little weird with EWD because that's probably not what she would have done in the 16th century. Other people say, no, no, it's still that chow and river stone is a phony. And what they're hoping is that modern techniques can kind of test this thing out at some point and see if it's, in fact, legit. Yeah, because it's basically been cleared by a lot of the humanities people. Like, there's an expert in medieval graffiti who said, this actually checks out pretty well. Here's an example of somebody using Arabic numerals. Here's an example of somebody signing their name in this kind of abbreviation. So a lot of it's been explained away. And the fact that it is white Courtsite that when she carved it, like you said, it would have been like a chalkboard. That would be a terrible stone for a forger to choose, because you would have to go to tremendous amounts of trouble to fake it. Basically, you just choose a different stone. So the fact that it would have been really hard to forge and they tried at the time of The Saturday Evening Post article to forge it three different ways and nobody could do it, really lends a lot of credence to it, keeps hope alive that this first stone, the original stone, is actually real. That's right. So maybe we'll find out one day, as our technology advances, what happened to the original calls at Roanoke or that the stone says exactly how it happened. That's great. I hope so. All right, Chuck, you got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, that is it for Short Stuff, everybody. Oh, wait. Jerry, you got anything else? Okay, well, that's it for Short stuff, everybody. You can read a really great article on the Dare stones on how stuff works, and you can listen to our original Roanoke episode two@stuffudhano.com. And in the meantime, we'll see you next time. Short Stuff out. 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 we're you listen to your favorite shows." | |
bb41140b-8ae2-464c-b774-ae5b00e2b53e | How Rewilding Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-rewilding-works | A big new push toward nature conservation (and saving the planet) is based on a simple premise: remove humans from the equation and let nature take its own course.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | A big new push toward nature conservation (and saving the planet) is based on a simple premise: remove humans from the equation and let nature take its own course.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Thu, 17 Mar 2022 13:48:49 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=13, tm_min=48, tm_sec=49, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=76, tm_isdst=0) | 44197164 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of. iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Kirk. There's Chuck Bryant. What? Oh, and this is Stephanie Shudder. You've been working on your Chewbacca friend. No, it did sound like Chewbacca, especially that last bit. No, I haven't been working on it all. It's all natural talent. Never had a lesson, as Ferris Bueller said. Do you remember Ferris Bueller? You know, that show that came out 50, 60 years ago, back when we were cool? I was supposed to do that on Movie Crush, and then my guests couldn't make it. And so I have, like, this great document of notes prepared all about Ferris Bueller's sitting there going to waste. Oh, you should just read them. Read through them on one of them. Read through my notes? Yeah. Ferris Bueller, sociopath or cool teenager? What did you come up with? Well, Hodgman always has this sort of rant that Ferris associate path upon looking back. Come on, man. It used to be like a whole blog for a little while about that. They would analyze famous films like Top Gun. They basically pointed out how Maverick was like this terrible person who got his friend killed and felt like no responsibility for it and everything. Yeah. People that we idolize. Yeah, it's pretty eye opening. It's paradigm shifting, I guess you could say. And I think that's appropriate that we're talking about paradigm shifting blogs because there's a lot of paradigm shift involved in today's topic. And there's a lot of blogs, too, it turns out, about rewilding. Yeah. It's all over the place. It is. And we need to thank our old pal Julia Leighton makes an appearance here for the first time in a while. Yeah. Welcome back. Leight helping us with this one, and I thought it was interesting because I think you and I both I'm going to go ahead and speak for you. I think we both agree that rewilding, the concept of rewilding is pretty awesome. Pretty awesome. Yes, I agree. But as evidence from even some of the stuff that Julia sent us, there are some negative examples of rewilding that didn't go well. But I would argue, like, that's not even rewilding. And calling it that just hurts the cause. And then you sent me a thing where a guy said, hey, calling things that aren't rewilding hurts the cause. Yeah. I was like, I need to back Chuck up today. I know he's thinking about something. I'm going to send him something that backs it up. And I did. But rewilding, I guess we should just define so people are not angry at us for rolling that out 20 minutes in. Sure, but it is a term. When was it coined here? I've seen all over the place. Somebody claims 85. Another dude claims that he coined in 92, but I think the first time it appeared in the scientific literature was 98. Some old hippie said that she coined it in 67, the same hippie that claimed to have coined we'll turn it up, man. But here's the deal. And we can get into the particulars, which we will, but generally, rewilding is, in its simplest form, kind of returning nature, turning it back over to nature to take care of itself. Because, as Julia points out, very aptly. Like, nature didn't need humans to come in. And like, all the things that you see humans do for nature, it's because we had messed something up with nature. It's not because nature was like, oh, we need you to step in. Like, if humans had never been around, nature would be just fine. Yeah. So the point of rewilding is to designate huge swathes of Earth all over the Earth, huge tracks of land. Yeah. To basically remove ourselves from and just let nature do its thing. Because we screw everything up. Even when we try not to, we screw everything up. We can over manage, we can under manage, we can mismanage. There are very few things that we properly manage. And that's kind of like what's, given the idea, the concept of rewilding, such great cachet in the ecological community, both the scientific part of it and also the popular part of it, it's saying, like, well, then let's just get humans out of the management business and let nature do its thing. I think it's a wonderful idea. It is. And it can encompass plant growth and just kind of simple things like that. Like where things were once mowed down and mulched and. Quote unquote. Cared for by humans. Letting that kind of run wild again all the way to the most extreme examples. Which is something we touched on in the National Park episode that Julia brought up here. Is like reintroducing a carnivore to the scene that had long been gone. Like the wolves of Yellowstone and letting them do their thing. And that's actually kind of a big part of one part of rewilding. Yeah. So you bring up something that you kind of reference what I sent you earlier about misusing the term. Yeah, it does encompass all of those things. But the only reason rewilding encompasses all of those things is because the scientific community is still trying to figure out exactly what rewilding is. They're trying to figure out the definition. They're trying to figure out what is not rewilding. They're trying to figure out what the best practices and best steps forward are for rewilding. Because they're still figuring it out and because it's such a buzzword. Anybody who's doing anything that has to do with restoration, whether it's like reintroducing some volts into a place where there's already voles. Yeah, like you were saying, like adding some kind of grass or raising the mower height in a park to let more of the ground cover flower to help me. Currently, that's technically rewilding, but really, if you give it five more years, probably those things will not be considered rewilding. We'll have a much more coherent definition of it and hopefully a lot more data to back up the claims that Rewilding makes. Because the big problem with it is it's a really great idea that we just need to know more about. We're jumping in feet first and it could be dangerous as we'll see. But I think more often than not it could just be a failure and it could lose popular support. It will make people think it just doesn't work if we do it the wrong way a bunch of times to start right. And there are some really bad examples of Rewilding. Well again, I don't like calling it Rewilding because one example might as well talk a little bit about a bad example is South Georgia. Not Georgia that we live in, but Georgia and Europe. There's no reindeer in South Georgia where there were whalers on this I think it was on an island and they were like, well, we love to eat reindeer so we're just going to put a bunch of reindeer on this kind of smallish island so we can hunt them as whalers and have something to eat. And it went terribly. And years later I think they had to just go in and slaughter 5000 reindeer. That's not Rewilding, that's a dumb idea, which is like bringing in an invasive species and plunking it down there. That's not rewilding at all. But it gets thrown in there as like this is a bad example of rewilding. It's not Rewilding. Right? And it wasn't ever intended to be Rewilding. It took place at the turn of the century and I think South Georgia island is down by the Falklands if I remember correctly. Like below South America. They brought it in like a food source because these Swedes or Norwegians were like, there's nothing down here that we've ever eaten before. We need some reindeer in this place. And they managed it just fine. Like they hunted the reindeer and the reindeer apparently were well checked or well managed for a while. But then when they stopped hunting the reindeer and let nature take over, basically what we would do with Rewilding, the reindeer ran wild and things just went out of hand really quickly. So it was not an example of Rewilding by anyone's definition, but it still serves as a cautionary tale about what can happen when you do something like just back out of the picture that we do need to know more about what our role is to set up an ecosystem before we take our hands off of it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And also Julia points out again, very aptly, that when something like this hits the news, then you're going to have animal activists and environmentalists when they hear the word Rewilding project, say we can't do that. That led to the death of the slaughter of 5000 reindeer. So it just gives it all a bad name. So hopefully we'll try and give it a better name. Yeah, because again, I think it's a really great idea. We just need to know more about it. We need more science. Everybody. Can we talk about biodiversity? Yes, I think we should, because that's pretty much the basis of this whole thing. The whole idea behind rewilding, the whole reason it has so much support is because it's become painfully clear that the damage that we've done to the Earth is altering ecosystems in pretty much 100% unfavorable ways. I don't think there's any way that we've damaged an ecosystem where we're like, oh, that actually worked out for the better. Well, maybe for humans and conveniences, but yeah, but even still now, maybe that was true, like, 30, 40 years ago. Now we've reached the time where it's time to pay the piper. And now, even for us, we're suffering the consequences of damaging and altering ecosystem so dramatically that they can no longer function. And the point behind rewilding is to reestablish biodiversity, in large part so that humans and other animals can survive on planet Earth in the next 100 years. Right. And then when you look into the more, I guess, level headed descriptors of what rewilding can be and sort of the tenants of them, which we can get to later in full, it's not, hey, let's dump a bunch of mountain lions into central park. It has to work with humans as well. But as we'll see, there's a lot of places where there are not humans, and this is mainly what they're talking about. Yeah. And then those places where there are some humans or whatever, it's like we'll just get them out all the way 100%. Yeah, but it has to work together. Unfortunately, like it or not, humans are part of the ecosystem now, and it has to work for everyone. But right now, humans are just making it work for them in many cases. Yeah. And then so even beyond also, you raise a good point. Even beyond also the fact that it's got to work for us, that we can't just coexist with mountain lions and central park. It has to work for us in the sense that a lot of the places that are being pointed to is like prime areas to be rewilded. If you look over to the right a little bit, there's some sheep herder there saying, this is my land that I use my sheep to graze on, and sheep herds grazing is pretty much the antithesis of rewilding. So what are we going to do with that guy? So there's also one of the things that they're figuring out with Rewilding is how to at least equally involve the community or the people who are going to be most affected by this, if not from a bottom up. Everyone saying, do not do top down. Don't figure this out in the city, and then come and tell the sheep farmers what to do that's not going to work. I think I saw somebody say, especially in Scotland, that is not going to work. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, I've been to Scotland. I know that's true. Yes. Oh, boy. I had this long string of Scottish vicinities I was about ready to belt out in my worst accent, earned brew. So as far as biodiversity goes, julia, put it away. That, I think, really kind of hits it on the nose. It's not just the quantity and variety of species and individuals, it's really the interactions within that ecosystem and how they all work together. That's what biodiversity is. And ecosystems and biodiversity, they're meant to fluctuate. Like, things happen in nature naturally and species may dwindle here and there when resources are a little more scarce, and sometimes they're not thriving like they should, but they're still built for that. What they're not built for is human triggered biodiversity loss. And this is what we've seen humans do over and over and time and time again, and that just makes ecosystems kind of crumble under pressure to live and do their thing. Yeah. And it's unequivocal that we are facing terrible loss of biodiversity all over Earth. The Living Plant Index said that between 19 72,012 boy, 58% of the world's fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals all disappeared. Like, just gone, goodbye. All those species had gone scary. When that happens, like you're saying, the way that ecosystems have evolved over time is that they function as a net, as a web, as, like, a bunch of interconnected parts that create something greater as a whole, and then that whole works together with other similar holes to create something greater. And it keeps going on to this macro scale until you reach, like, planet level. So you're going from door mouse to planet level, all following basically the same path. And when you lose biodiversity, you're bound to lose species that are performing really important, really valuable functions that affect and support a bunch of other different kinds of species. So you lose those other species, but then you also lose what are called the services that that ecosystem provides, right? Everything from preventing floods and erosion to preventing forest fires, wildfires, speeding up the carbon sequesteration, speeding up oxygen production, like, all these things that the planet needs to live. We evolved on planet Earth, so we need those two. And we've also, whether we realize it or not, built our economy taking those things for granted. And so, fortunately, the Office of Economic Development put together a paper that cited $125 to $140,000,000,000,000 worth of these services are produced by nature per year, right? They put a number on it, which, on its face, it sounds like a lot of money, right? It is the global gross domestic product. All of the money produced by all the goods and services produced on planet Earth in 2020 only equals 85 trillion. So on the high end nature produces services that are worth nearly twice of global GDP in a whole year. And so now you're starting to bring in the conservatives. They're like, oh, okay, I hadn't considered that. Let's talk about that, too. So there's basically no one who wouldn't benefit from a healthier, more biodiverse planet. And I feel like we've reached the point for a break. What do you think? Right after I say one quick soapboxy thing? Sure. It sort of echoes back to what pointed out in the Yellowstone episode is this wonderful macro long view of the world that you embrace and I embrace. That's the problem, because in the short term, people are like, sure, but what about this one thing I can do now? What about all this crypto I can find today? Right. Not to get into all that, good Lord. But people need to take a longer view of things. And I think humans are just unfortunately want to look at the $5 right in front of their face that they can make. Chuck, it feels a lot like we're waking up, you and me. Yes, but I think that's a big point. I think you and I are very mainstream people, and I think we're waking up even more than we had before, and I think that that's usually reflective of people in general. I think that people are starting to wake up more as a group, as a collective, and you just see so much less, like green washing and PRBS. People don't buy it anymore. I think people are starting to understand, on the whole, how important this is. I think younger generations genuinely do that through time, and it's happening. So that's a good thing. And I agree. We should take that break. Go. Gen Z and whatever follows you. I don't even know what my daughter is. I don't either. I'm not sure if they've named that generation yet, because right now it's generation. Very selfish. No, but that's they're very young, six years old. Generation temper tantrum. She's not much of a tantrum, but anyway, that's good. Let's take that break and we'll be right back. Okay. Hey, before we get going, can I say one quick thing? And this is I am always very sad when I see that Jogger in California, southern California has attacked in mall by mountain lion. That is a tragedy for that family. But my favorite thing is when those stories end with, and that's what happened, and that's too bad. And that's a mountain lion doing what a mountain lion does, and they hunted it down and killed it. Yeah. Speaking of releasing mountain lions in the Central Park, which I doubt if they were ever there anyway, well, I think that's one of the big tenants of Rewilding is there's a push of converting. So I was talking about those sheep birders in Scotland, and what are they going to do? Well, some people say, well, you can actually there's stuff called nature based economies, and you can change what you do to make money. If you are getting into Rewilding your land, you could start basically holding safaris. And that illustrates two things. One, there's a lot of money to be made. I've seen that some farmers have reported making as much, if not more than they did farming that they do now, that they're doing like, eco tourism on their land. That has been rewilded interesting. Sure. But then also it also shows you the role of humans in this. Like, we are meant to be guided on a tour in a very arranged visit to these areas. It's not like this area is wild. Just do whatever you want in it. It's extremely well managed, but what you're managing in this case is the humans, not the wildlife, not the floor of the fall in it. You're keeping people out. No hunting, no farming, no grazing your livestock. No, just like going camping there. I'm not sure about that last part, but I get the impression that humans are meant to just be kept out of it rather than the animal populations are managed. It's the humans that are. Yes. I don't know how Rewilders feel about it, but as a camper, I think if you do it right, then you shouldn't be harming the ecosystems that you're in. But someone might argue that, like, hey, man, just setting a tent up, like on the ground. Harms the ground. Yeah. I guess if you zoom in far enough with a microscope, you could probably back that up. Yeah, like, I crushed a worm with my sick body, so then I slept in a hammock. And where are you going to give that worms family now a small sum of money? Or maybe some dirt. They would probably prefer dirt, especially if it was really good dirt. Soil from my body? Yes. Just take off your clothes and roll on the ground and say, I'm sorry, worm. And then they said, well, and you just killed two more of us. Let's humans have to remove themselves from the wilderness. Let's move on, please. We should talk about the three C's because this was sort of an early descriptor on Rewilding, which is cores, corridors, and carnivores. And the idea is that and this has a lot to do with, like, reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone carnivores. Having an apex predator in an area is awesome and super healthy for that area. They control and they regulate that food chain like a champ. And they need a lot of room, though. And so it's called the core reserve. Like their area, if they're going to thrive a lot. And when that core reserve shrinks, then all of a sudden they're isolated. That's going to harm them. And then that's going to have that trickle down effect that we talk a lot about here on planet Earth. Now, there are a lot of cores that are too small. So the idea is all right, why don't we connect these cores with corridors to allow them to keep moving? And this can look anything like I said, you know, that one thing. I know that we talked about this before. It's the coolest thing when they make, like, a land bridge for animals to cross the highway without getting killed or go under, like an overpass or an underpass that could be a corridor at its most sort of fundamental, or, like, literally sort of rejoining land that was not joined before because of human interaction. Yeah, there's a big push for that because there's plenty of cores around. But if they're disconnected, then there's not going to be enough to support, like, a healthy ecosystem. And those apex predators are going to get stressed and it's going to stress out the whole ecosystem. They don't have anywhere to go. But if you connect two small ones through a corridor, all of a sudden they can kind of go back and forth, and this one small place regenerates in their absence, and then they go to the other one, and then they go back to the first one, and the second one regenerates while they're gone. That's a really great idea because it also kind of shows that spirit of not giving up. Like, oh, the cores are so small, what are we going to do? I guess nothing. It's like no, you connect the cores and then you can also look at it on even bigger scale. Like a good example of a core, the ideal version of a core, or close to it, is an American national park. You can't do anything in the national park but basically go and camp and visit and that's about it. Right. The other national parks I was reading about, ones in England, at least, you can hunt. They're managed for grouse hunting and deer hunting, and they're not like American national parks. So the American version is a really great example of kind of what we're talking about, rewilding. And then imagine if you connected Yellowstone to Yosemite with a wildlife corridor. Wow. Right? Is that even possible? Oh, yeah. They're on the same continent, so effectively it's possible. Yeah. But you're probably going to have to move some powerful landowners, like Ted Turner, who's probably not going to give up his land willingly, although, I don't know, maybe he will. There has to be, like a shift in how people view the importance of wilderness and nature and that's kind of part and parcel with the concept of rewilding, too. Yes, and a lot of the research that we looked at comes from the UK, and we'll talk about that more later. But it comes down to a micro effort of going and convincing one landowner at a time almost, to do stuff like this. And they're having some successes in the uplands of the UK, where that kind of one at a time, some landowners are agreeing like, all right, this is what I'll agree to do and for the good of everybody. Yeah, it's kind of cool, but it is a pretty slow process. Like, you're not going to see rewilding on the evening news every night. It's a pretty I don't know about small movement, but it's not mainstream, I don't think. In the consciousness, no. But in the ecological community, it's like basically being touted as the future of ecology. So hot. So the three C's, especially with the carnivores featured, that's basically descriptive of one of the two general umbrella categories for rewilding. Yeah. And that would be trophic rewilding, which will talk a little more about but let's talk about passive rewilding. Kind of the other end of the spectrum. Yeah, this is kind of taking a good look at where you should do this, like where to start, what's a good area to even try this, and where you can kind of go unchecked, and where it will benefit people as well as the ecosystems around there. But the two main goals of the passive rewilding are and this is something humans do a lot, like, there's a lot of wildlife protection going on. So the first part of passive rewilding is kind of that is letting wildlife rebound and kind of get its land legs back under itself. And that means like, no hunting and stuff like that, or hunting restrictions and then letting that land grow back together like you talked about. So animals can go where they once could go, like just increasing their territories and just saying, here nature, do what you will with yourself, and it sounds super dirty. We won't look. We're walking away. We had no idea nature would do that. Right. Oh, God. So with passive rewilding, they're trying to figure out what the initial steps are because in a lot of these areas, we've done a lot. It's just kind of invisible to city slickers like you and me. To alter the ecosystem, the landscape. So we would have to go in and remove dams that we've built there. We would have to fill in canals. Just any way that we've altered or put a human touch on the landscape, we would need to basically undo before we left or else it would still be an altered ecosystem that could be really problematic. So if we just basically kind of restore it, then we walk away. The idea is that it will take care of itself faster. But like you're saying, this is not a fast process. Like some of these projects that are being proposed have timelines of a couple of hundred years before they reach where they're supposed to be. That's a hard sell to people, you know? It is. But again, I think it's getting easier and easier. I agree. And part of the passive revolving is what I was talking about in the uplands of England, that's where they're kind of going one farm at a time and saying, hey, 70% of England's drinking water comes from these uplands. And I think when you start describing without maybe, I think you can go too far and scare people in the other direction with the doom and gloom. But if you very just sort of calmly lay out some facts and figures, I think that can wake people up sometimes. Yes. And the UK's super into this in no small part because of an ecologist, Harriet Megan named George Mambillat, I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly, he wrote a book in 2013 called Feral that basically called for rewilding, and he really popularized it over there. And since then, it's really started to kind of take off. And they have really lofty goals. They have a goal of rewilding 5% of England's land, I believe, by 2030, which is coming up quick, and 5% is about a million acres, and they put in perspective a quarter of that is in football fields in England. So really is that much like if you're daunted by that idea, but that's still an eight year converting it to a rewilded state or starting to is pretty ambitious. Yeah, I think you sent me that one thing that was really cool, where they sort of analyze and this is from a UK site, I think, where they analyze someone who might poopoo. This is, do we even have the space to do this kind of thing? We can't turn our cities over again to the mountain lions and just let everything grow wild. And that's not what they're talking about. But that one website, I can't remember which one it was, but talking about if you could traverse the entire UK in one day, england, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, that 86% of the land that you would find. You would not see many people or buildings. You would only spend about an hour and 45 minutes of that 24 hours traversing all of the UK, moving through urban spaces. And some of those urban spaces even have green spaces. Obviously not rewilded, but green space nonetheless. Right. And 83% of the population of the UK lives on 6% of the land mass. So, in other words, there is a lot of land out there to be rewilded. That doesn't mean throwing wild animals in the middle of the city. Right. It's the opposite. Throwing the humans out of the wilderness. Exactly. You go over there and you've built your city life where you don't breathe fresh air and you don't go outside and things like that. Well, some of the more radical proposals for rewilding is like giving over, like, nine tenths of the United States to wilderness and basically just pointing out how many more people you can pack into the urban centers of the East Coast and the West Coast and just, like, leave the middle alone as wilderness. I haven't seen that supported by many people. I think probably the guy who keeps promoting that keeps getting told to be quiet by the other. Ecologists because it's going to scare off the normals american suburbs are very big and important. Right. But it does really point out, too, there's people out there and we have to take their interests into consideration. And one of the things that I kept seeing pointed out in the UK is apparently after Brexit, the farm subsidies for farms that could not support themselves 100% through their own production like it is in the US. And I'm sure Australia too, they were heavily subsidized by the government to make up that gap. And then after brexit, apparently those things are beginning slash left and right. And so people have been saying, okay, well, if we're not going to be giving them farm subsidies, what if we change the purpose of the subsidies from farming to rewilding land instead? If these farms aren't producing that well anyway, and we can still produce enough food. That's a very important point. Sure. Without these farms, and in fact some of these farms would actually be way more valuable as untouched wilderness, then maybe it would make sense to take that money and convert it into that instead. And then you've also taken care of the person problem because they're still being supported as they need to be, but at the same time they also don't have to move. They just can't graze their sheep anymore. They don't graze sheep anymore. And you're going to make the same amount of money and you can take tourists on wilderness safaris as a side gig. Right. I just pictured Groundskeeper Willie staring us down from the room. Yeah. And then getting on this tractor that pulls us along to point out the red deer just hopping all over the place on his rewilded land. Or he could just give us one of the great Groundskeeper Willie lines of all time from one of the Halloween episodes when he was Freddie Kruger. Do you remember that one? Yeah, of course. When I'm done with you, they're going to need a compost modem, so great. That was a good one. One of my favorite lines. So a lot of the stuff we were just talking about falls under the path of rewilding. We've hit on trophic rewilding, but within that it kind of depends on how hard core of an environmentalist you're talking to. There's something called Pleistocene rewilding where they're like, hey, human disturbance started at the last ice age and that should be our goal, is to kind of like introduce, if not woolly mammoths, like maybe a descendant of the wooly mammoth because they're not around anymore. And so you get some sort of other people. I don't know about how heated the arguments get, but other people are like, Pleistocene is really too we should really kind of move from that forward from there and think more along the lines of the walls of Yellowstone than these huge megafauna. Right. Some people say, no, the megafauna are important. Yeah. And the people who are. Proponents of Pleistocene rewilding say that the reason that they've chosen that point is because they're suggesting that if we go that far back, we could probably defend ourselves in the planet against climate change that much more quickly or more robustly, I guess is a better way to say it's not like they're just doing it out of sentimentalities. There's an intellectual bent to it. And that is that we basically need to go that far back to counteract the damage we've done in the last 200 years in a mentality. There's a problem with Pleistocene rewilding, though, Chuck, and that is a lot of those animals are extinct. Yeah. Like the wooly mammoth. Yeah. Okay, so what are you going to do if you want to recreate the Pleistocene on the American Midwest? Let's say every state in the Midwest agrees to move eastward or westward and they're giving up all of their land over to rewilding. And we've all agreed it was Pleistocene rewilding. What are we going to rewild it with if there's no such thing as a willy mammoth? Elephants maybe, but elephants have evolved in the last 1012 thousand years to live around equatorial Africa, if I'm not mistaken. So are they going to do well in Kansas and then the same thing for the saber tooth tiger or actually, I don't think they call them anymore. I think it's a saber tooth cat, maybe all of their families totally extinct. There's no descendants of the saber toothed cats that are alive today. So what are we going to do, put mountain lions out there? Are we going to put actual tigers out there or regular like African lions? And are we going to move them over to Kansas? And then the larger problem, Chuck, the larger problem is this those animals, as big and scary and ferocious as they are, are kind of puny compared to the actual Pleistocene megafauna, like a sabertoothed cat. And it's not clear that they would be up to the task of managing enormous ecosystems like that just because of their smaller size. Yeah. So there's a lot of problems with place to see wildling back to megalodon for the oceans. Yeah, no, there are a lot of problems with that. And you were sort of talking about, you mentioned the top down control and that is that theory that if you bring in an apex predator, it can be a really good thing, that the cascade of interactions that it can trigger can be vast. But that's trophic rewilding, it worked out pretty well for the wolves in Yellowstone and the beavers that followed, and the birds and the fish that followed because of the beavers. So it's always a sterling example that people bring up. Yeah. So just to button that up, you've got passive rewilding, which is basically like just trying to get rid of your dams and bridges and stuff and then leave. And then the trophic rewilding is where you're selectively putting back animals that used to play a role in that ecosystem or related to ones that used to play a role. Right. And then with a focus on those apex predators because they have so much control over the ecosystems that they live in. And that one is way more involved and needs way more thought before we start doing that. Yeah. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right. We're going to take our final break and we'll talk about some of the issues with Rewilding and some of the examples and some of the tenants. How about that? That sounds great. So, earlier on, we talked about one bad example of what I don't even think is Rewilding with those reindeer in South Georgia. There are other examples. There was one because people will point to stats, people to say, this isn't a good idea, will say that, hey, the failure rate for introductions in nature is higher than 70%. And we don't even really have a lot of data if this works out anyway. And 70% is pretty high. And look at what happened in Argentina in the 1940s when they brought these Canadian beavers in and they ran wild and destroyed the forest. People who know what they're talking about would say that's an invasive species. And when the beaver and Yellowstone eat the willow tree, the willow tree grows back. When they eat these beach trees here in Argentina, they don't grow back. So you just have a wasteland. It's not dropping invasive species down into another place where they were never supposed to be to begin with. Yeah, it's supposed to be a little more thought out than that. Like I was saying before the break, like, these are carefully selected and carefully thought out, or they're meant to be animals that fill specific niches in the ecosystem that you're trying to restore. That's right. Not dropping beavers in South America. Canadian beavers, no less. Yeah. One thing that really spoke to me was in that additional material that you sent over. I think it was the four tenants rewilding britain, I think, was the website, and their four tenants are pretty self explanatory. But one part of part two really spoke to me. The first one is support people and nature together. The second one is Let nature lead. And the line that really got me was, it is not geared to reach any human defined optimal point or in state. It goes where nature takes it. And then that ties in with number four. Number three is create resilient local economies. It's a big part of it. But number four is work at nature scale. I think humans are so obsessed with scale in business, and they're basically saying, you got to do what nature does. Let nature do what nature does at its own pace and at its own scale. That's nature's scale. And just let it do it. Don't put your hang ups on nature, man, on what you want it to be. And that's kind of true, though. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, though, that kind of reveals, like, the lack of consensus in the field of Rewilding, because what did you say that was? Rewilding, Britain's. Four points. Yes. There were actually five. The fifth one was secure benefits for the long term. Okay, yeah. Five. And then I saw the union of the conservation of nature. I think that's it. Yeah, they have ten points. So you got five, you got ten, depending on who you ask. But they all generally agree that before we really start doing this stuff in earnest, like, we need more data. Like, most of the people who are like, yeah, we just release some volts into the woods. There's some Rewilding project right there. These are the people who aren't necessarily even thinking it through. If you're a conservation ecologist, if you're a biologist, if you're a botanist, if you're a scientist who's, like, actually looking at Rewilding, pretty much everyone agrees, like, we need way more data than we have right now. That is a great idea. We just need way more data. The science just isn't even there. Yeah, but one of the tenants that they both it seems like everyone is talking about is talk to the local people. They call them stakeholders. Yeah, talk to the local stakeholders. Because you can't just come in there with your science under your arm and your folder and just say, this is how it's going to go. Like, it's got to work for the people and you have to get them involved. And on borders just not going to work. Yeah, don't even try that in Scotland. Everybody. Oh, man, don't mess with their sheep. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, maybe this last little bit from that stuff he sent. 77% in increasing of the human population lives in urban areas and they spend 90% of their time indoors. 77% of humans spend 90% of their time indoors. And just the health effects and the role, the trickle down effects from that we've talked about a lot, but people need to be out in nature. Mental and physical illness, depression, heart disease, anxiety, fatigue, obesity, ADHD, you name it. Like, a lot can be not wholly attributed to this, but certainly has an impact on people. That and I'm a city guy. You are too. I love my urban areas, but people need to get outdoors more and this is a good way to do it, I think. Yeah, but that's a fine line you've got to walk, because we're giving this stuff over to nature, so we have to ask ourselves, what role, what place do we have in these wildernesses that we're creating? And I think that's one of the things that Rewilding ecologists are excited about, is that would cause us to rethink that. That would be like, Wait a minute, I want to be indoors all the time. Well, wait a minute, I'm already indoors all the time. I need to get out there and now there's a place for them to go. So, yeah, I think that's another big question mark that we'd have to figure out, too. That's right. Well, that's it for rewilding for now. Give it another five years, maybe we'll come back to it, everybody. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this what the author called it, lesbians in the military. Okay. Hi, guys. Really enjoyed your podcast about the term friend of Dorothy. I wanted to add something to your discussion about gay men in the military. And this is probably on us for just sort of saying gay men in the military, but there were many lesbians in the military during World War II, as well as people who we would now describe as bisexual women, trans masculine people and others. The military was a safe place for queer women and AFAB assigned female at birth people, since it was somewhat of an escape from mainstream society that expected women to dress and present femininely and marry men. Never considered this. It's pretty great. This article is a great summary of the history. Thought you might find it interesting. And the name of the article I just clicked, the link is called this is from outhistory.org lesbians. Comma, not colon. World War II and beyond. And this is from Rebecca, a friend of Dorothy. Nice. Thanks a lot, Rebecca. We're a friend of Rebecca who's a friend of Dorothy. That's right. It's hard to keep track, but let's just all be friends. That's pretty great. Thank you for that email, Rebecca. If you want to be like us and point out something we hadn't considered before, we love that kind of stuff. You can wrap it up and send it in an email 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." | |
c35c506e-5460-11e8-b38c-9b86033d406c | SYSK Selects: What Makes a One-hit Wonder? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-what-makes-a-one-hit-wonder | The term "one-hit wonder" gets thrown around a lot, and - yes - you probably are using it correctly, but Chuck Bryant went to the trouble to really define what makes a one-hit wonder in the article this classic episode is based on. Join him and Josh as they get to the bottom of this disparaging term. | The term "one-hit wonder" gets thrown around a lot, and - yes - you probably are using it correctly, but Chuck Bryant went to the trouble to really define what makes a one-hit wonder in the article this classic episode is based on. Join him and Josh as they get to the bottom of this disparaging term. | Sat, 29 Jun 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=180, tm_isdst=0) | 26871107 | 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. 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 awardwinning 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, Chuck here and it's Saturday, and that means that I am hungover. I'm just kidding. I feel like a fresh daisy. And right now I'm going to listen to this one again and I think you should, too. The stuff you should know select this week is called What Makes a One Hit Wonder? Super, super cool stuff about pop culture and music from March 2013. Enjoy. 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. Say something. Yes. I didn't even say say something funny. I just said say something. I know. I froze. Yes. It's all right, man. It's good quality in a broadcaster to freeze up on the air in a professional talker. Yeah. How are you doing? I'm great. Freezing. I'm good. Man, this is a fun, goofy little topic and we haven't done one like that in a while. This is a fun article written by a guy named Charles W. Bryant, a writer for the site. Yeah. I will go ahead and say one thing I was disappointed in in this article and I would still like to see someone tackle this in documentary style. Maybe. Is the psychology of being a one hit wonder, like what it does to your psyche? Yes. Is it better to have that one hit and fade away and at least you had that, or is it better to have never? I would be really curious to see a series of interviews with one hit wonders to see how they feel about it. You're saying is it better to have hit and lost than never to have hit at all? Exactly. And I couldn't really find anything on that. I'm sure there's one or two who listen to the podcast. And if you do write in, let us know how it is we're interested. Blue Baker. Yeah, the very least. Lubega. Listens. The fake Lubega. So, Chuck, I wanted to commend you for this article because this is a tough one with How Stuff Works articles. We typically take a topic that has a lot of research done on it. It's very well defined, and then we deconstruct it. This one is like, I looked on the Internet, and if you type in one hit wonder, there is, like, zero scholarly work done on it for good reason. Yes. I mean, it's interesting that, too, like, you brought up the psychology of being a one. Yeah. There shouldn't be anyone ever done a study like that. It's all just lists. And I actually did find one good website. It's called Onehitwonder Central.com, and they have everything you can play, like, every song, they have it by year. Awesome. Who. The one hit wonder was from the maybe 50s. Some of the greatest songs to me are some of the one hit wonders. Sure. And I mean, that's the point. Hit wonders just something that everybody liked at one time. We just didn't like whatever else they were making. Right. Yeah. At least as a large collective group. Anyway, back to me. Commending you. Okay. You had to take something that was really amorphous that everybody knew, and we knew if you got wrong and whip it into shape, like a definable shape, and you got it right. I think you did a great job of that. Thank you. Very cool. So the first thing you pointed out was that no one is 100% certain of the origin of this phrase. That's right. But we figured out that it first came in print, 1977. Right. Well, that's what Phrases.org says, and I couldn't find anything to dispute it, but a writer there wrote the sentence in July 77 about abba. Instead of becoming what everyone expected, a one hit wonder, they soon had a string of hits behind them. And although the website phrase.org does say it appears to have already been a used phrase, but this is the first time they've seen it in print. Right. And there actually is, like, a definition for one hit wonder. There's a hit I guess you define a hit, and it's got to be on the because we're so American centric. Sure. It has to be on the Billboard top 100. Yeah. And then specifically in the top 40 to be considered a hit. Right. Yeah. Technically, when most people there have been books written about one hit wonders, and that's usually what they say. Okay, so that wasn't just you or anything. I thought it was a great definition. No, it's a good definition, but that's the generally held definition. But then that's where it gets really blurry, as we're about to find out. Right. In many ways, yeah. You make a point that there's a lot of one hit wonders by that definition who are legendary musicians like Jimi Hendrix. One hit Janice Joplin. One hit. Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines. Yeah. That's only Billboard hit. Yeah. This is only Billboard top 40 hit. He had country hits, just lived on the country top ten. But yeah, in the mainstream top 40, his only hit was Chris Gains with the haircut and the Bull Patch. Yeah, man, that was yeah. I don't know what song it was, even. I don't either. Beck. Yeah. The Dead. The Dead. The White Stripes. Lou Reed, iggy Pop devo some iconic bands and musicians that have only had one hit. And then you've got artists who never had that hit but are still considered one hit wonders. Because what you end up realizing is, despite the definition of what a hit is, a one hit wonder is something different. It's just an artist and a song who captured something for a moment in time. It doesn't matter if it was a Top 40 hit, right? Like you say. Wala voodoo's. Mexican radio. Absolutely. It's not a Top 40 hit. No. But that's definitely a hit. Sure. In the Zeitgeist. Did you put it? Absolutely. Who else? I'll melt with you. Modern English the weather, girls, it's raining men. You would say all of these are definite one hit wonders and none of them had Top 40 hits. Right. But sticking to the strict definition, that still works, too. Right. Like the penguins. Earth. Angel. Yeah. In the 50s. Right. In the had summertime Blues by Blue Cheer But they really spent blue on their one thing. Their one shot was covered in blue. Blue cheer did summertime blues. Green Tambourine. Remember that song? No. I did. Green Tambourine. It was very, like, psychedelic. No. And the Lemon Pipers. It's one of those songs where sort of like, in the 70s argent. Hold your head up. Everybody knows that song. It's a good one. But I bet 99 people out of 100 have never heard of the band Argent. No. They probably think, oh, wasn't that the guess who? Or wasn't that in Joe Dirt? Or yes. Was it? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. I never saw that movie. Oh, what? I never saw Joe Dirt. Oh, man. Such a great, like, keep your chin up movie. It's so good. Really? Can hate David Spade. You can hate all of that kind of comedy. But that movie has such it got heart. It's a cute movie. Well, I had friends it's on Netflix streaming. Yes. I had friends that worked on it. And that's where I had my Gary Busey insider story. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I think I told you he was supposed to play the father. And if you'll notice in the film, he does not play the father. No. It's done by one Fred Ward. Yeah. So Gary Busey was on set for a day and it didn't work out. He made it I wish I could tell the whole story. He made it into Black Sheep with Chris Farley and David Spade. I've seen that. Yeah. He was like the crazy guy who lived in a school bus in the woods. It was the party's born to play. Exactly. Please don't come to our office. Carry P. All right. So that was the that's generally when the rock era in the 50s is when people say you can start talking about things like one hit wonders. Like, not some guy who had one big band hit in the 1930s. Although I'm sure they were there. Sure, that's true. There has been one song that was a one hit wonder for two bands, which is interesting. Oh, yeah, that's it. Funky Town. Really? Yeah. Lips Incorporated in I don't know if you remember Pseudo Echo. They did a version of that in 1986. No, it was a little more electric and upbeat. And that was a bona fide top 40 hit as well. People couldn't get enough of Funky Down. I hope that whoever wrote that really cashed in. Yeah, I do too. All right. Now, the 60s was the Green tambourine 70s songs like Spirit in the sky by Norman Greenbaum. That's a good song. It was an Apollo 13. One took over the line. I literally wrote Shudder next to that. Oh, you hate that song. It's pretty bad. Brewer and shipley and then seasons in the sun. Great song. Terry Jacks. Never heard of the guy. No reply. And you also make the point that the 70s were lousy with disco one hit wonders. And in our disco episode, we talked about why because it was all producer driven rather than artist driven. Exactly. I didn't even bother to list any in here. You can just name a disco song and there you have it. The course. You had bands like Soft Sells, Tainted Love and oh, Mickey, you're so fine tony Basil I Want Candy by Bow wow taja gogu. Remember what song? I don't remember. Too Shy. Is that who that was? Too Shy. Shy. Yeah. So the 80s was lousy with it, but a lot of the songs are great songs and a lot of the artists in the 80s were popular in other countries and are known as one hit wonders here in the US. Like, I was reading an article on, I think, Cracked, maybe about one hit wonders and they were saying, like, AHA had taken on Me, which was a hit here in the United States, but that was it. But they're like one of the top 50 grossing bands of all time worldwide. Yeah, well and AHA falls into another weird category, which is a band that's known as a one hit wonder who actually had a quieter second hit. Oh, really? Yeah. They had a song called The Sun Always Shines on TV. That was like a top 20 hit, I think. Wow. I don't remember that one. Nobody does. They're good, though. Now. They're awesome. And then remember? Right said Fred I'm too sexy. Huge in England. Yes. I'm Too Sexy was actually only hit number two in England. They had another one that hit number one. But here in the States yeah, I think it hit number one here. I think so, too. And then that was it for Right Side Fred. The same with Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Oh, yeah, they were really big in Europe. And Gary Newman. Yeah, that was a good song, though. That song holds up. Cars. Go back and listen to cars. Yes. That dude was a good musician. Well, and he was hugely popular and still like tours today. So he's one of those guys that's like, please don't call me one hit wonder. I've had a long, successful career. Right. Look at my house. You know it's a car. No, I think it's like a mansion. He lives in his car. That's where he feels safest. Got you. He can lock all his doors. Falco and Nina were really big in German speaking countries. Yeah, I could see that. But had the 99 red balloons. Balloons. Lou balloons. And then Falco's Rock Me on Medeus. Yeah, a huge hit here. It didn't occur to my young brain that that wasn't from the Amadeus soundtrack because, remember, it came out at about the same time as the movie. Oh, yeah. And I just thought it was part of the soundtrack for a new movie soundtrack. Well, the point with this, though, is that one hit wonder is sort of a derogatory term to throw on a notionist. So a lot of these people are, like, in America, like, you jerks. I was huge in Europe or maybe some other country in America. Who cares so much for your one hit? The 90s Crash Test. Dummies. Remember those dudes? Well, that was the song. Oh, yeah, that's right. The Macarena. Even though I don't even like to count that song. What about Faith? No more's. Epic. Yeah. See, that's a band that hugely critically popular and had a big cult following. But yeah, just the one hit. Epic. That was the name of it, right? Yeah. You want it all, but you can't have it. I remember hearing that song the first time. This is the coolest thing I've ever heard. Yes. And that lead singer, what's his name? Mike something. He's, like, super respected. He's been in other bands. He like Mr. Bungle. Yeah. Has a big cult following. And not among colts. Even, like, among people who aren't in cults. All right, so that's music. That's an overview. Yes. You make a really good point in this article that, like, one hit wonder. That derogatory term isn't just aimed at people, only in the music industry, although that's where the lion's share of it is. But it shows up in sports. You pointed out a couple of them. A couple of instances, yeah. Well, if you have one hit in baseball, then you've been a complete and utter failure. But a couple of guys have had one hit, and that one hit was a home run, which is pretty cool, which is pretty interesting. Who was it? There was a guy named Chris Jelic whose name I recognize for some reason I am. And I don't follow the Mets or anything, but I guess I just saw that bit of trivia before that he had one hit and it was a home run. Yeah, maybe so. There's a guy who didn't have a hit named Eddie Goddell. He had one plate appearance in a 1951 game for the Yankees and he was a little person. Oh yeah. And they put him in against the St. Louis Browns and he drew four consecutive balls and got a walk. Really? Yeah. And his jersey is in the hall of Fame. You can't see me doing this right now. I'm rubbing my face. His number was one eight. Really? Yeah. But he was, I guess you could say, a one hit sports wonder. It was kind of a fun story until then. Yeah. That was his jam. That's what he got paid for. And he was aware that he was a little person, so he made money off it. What about the art world, design world? There's a very famous person yeah. Harvey Bell. Yeah. Who has the perfect name for what he did. Why is it the perfect name? Harvey Bell? It sounds like the creator of the smiley face. Yeah, the iconic 70 smiley face. He created that as a marketing campaign. It sounded like an internal morale campaign for State Mutual Life Insurance Company. And it took off. I don't know if the company made the money or what, but he was paid $240 for it and he never had another artistic hit. And I looked to see if there were any other artists who were considered one hit wonder. I found some, but I didn't recognize any of them. I did recognize one Grant Wood, the painter of American Gothic. Oh yeah. He painted that and he won all sorts of prizes. Became like this cause celeb, like all over the art world. And the media started digging into his life and realized that he was a middle aged bachelor who lived at home with his mother and sister and wanted to know more about that. All of a sudden he just really couldn't handle the limelight and it's pretty sad story. Interesting. I think I read an article about it on mental floss. It was worth reading. So he never painted again. I don't think he ever kind of went for the gusto if he didn't just stop painting altogether. I don't remember the end of the article. Well, the art world certainly has a lot of people super famous for a single painting, but they may have been very revered in other areas. Right. Like Faith No More. That's right. They're the Faith no more of the art world. I told you all the Scream this last trip to New York. Oh, yeah. And you were like me? Yeah. This was like yeah, I can see what you're telling me. I mean, like you build something like that up in your head, you see it everywhere. And then just to see the real one, it's either going to go one of two ways. Sure. You're going to be underwhelmed or amazed I completely agree. And that's been what's happened to me with art, because you know how I feel about art. I know how you feel about art. I love it. 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 major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You weren't about to let any cyber attacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt. And everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM let's create learn more@ibm.com. Are you looking for an escape or a relaxing getaway or a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of it all? Well, we know just the place. Maybe you want to solve a murder in your building where you're just all about that paper boy. Perhaps you want to watch Hollywood's biggest monitor. Or you crave the thrill of a classic American story about horror. Or is your stomach grumbling for a MILKSTAKE flaming flamer's chip? Would you love to quench your thirst with a delicious Tranquillum house smoothie? Did you see blood analysis? As an investment opportunity? Would you wear one of Dave's wooden shirts? Do you smash glasses whilst yelling Hooch? Well, then there's a place that has everything you love, from Atlanta to the Kardashians to only murders in the building and everything in between. Hulu is your entertainment. Getaway hulu. Check into your obsessions. Hulu subscription required. Terms apply. Visit hulu.com for plan details what about books? Yeah. To Kill a Mockingbird. Yeah, that's the one. Most often cited as the one hit wonder because Harper Lee wrote one book. Yeah, that's one of those rare ones where I actually think the movie is better than the book. Oh, yeah, and I love the book. It's one of my favorite books of all time. And I had read it in a while, and I went back and read it, and then I watched the movie shortly after. I was like, holy cow. The movie is better than the book. Yeah. Me, Gregory Peck. I mean, talk about one of the best casting, but all of those actors were amazing. Every single one of them. Good stuff. She wrote the one book, and she worked on a second for a while. Come along. Goodbye. But shelved it. And in the 1980s, she started another book and never finished that one either. I guess she just procrastinated. I don't know. I don't know if anyone has an answer why she never wrote again. Same with Sallinger. Yeah. Catch her in the ride. That was it. Except he wrote short stories, too. But, I mean, he never published another novel. Yeah. And I will never know. And John Kennedy tool. Sure. Confederacy of Dunces. How often do you think about that book, just in your normal life? I don't know. Almost never, maybe. Yes. A couple of times a year, maybe when it's like a movie in the works that never happens. I was thinking about that movie or that book yesterday. Oh, really? And I hadn't read this article yet. Have you read it? No. Yes, it's good. I think a lot of people have these expectations because it's known as this genius work after this guy committed suicide. And it is really good, but I don't think it's like one of the greatest books of all time or anything. Yeah. So what happened to him? Do you know? No, I've never read the book. I don't know much about it. I know it's kind of like a wacky, Southern Gothic kind of novel. He lives with his aunt, I think, or something like that. Yeah. This crazy character in Louisiana. It's always grabbed my attention because it's just like a perfect title. And then the guy's name is perfect as well. John Kennedy Tool. Yeah. Or the character the author got you. Yeah. Well, he'd killed himself. He was clearly now suffered some sort of mental illness and could not get published. And that drove him to eventually commit suicide in 1969. His mother made it her life's work to get it published and did so in 1980. And then his second book was published, the Neon Bible, I think, in 1986. And that was made into a movie. So he's not a one hit wonder then. Well, Neon Bible wasn't a huge hit. I got you. But, yeah, I would say he's a one hit wonder. And you also bring up movies, too, man. Yeah. And on books again, Sylvia Plath is on here for the Bell Jar. I kind of wish I hadn't put that in here. Because she was a well known poet. That's why I hadn't mentioned it. But she did write the one book and then what, she did stick her head in the oven or something? I don't know how she killed herself. I think Virginia Wolfe drowned herself. Right? Sylvia Plated. She hung herself, I think. Did she? That sounds right. I remember that scene in Wonderboys where Toby Maguire rattles off the famous celebrity suicide. It was really great. That's a great movie. Joseph Heller with Catch 22. Yeah, that's certainly a one hit wonder. So, yeah, movies. I mean, there are more directors and actors that you could even mention that had one hit, but legit super hits. People like Michael. Is it Chamino or Cemino? Cemino, I think. Although if you're speaking in the Italian, it'd be chamino. Chamino. Yeah. He did. The Deer Hunter, of course. Yeah. One Best Picture and four other Academy Awards. Did he mow? What's that? Did he mail? That's what they tell them when they're, like, making them play Russian roulette. Diddy mow? Yes. Except they probably scream it. Yeah, that scene was so intense. I saw that. Very young. Too young to be seeing that movie in retrospect. Like it made an impression on you. Oh, yeah, huge. But yeah. He famously made Heaven's Gate as his follow up, which was one of the notorious disasters along with ishtar Water World. Was Heaven's Gate Award and baby movie too. Or is that heaven? Kin white. He was in heaven. Kin white and ishtar. So what about Heavens Gate? What was that about? I think it was a western. Oh, yeah. If I'm not mistaken. Yes, and it was just a notorious failure and a very expensive one. And then Chamino Never, he made a few other movies, but you haven't heard of many of them. He did year of the Dragon was like with Mickey Rock, which is the only other notable movie that's supposed to be a good one. Yeah, but it was far from a hit. I got you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And then my favorite, Steve Gordon, one of my favorite movies of all time. I have not seen it. You didn't see Arthur? Not only have I not seen the original Arthur, I haven't seen the remake that includes our friend Hodgman as a candy store manager, I believe. That was terrible, by the way. Not Hodgeman's bit. Hodgman was great, but the remake was really bad and it was so sad because Arthur is one of those movies that I hold very dear to me. And Steve Gordon wrote and directed it and then died afterward. It was the only movie he ever made by his own hand. No, I think he had a heart attack or something and died young. But youngish. And it was just so like it was a gut wrenching experience watching the remake for me. Why did you watch it? Like, for example, I think Red Dawn is one of my favorite movies of all time. There's not a chance that I will ever see the remake of Red Dawn. Well, I'm not either. And I learned after Arthur. So that's the one that taught you the lesson. Yeah. I'm not going to watch anything that was really precious to me if they rebooted or remake it again. Never again. It sounds like Hodgman tell you a valuable lesson. Yeah. And I like Russell Brand. And I thought they made Helen Mirror and John Gilgood's character and was just enough of a spin where I was like, well, that could be interesting. But then everything about the movie was just some new little spin to make it different. And it was like, hey, let's make the man a woman. Let's make the white guy Puerto Rican. It was like Louie Guzman. And it was bad. So bad. I got you. Yeah. Well, that's it for Arthur. Yes. If you want to learn more about Arthur, you can type that word in the search bar. Isn't that what this podcast is about? I forgot. Yeah, it's Arthur one hit wonders. Sadly more. That's what it was. You should read this article by Chuck. It's a good one. You can type one hit wonders in the search bar howstepworks.com? And it will bring up this article again. Commendable article. Thanks. And I said commendable. So it's time for word from our sponsor. 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 trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes. And you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule of their own sleep. IBM let's create learn More@ibm.com it automation. Are you looking for an escape or a relaxing getaway or a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of it all? Well, we know just the place. Maybe you want to solve a murder in your building where you're just all about that paper boy. Perhaps you want to watch Hollywood's biggest monitor. Or you crave the thrill of a classic American story about horror. Or is your stomach grumbling for a milkshakes flaming flamers chip? Would you love to quench your thirst with a delicious Tranquillum house smoothie? Did you see blood analysis as an investment opportunity? Would you wear one of Dave's wooden shirts? Do you smash glasses whilst yelling who's a? Well, then there's a place that has everything you love, from Atlanta to the Kardashians to only murders in the building and everything in between. Hulu is your entertainment. Getaway hulu. Check into your obsessions. Hulu subscription Required Terms apply visit hulu.com for plan details. Now it's time for listener mail. Josh, we're going to give this guy's wife a tongue lashing. Oh, jeez. What you do? You'll see. Okay. Dudes have been an avid listener since shortly after its inception. I'm a huge fan. I enjoy listening to it while I'm stressed out. I always soothe my nerves to hear your banter. Over the years, I've tried to convince my now wife Elizabeth to listen. Oh, I know this one. Unfortunately, she's always insists that you two are stoners and that your ritty riparte is contrived. It's so far off, she makes me change over to this american life or radio lab. Great chose which her podcast I download to fill the time between stuff you should know releases. I've repeatedly informed her that you guys are not stoners. You've done frequent podcasts on the ill effects of drugs, and this is not convinced or still listen with envy when you read letters during listener mail about couples who enjoy listening together. That's so sad. If I'm not mistaken, one pair even became engaged during a listener mail segment. Yes, we don't know about. That yet. I'm not vouching for that. It recently struck me that perhaps if you were to give Elizabeth a shout out at the end of the show, she might be impressed enough to become a fan as well. You could say hi to Elizabeth at the end of the show. You'd be contributing to my marital bliss. So wait a second. Wait a second. You realize what's going on here? We're being manipulated. Yeah. To say hey to somebody who doesn't even like us. I know. I feel like there should be some money exchanged for this. Well, no, I feel instead of saying hi to Elizabeth, she needs to get a tongue lashing for these baseless accusations of us sitting around, like, in a garage smoking marijuana. Smoking marijuana and just, like, talking. Yeah, it's BS. That's someone who's never listened to the show. We have banter. We might go off on tangents. We might say, like, 5 million times in a sentence, but we're not sitting around smoking weed, just rambling. Yes, we're just relaxed. A lot of work goes into the show. Sure. So. Elizabeth. Mellow out, dude. Yes. Seriously. Maybe you need to go in the garage. So anyway, this guy's a neurologist, and he said the alien hand syndrome part struck close to his heart. Awesome. And, Devin, if this doesn't do it, then Elizabeth can just go listen to this American life and radioactive. Yes. Let her hang out with Ireclass. Cool. And I'm sorry for your marriage, because it is clearly headed in the wrong direction. I think we had her until just that last sentence right there. No, she's great. I'm sure she'll tune in. We'll find out. Let us know. Devin, will you? If you want us to say something specific to somebody you know, we very well might do it. If you ask, we have before you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuff. You should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web. Stuffyshow.com. Stuffyshoenoe 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. You want your kids kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. 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d7412145-bf44-48d0-ba2c-ae70010d2b79 | Selects: A Partial History of Action Figures | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-a-partial-history-of-action-figures | Action figures have a long and glorious history. From GI Joes to Star Wars figures, these offshoots of dolls came along at just the right time to capture the hearts and minds of children everywhere. Learn all about the partial history of action figures in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Action figures have a long and glorious history. From GI Joes to Star Wars figures, these offshoots of dolls came along at just the right time to capture the hearts and minds of children everywhere. Learn all about the partial history of action figures in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Sat, 09 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=99, tm_isdst=0) | 70417859 | audio/mpeg | "What if you are a gigantic snack food maker who needs to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to manage your supply chain with realtime datadriven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM's let's create learn more@ibm.com 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 Geographic. 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, everyone, it's Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I've chosen a partial history of action figures, our episode from November 2016. And it is a really in depth look at action figures. We talk about different types of plastic molding, for goodness sake, but it's also chock full with nostalgia and good feelings and lots of warm memories between me and Chuck about our childhoods playing with action figures. So I hope you enjoy it. We certainly did, so you should too. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's right there to my immediate right. And that makes this stuff? You should know the podcast. That's right. I'm excited about this particular podcast. Chuck put together this episode, I should say. Well, do you want to go ahead and announce the title for people that maybe didn't read it? Well, you're going to select the title. What's the title? Oh, jeez. I don't know. Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about actually, some stuff about action figures that you may already know and some stuff that may delight you. That's a working title. Yeah, but we're talking about action figures. That's the point of what I think the exercise just was. Yeah, I was going to say Everything you wanted to Know, but I'm sure there are entire podcasts on action figures. For sure, yeah. And if you have a podcast on action figures right in, let us know. We'll tweet it out for the people whose boat is loaded. This one definitely follows in the vein of the Barbie episode, which I have to say is one of my perennial favorites. I love the Barbie episode. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And Barbie actually makes an appearance in this one. Do you like to play with dolls? I like to play with action figures. I play with Barbies. I had older sisters, so I played with Barbies whether I wanted to or not. So I made the most of it. Yeah. I don't remember my sister having Barbies, but surely she did, right? Yeah, she was a girl in America from the 60s on. Yes. She had a Barbie. Oh, no. My sister grew up in the Soviet Union. Oh, well, there you go. She had a Martina. There probably was a Martina, but, I mean, that was a pretty good episode. And this one's kind of similar. It's got it all. And like I said, Barbie kind of pops up. In the beginning, she actually inspired action figures basically directly when Mattel I think it was Ruth Handler who invented the Barbie doll. Right. Yes. And when she and Mattel released it, it was just a huge, enormous hit. And one of the big reasons Barbie was, number one, such a hit, and number two, so appealing to toy companies was that when you bought a Barbie, your buying experience wasn't over. There were always, like, more clothes and shoes. My sister had the pool that you could hang out with, and it had, like, a shower that actually worked. There's just a ton of extra stuff to buy. And so when you bought a Barbie, you wanted all the other stuff, too. And toy companies wanted to figure out how to do that with boys toys, but they just couldn't quite figure it out because no one had ever come up with a doll for boys, and that's kind of what it required. It was coming up with a doll for boys, and no one had cracked that nut. But Barbie made the whole thing all the more appealing, I guess. Yeah. Finally, this dude named Stan Weston, who actually knew Miss Handler, and he was in the toy racket, and I guess I shouldn't call it a racket. It's a bit of a racket. It's a bit of a racket. So he said, like, you're talking about there's tons of money to be made here. He was a military history buff, and so he had this the light bulb went off over his head, and he says, what if we could come up with a soldier doll or perhaps even a series of soldier dolls and maybe not call them dolls? Actually, the big one, he didn't come up with the name, to be fair. His boss at hasbro VP. Don Levine, or Levine in 1963, he was pitched this idea, and he went nuts over it. And he's the one that said, maybe we should call them action figures. Right, yeah. Stan Weston approached Don Levine at the toy fair and said, I got a great idea. And apparently he gave him $100,000 just for the idea. And then since he worked with Hasbro, he's like, guys, I've got a good idea here. So that roughly translates into about $782,000 in today's money, which is good, though, for an idea. But of course, anytime you're the schmuck that comes up with the idea that you sell for even 782 grand, and it goes on to be, like, hundreds of millions of dollar business, you probably always kind of feel like, I got taken for a ride a little bit. I'm sure Stan Weston was like, I'll have millions of good ideas like these that I can sell for $780,000 a piece. I'm sure he may have, yes. I don't know. It's certainly not one like GI. Joe. Right. Well, that's what we've been talking about. We've talked about GI. Joe a lot on the show, so it feels appropriate that we sort of go down that rabbit hole if we're going to be talking about action figures. Well, yeah, because GI. Joe was the one that started, literally started the action figure craze. Every action figure that's out there, from Action Jesus to the Marvel Superhero action figures, every action figure came from GI. Joe. And if you want to get feminist about it, every action figure, including GI. Joe ultimately came from Barbie. That's a good way to look at it. Yeah. All right, here's the deal that I never knew. GI. Joe debuted in 1964, before Christmas. It's almost as if they had planned that. The original I knew all this stuff. The original was twelve inches and had 21 moving parts. And the thing I did not know was that GI. Joe was the collective name of all four of these Armed Forces dolls. You didn't know that? I thought the guy was Joe. No, for my era, the main guy was Duke. And for your era, the main guy was Rocky. Well, it depends on which one you had. Okay, so there was Rocky, the army and the Marines. Skip was the Navy guy, and Ace was the Air Force guy, the fighter pilot. Right. So they ran out of names after name. Three circled back to Rocky, they ran out of names, and they all were identical except for their clothing. Yeah, as far as I know. Right. Wasn't their head different, or was it the same face for each one? It was literally just their clothes were different. I don't know. I'm going for my own memory, which is that they were all the same dude and they were all Franco Harris. Well, no. Well, they came up with an African American one at one point, in like sixties, I think. Yeah, they change with the times. But to my recollection, those original dudes, and maybe I got in on the second wave. Maybe the original sixty s ones were different, but I only knew Franco Harris. I got you. So maybe I just had Rocky. Maybe. So, Rocky or Rocky? Which one? Yeah, I had Rocky. Not Rocky. So they come out with this toy, and it's the first one of the big differences with GI. Joe, because there were toy soldiers before, but did you ever have those, like, little plastic ones, a little plastic green men? We dump them out of the bucket, and one had a bazooka, and he was always the best one, but they were unlike little molded plastic stands, and you couldn't do anything with them except slide them around or whatever. Those have been around forever. Well, you could do a lot more with them if you had imagination and a lighter and a can of hairspray. Actually was delighted. It was Toy Story, right, where they had those guys come to life. Right? That was really cool to me when I saw that on screen because like you said, you could never move them. So I see those little dudes actually come to life. Was pretty awesome. You were like, yeah, I've been dreaming of this day. I got it was thank you, DreamWorks. Oh, that's where they got the name. Was it DreamWorks or was that pixar? Pixar, right. I got it wrong. That's right, it's Pixar. We're still going to get emails anyway, even though we just corrected. They're all working dreams. They are. So I read this great article called what was it called now? You know, the history of GI. Joe and knowing it is half the battle. From Smithsoniancom written by Jimmy Stamp. Was that his name? The Stamper, the stampster. So I didn't realize this, but you can't copyright a human figure. So that was sort of an issue when people started to do knockoffs of GI. Joe, but apparently early on in the process, GI. Joe was well known for that scar on his face. And I didn't even know this, he had an inverted thumbnail. And both of these were because of errors in production, but those flaws were what allowed them to go after people for copyright infringement. That's right. That's crazy. Yeah, it is. And I guess they were natural. Like they didn't plan them or anything like that, but they just were happy accidents, I guess. Yeah. And actually I've read also elsewhere, Chuck, that GI. Joe was so successful, as we'll see, that by the 70s, there were so many knock offs that Hasbro released its own line of knockoffs of cheaply made GI. Joe's to compete with the knockoffs and dilute their market share. Yeah, it was called Defenders, and they were just these really cheaply made versions of the big GI. Joe's. Well, it was a huge hit, though. It says here that they accounted for almost 66% of Hasbro's profits in 1964. That's insane. That is nuts. And that was the year it came out, right? Yeah, like right out of the gate. It was a really big deal. And again, one of the reasons why is because you had toy soldiers before, but this guy could move, he had to think like 28 or 29 moving parts or different parts, and he was articulated so he could lift up his hand and karate chop you. Although he didn't get the Kung fu grip until the mid seventy s. Yeah, that's where I came in. Okay, so he had Kung fu grip when you knew GI. Joe. Yeah, very much. Got you. It was so kung fu. Right? But he still looks like Franco Harris. But he still looks like Franco harris. Yes. And then the other big innovation was not an innovation at all. It was following the Barbie model, but for boys, it was that this doll, which no one called a doll, in fact, I believe Hasbro wouldn't do business with you if you were going to call it a doll as a retailer, they would just be like, well, you don't get any GI joe. This is an action figure. That's right. But on the package itself, and I don't know if you remember this or not I don't, because I wasn't born yet, but there were pictures of the other dudes and the other outfits you could get. So when you bought one GI joe, you as a kid were made immediately aware, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's other GI joe out there and I want to collect them all. Some little kid came up with that collect them all phrased just in his little brain. Yes, some little kid named middle age marketing executive Don Levine. So not only that, but they had, like, Barbie, they had all manner of other things that you could collect and buy. I had the jet pack, which you would attach to a string to simulate jet packing and send flying, like, between two trees. Got you. And then I had the submarine. It was like a seawolf. It was really cool. How big was the submarine? If you're playing with twelve inch GI Joe, it was to take up the size of, like, the family room. Well, this is not going to mean anything to anyone at home, but it's about the size of this lamp on our desk. So it's like a one man sub. Yes. I can't remember exactly. I feel like it was about the size of a little smaller than a bowling ball. How's that? Like a child's bowling ball. Yeah, because he had to sit in it. You're right. And he was a big dude. Even though you were in a seated position, he was smaller. And then I had the six wheel or eight wheel, I can't remember. All terrain vehicle. Well, that's nice. And that's about all we could afford. But that was probably quite an outlay from your parents. No, it was great. And that was over time. Right. Several Christmases, right. Yeah. And this was like I said, I came in on the 70s, but in the 60s, GI joe did not do very well because of the Vietnam War. And I think it actually went away from production for a while. Yeah, it did. They just they basically retired them. I think the Vietnam War hurt sales, so they took them out a little bit and then they re released them again and kind of rebranded them, I think, too. Rather than a soldier, they rebranded them as an adventurer. Right. Yeah, totally. This machete is not for cutting off the hands of a sherpa who leads us into danger. It's for cutting through vegetation on a jungle adventure. To save sherpas who are for some reason, live in the jungle now. Yeah, and like you said, they call them adventurer. Or the naval officer was called an Aquanaut. And I very much remember that being the deal. Like, I didn't think of him as a soldier. I thought of them as well, I thought his name was Joe because it was a dumb little kid. But I guess Rocky the GI. Joe adventure guy, right? Franco Harris. Right. And GI. Joe actually was taken from a 1945 movie called the Story of GI. Joe. That's where that came from. Did you ever see that? No. Have you? No. Okay. I was just curious. So Chuck GI. Joe, he starts to do kind of poorly because of Vietnam. They take them out, they re release him, and he doesn't do very well when they bring them back out, even though he's an adventurer. Right. So GI. Joe left they stopped making GI. Joe for a while, and it left this big vacuum that was just waiting to be filled. And it was filled by a little company named Migo. And we'll talk about Migo after this break. How about that? Sounds good. What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year, you weren't about to let any cyber attacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. 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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. comStuff right now. All right, is it migo or mego? I've been saying mego in my head just because I'm a dumb American. Well, I think mego is probably how they say it in the UK. Was that where it came from? No, they're American. I say migo. To be honest, I have no idea. I'm sure there is a right way that Tommy migo would love to tell you about or Tommy mego, but yeah, I've said migo in my head, but I don't know which one is correct, to tell you the truth. All right, we'll just proceed thusly. I'll say Mego, you say migo. Let's just call the whole thing off. So go ahead with me. Go. GI. Joe's gone. But again, you said it accounted for 66% of hasbro sales just in the first year. And he was a hit year after year after year for many years. Right. And even when they brought him back, sales were terrible compared to the initial stuff, but they were still making money off of them. Right. So the world's first action figure made a huge impact. And when the world's first action figure wasn't around anymore, well, there was a void that was to be filled. And this company called mego decided and I think that a pretty good place to start, would be releasing a line of action figures that were based on superheroes. And they released a line of superheroes called the world's greatest superheroes action figures in, I think. And it was a pretty big hit, like, right off the bat. Yeah. And what they did was they were super smart and kind of had a lot of vision and said, I think where it's at is not necessarily creating characters from whole cloth that kids don't know of, but licensing very famous characters and selling them. So they got a hold of licenses for spiderman and the hulk and Batman and wonder woman and iron man and Captain America. Yeah, if you'll notice it's DC and Marvel characters in the same line, like, that's unheard of today. They did not discriminate back. No, they did it's a wonderful time. And not only that, but they said, we're making money hand over fist selling these action figures. Do you think kids would actually buy villains like the Joker? And do you think they would buy side characters like Robin and Batgirl and other villains like the Riddler and things like the Batmobile and the Bat Cave play set? And before you knew it, they were pumping out things like Bruce Wayne's foundation building. I know. That was a real thing. What was the other weird one? The store. Oh, they had an exclusive with the Montgomery Ward store. So it wasn't a store, but at Montgomery Ward, only you could buy the non superhero versions of superheroes like Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne, which is like, all right, you sit there in your cubicle, and that's what you do. While the rest of us are saving the world, that's what you do with that action figure. All right, that makes much more sense. I thought they had a Montgomery Ward play set. That's what I thought at first, too. Bruce Wayne worked there or something, which, of course, he didn't even work. I don't know what I'm thinking. No, he just gave orders. They were making tons and tons of money. In 1973, they moved into movies with their Planet of the Apes line, which was some plastic primates, and then the astronaut that was taller, and that was a huge hit. Yeah, and the other thing about Migo, too, was that all action figures have been, like, twelve inches tall up to that point, and Migo's line was eight inches. So action figures are starting to shrink a little bit now. That's right. The one I actually had, even though I have no idea why, I had the Star Trek Enterprise Bridge. Oh, yeah. And then I guess I'll know I had Spock and Kirk and a couple of others, but I'm well known to not have ever seen any Star Trek at all, except for maybe one movie or something. So I have no idea why I got that if it was a cool action figure. Like, I had a weird wizard action figure when I was a kid. But you're into weird wizards. You still are. Yeah, well, I am now. As a grown up. I wasn't as a kid. I was like, what is this thing? Got you some weird wizard. Well, I don't know why I had it, but the Star Trek, their collection, that was another big hit. So they were just they literally kind of GI. Joe and Barbie, of course, kind of spawned this thing. But it seems like Mega really took it to another level. Yeah, action figures were cool, and GI. Joe had really started something. But Migo, they established it forever, permanently. And they also showed other companies, too, like, hey, man, go get yourself a license and stick to it. Like, get creative. Like with the Star Trek license that they had. Clearly the toy designers had actually watched Star Trek episodes because one of the playstets was from one of the sets from an episode of Star Trek, the Apple episode. You don't necessarily see that. You didn't see that before with action figures. It was more like, hey, you know this guy. Just buy them. This is like, you're into Star Trek and so are we, and here is some awesome playsets based on your love of Star Trek. So Migo definitely broke the mold in that sense as well. But they also they were it for action figures. Nobody could compete with Migo. They would buy stuff from Japan and then turn them into new stuff here. There was just no competing with Migo in the US. Even though a lot of people were. But they also dropped the ball in the most spectacular fashion anyone could ever drop the ball in the action figure world. Yeah, it's almost an elegant end of the story because it literally makes you cringe when you read it. And there's two different versions, but both of them are like, oh, man. Yeah, I think there's really only one version. I literally could not find a single source other than this one guy's blog who claimed the other version. But what we're talking about and if you know action figures, you probably see this coming, they declined the Star Wars brand and allowed Kenner to pick it up. Yes. So how, though? Which story is true? Well, the story that I think is true is that they didn't want to invest, and they said that we're not going to throw our money at every little thing that comes along and be a little more discerning. Yeah, that one hurts. That hurts more than the other store. The other version was that the people who could sign the contracts were out of town when George Lucas came by to offer them the franchise. And now that I'm saying it out loud, like, yes, that's a ridiculously dumb story, then actually turning down the Star Wars line is even better. It's even sweeter, like, man, what are you guys thinking? But I mean, there's lots of stories like that. Somebody lacking foresight. Yeah. The other story is completed by supposedly they weren't there. So Lucas went to another one, to Kenner, who was in the same building in New York, and I guess the people that could sign their name were there. Right. But I can't find that anywhere else except for this one blog where this guy says it's true. But I would love to hear from someone if they have inside Verifiable knowledge of that. Oh, for sure. George Lucas Just let us know. And I mean verifiable. Not what I heard. I read the same blog. Exactly. I knew your nerd voice is going to come up in this episode? Oh, sure, of course. So if you have a love of migo or you just want to know what we're talking about, also go check out the Migo Museum online. M-E-G-O museum. And it's just basically like this wonderful online museum dedicated to everything that Amigo ever put out. It's pretty cool. I wasn't even around when these things came out. They still somehow make me nostalgic. Exactly. All right, so let's jump back a little bit to 1966, and we're going to explain how they went from eight inches even though they were still making the eight inches after 66, how they eventually got down to the three and three quarters inch GI. Joe was licensing their stuff out to other countries all over the place. There was a UK company who released it under the name Action Man, and eventually they licensed it to Japan to a company called Takara. They went on to create some action figures based on GI. Joe, and then due to the oil crisis in the early seventies, they started developing smaller versions. So at three and three quarters inches, they developed microman, released him in, and that kind of led to this new thing, which was smaller. Dudes and kids didn't care. No, not only did we not care, so now we're starting to enter my wheelhouse. Not only do we not care, these smaller ones are vastly superior to the older ones. Oh, you think? Yeah. So we agree on a lot of stuff, but I would say this is the one thing that divides us more frequently than anything else is whether the original big GI. Joe or the second wave, small GI. Joe's are better. All right, let me ask you, sir, have you ever held in your hands and played with a twelve inch GI. Joe with a kung fu grip? I would not touch one. So you can't even say that. Have you played with the small one? Yeah, man, I had tons of small action figures. Okay. All right. Did you have the Star Wars stuff? Oh, yeah. So you think the big one is superior? Yeah, it's twelve inches. It articulates 19 different ways. I like the small ones. I always will. Even after playing with the big one, which I have not and never will. I just know that the small one is vastly superior. I don't know if it's because I am nostalgic for the small ones and the old ones seem weird and dusty and moldy or something like that, but the small ones seem better to me. All right. At the very least, you have to admit the wave of GI. Joe's that were released when I started playing with them, just the line itself was better, regardless of the size of them. Right. Well, let's go ahead and talk about that because GI. Joe changed a lot once it became a cartoon. And we're going to talk about some really cool political stuff that had. No idea went into this, but GI. Joe became a cartoon series. This was in the early 80s. So this is when I had kind of quit playing with action figures for the most part. Okay. Because 83, 84 I was, like 13, and, you know, I was moving on to check out this mustache. Yeah, I was skateboarding by that point, and I thought it was, like, super cool skateboarder. Yeah, maybe I still played a little bit. Only your neighborhood best friend knew about it. Your school friends did. Exactly. So GI. Joe was a cartoon then for the first time. Basically, it became a commando team, an anti terrorist commando team that had all kinds of characters, and they had finally had a common enemy, which was, of course, Cobra yes. Led by Cobra Commander. And this was your right in your wheelhouse, correct? Yeah. So in 1983, I was, like, seven. So, yeah, I was really just primed and ready. I would just let's go Joe. And plus, also, the other thing, too, that I had that you didn't have was the cartoon that not only blew up the backstories because this new wave of GI. Joe, when they released it, each character now had its own name. And it wasn't Rocky or Rocky. It was things like Duke or shipwreck or blowtorch or barbecue or dusty. And then the bad guys have their own names, too, like Cobra Command or Serpentor Tomax or Zamat or the whole gang toaches who was that? Tomax and Zamot. They were evil twins who were if Cobra Commander had hired Patrick Bateman and then cloned him a mere version of him, it would be Tomax and Zamot. Interesting. I know none of this stuff, right? Okay, so I do, because I grew up with it. But I also had it pounded into my head every day after school watching the GI. Joe cartoon. And that was the huge innovation that really just created this other world for kids like me to just lose yourself in with the action figures. Because now you didn't even need to use your imagination. You could just be like, oh, I saw this on the GI. Joe cartoon today, so let's act that out. Right. And none of this would have ever happened had it not been for Ronald Reagan. That's right. And that sounds weird, but here's the story. So, in the late 70s, there was a lot of concern about kids and advertising, about advertising two children. So the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, got a task force together, and they said, should we ban or regulate this marketing to children? They put together 6000 pages of testimony from 60 oral testimony, 60,000 pages of expert testimony from all these experts on child psychology and health and nutrition because it had to do with food and sugary candies and stuff like that, too. And the conclusion across the board was that young children cannot, they are cognitively unable to understand the intent of selling ads. They can't distinguish that from reality. Right. Like, if you dress up a cartoon as an ad, the kid, he just thinks it's a cartoon or she does. Exactly. Or if the ad is a cartoon right. Rather than the kid doesn't know. They just think, I'm still watching cartoons on my TV. My brain hasn't made that switch. But man, could I go for some Smurf cereal? Exactly. So it was a big deal at the time. So there were all these recommendations basically, on how to regulate and restrict advertising. They basically said it was unfair and deceptive to kids. For older kids, they said they can tell the difference, but maybe we should have warnings on the ads and disclosures saying that this is a commercial message. Right. And so what happens when you do this in America? The private sector said, no, I want to be able to sell as much sugary garbage to kids as I want. You can't restrict free trade. Free trade in business. And so we're going to raise a record at the time, $16 million to lobby against this. And they were helped out in no small part by getting the right guy into the White House. Right. So in 1981, of the first things Ronald Reagan did was he appointed a new chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. And this was a move that basically said, you know what? There's going to be no regulation whatsoever. Got to leave these markets free. You can do whatever you want. And that is basically how all of these cartoons were born, right? GI. Joe transformers. Smurf Bears, Care Bears, Rainbow Bright, Care yeah, you name it. It basically became marketing and selling things, and cartoons became one and the same, finally. Yeah. And one of the other things that definitely helped GI. Joe too. Was the I don't know if it was formal or informal. But there was basically a ban on warlike cartoons and warlike toys that was brought back under the same ease of restrictions by the FTC so that I think the percentage of warlike toys that were sold in the early 80s went up like 350% from one year over the other. From 1983 to 84. I think. Whereas before it was like, no, GI. Joe is an adventurer. I remember it's like, no GI. Joe is going to cut Cobra's head right off. So that's one of the first big things Reagan did when he got into office. FlashForward to 1988. In November 1 of the last things he did was he vetoed a new measure because basically they saw what was happening. All of a sudden, kids were being bombarded with war cartoons and just terrible sugary packaged food all over the place. Like the restrictions were nowhere to be found. Right. So Congress came back and said, you know what? This is out of hand. Here's a measure that will restrict once again and impose some legislation on this programming aimed at children. It passed the House by 328 to 78, passed unanimously in the Senate, and Reagan vetoed it. Basically, one of the things they were trying to do, they were trying to limit programming to advertising to 10.5 minutes an hour on the weekends and twelve minutes an hour on the weekdays, and also require broadcasters to provide educational and informational programs as a condition of renewing their licenses. So Reagan vetoed that and said, no way. We're not going to do that. We're going to keep it as is. People that were in favor of this went crazy. Basically, they were saying, how can you guys say you're the party of the children in education and then veto something that is clearly going to help protect our children? Yeah, that is messed up, man. I had no idea about that one. Yeah. And not only that, what happened was, along with this deregulation, the toy companies and the cartoons, actually, they kind of got in bed together and they said, you know what, if you schedule as a broadcaster or cartoons that sell toys, we'll give you a profit on those toys. Nice. If you run these GI Joe cartoons, then we'll give you a little cut of what we're selling. Plus, also we'll buy ads on those cartoons or on your network, too, to sell those toys. When you show these cartoons, I imagine. Yeah, because I remember watching GI. Joe Real American Hero, the cartoon, which I have to say it was created in large part to sell GI. Joe. True. But it had great story arcs. It had overarching story arcs that went from episode to episode. The individual ones were good. Like, the voice acting was good. The animation was pretty good. Same with Transformers, too. It was pretty good cartoon. So at least they were putting time and effort and thought into this. But, yeah, it's pretty despicable marketing to kids in general. Actually, I read a blog I'm certainly glad you were a satisfied viewer. Yeah. But I read this blog that basically said that, man, I wish I could find it. Maybe I'll post this when we release it. That the deregulation killed the creativity in children's cartoons. Yeah, yeah. And that they said that before you know it, they were just like things were knock off of one another. They didn't care about, I guess. I mean, you were a kid, so maybe you didn't realize it. I was too stupid to know what was going on. They said that you can see a clear demarcation line between really good storytelling and then storytelling that was clearly just geared to sell things. I guess I'm trying to compare what cartoons were in the they were great. They weren't high art, though. Again, I'll go back to that hair bear bunch. Well, they loved the hair bears. They were drugfueled. Yeah, that was a big one. But their plots were pretty simple. It was the same plot that you would see on a yogi bear cartoon or like a huckleberry hound cartoon. Scooby doo was interesting, and it was pretty cool, but it was basically the same storyline every single time with scuba Doug. And I'm not trying to argue in favor of corporate America marketing to kids and ruining creativity, but there weren't any overarching storylines aside from scooby being crazy for scooby snacks and scooby doo. And there definitely was in GI. Joe when they went around the world and took the DNA of all of these great, these great dictators and conquerors like Alexander the great and Napoleon and put them all together and created sir pentur, who is actually the new guy who is in charge of cobra because cobra commander was a bit of a coward. Did you not know any of this? How do you not know this stuff? I was trying to kiss girls in the roller skating rink at this point, and you thought girls were gross. Still. It's true. But it definitely helped shape me, and I am nostalgic for it in that sense, and I am appreciative. But, Chuck, I propose that sooner than later, we do an episode on marketing to kids, because this whole deregulation story is just fascinating. Yeah, I mean, I didn't really know anything about it because I was still a dumb kid when this is going on. Let's do it, though. Okay? Agreed. So that was GI. Joe shaped my childhood. You don't say. But prior to GI. Joe, the first three and three quarter inch action figure in the US. As far as I know, was the star wars line and the star wars line again. When migo passed it up, they quickly realized that we really screwed up. They released, like, a buck rogers line and a black hole line. Remember that movie the black hole? I do. From Disney. It's really creepy, even still. So they tried to catch up, and they ended up going bankrupt in 1983, basically as a result of losing this star wars line. Sad. So kenner picked it up, picked up the star wars line instead, and they released them. And right out of the gate in 1978, which I believe was the first year that they released these things, it's three and three quarter inch star wars line of action figures in. They made $100 million each year. From selling those, they sold about 40 million units a year. And to 1985, which I think was the whole run of the star wars wines, the original run with Kenner. Kenner sold 300 million units. So if they're selling 40 million a year and making 100 million each year from that yeah, it's sold 300 million total. So kenner made some serious bank off the star wars. Yeah. Off of me and my lawn mowing fund. Yes, for sure. I feel like I had at least doubles of most of the major characters, many of the minor characters the tie fighter, the x wing, the death star, you lucky, the land speeder. I also had the big dolls. I don't know if they were twelve inch, but what is it with you and big doll? They're huggable. Yeah. I had the big Luke and the big I think the big Luke and the big Vader and maybe like one other, maybe Chewbacca, but not all of them. And basically whatever I could either get for my birthday or Christmas or save my allowance to buy. Right. I would get. And I was all in. I didn't know that these were collectible, of course. I ripped right into them to play with them like normal children do. I didn't put it in a box on a shelf to try and keep it in mint condition. But that's weird to do though, as a kid. Yeah, I don't know, maybe there were kids doing it. I didn't know any. We all played with them. Sure. But I mean that was originally the point, I think. It wasn't until like much later that it became evident that you could sell them to people who wish they had them in the package still for a lot of money. Yeah. And should we close later on with some of the more valuable ones? Yes, for sure. So that's a tease. Okay, everybody take a break. Yeah, we should. Was that it about Star Wars, you think? I don't have anything else. Really? I mean, there's a gazillion of the things we could talk about, I guess, but what more do you need to know besides that there were huge hits? That's it. All right, we're going to take a break. We're going to come back and talk a little bit about how these things are actually made. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets you call IBM to automate your It infrastructure with AI. Now your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes. And you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule of their own fees. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com it automation. Incredible story of what seems to be a large military transport plane that's crashed in a remote region south of Ankara, Turkey. 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Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana De Armas and Billy Bob Thornton. You'll make an omelet. Got to kill some people. The uncatchable meets the unstoppable. They can kill anybody. Maybe not anybody. The Gray man. Only on Netflix, july 22, rated PG 13 may be inappropriate for children under 13. 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, Tik, Tok, Pinterest, and more. And you can synchronize your online and in person sales so you gain insights as you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins, and beyond. It's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So just go to shopify.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. All right, so just to put a little bow on the action figure thing before we get into how they're made, transformers came along was huge throughout the 90s. Then you saw Marvel and DC really come on the market. Every movie you could think of had action figures. TV shows started having action figures. Older popular movies started having action figures. Like, for nostalgia sake, like, I literally had a Scarface doll. Oh, yeah, I've seen that. The Scarface Al Pacino that I used to have in the office, did it come with a mound of cocaine? It did. Plastic mound of cocaine? It did. And now you can find pretty much any kind of action figure you want, from politicians to older movies and TV shows and things you wouldn't even imagine. People would like, welcome back, cotter action figures. Yeah. And I didn't realize this, but apparently companies intentionally will release, like, a very limited run of some where they're missing their thumb or, like, it's mislabeled on the package to make them valuable for the aftermarket. The collector's market, which seems really untoward to me, like gaming the collector's market by manufacturers, that's just the opposite of what you're supposed to do. Is that verified? That sounds urban legendy to me. Well, it was in one of the articles you sent, and I took it. The person who wrote the article sounded like they knew what they were talking about. Really? But was that the same article from the guy who said that I don't know, that Kenner couldn't sign the contract because the right people weren't there? I don't know. Because the first thing I think of, if they're doing that, then what's to keep them from artificially manufacturing something that's going to be valuable and just keeping a bunch of them themselves? Well, most companies like money now rather than a little more money later. So that would probably do it. That's true. You know. Alright, so you want to talk about how these suckers are made. Yeah. Again, you found some good stuff here when you put this together. Yeah. I thought this is pretty interesting. So it starts with design, right? Right. Which means it's pretty sensible. You say, give us a Thor character, you sucker. And they're talking to an artist, a sculptor when they say that. So the sculptor gets to work like creating like basically a skeleton called armature out of wire. And the wires in basically a position Thor likes to run holding his hammer. So he'll be kind of like in a crouched running pose. And then they slap some clay around it, maybe bake it a little bit to make it stiff. And then they mold very roughly the general body shape and head shape of Thor. And then they kind of start to get to work from there. Yeah. Rough Thorness is what they look for early on. It depends on the action figure. There are all different kinds that have varying levels of movement and depending on what you're going to end up with is really going to inform the process. But let's say you're Thor and you want to move your arms, move those big pipes a little bit. They may choose to sculpt the arms separately or maybe the legs separately. They almost always do the head separately because it's got all these fine detail and you just want to work on that by itself. Right. When you're messing with the head, your wrist is like going into the chest that you just finished. And why do I always do this? Not to start over, pretty much. So they're working with this torso, perhaps only put him aside. Work on the arms, work on the hands, work on the head. And eventually, once you've got this head and face like you want it, you're going to attach that back on, build the neck and build some hair. And if it's one that's completely plastic, you're going to do the clothes and everything in the suit. Sometimes you have real cloth though, like in a cape. You're not going to carve that out, obviously. No, they'll add that later. And sometimes like an extra figure will come with like a breastplate or boots or Thor's hammer. Maybe they gave Thor kung fu grip, so you'll have to mold that also separately. But then sometimes, and you'll know this already, probably as the designer, they're going to be like, no, we don't want any of that weird cloth. That's like a big GI. Joe, and that's just weird people out. We want it plastic and molded. So they'll basically carve the clothing out of the original sculpture as well. Yeah. And this all takes about two weeks. Of course, it depends on who you're working with, but two or three weeks to carve this dude out to its kind of Ross form? Yeah, I'm always incredulous and stuff like that. Who does it take? Two weeks? Is that really an average? Like, how many action figure sculptors did you pull to find out that it was two weeks? They probably just talk to someone at the company, and they say, how long does it take? And they said, about two weeks. Yeah, that's good enough for me, then. All right. As long as they spoke to somebody. All right, so now you've got your little dude, and you're going to use a plastic resin when it comes to the actual materials of the thing itself. There's something called ABS. I thought I got it. You want me to try it? Sure. I think it's acryla nitrile, butydiane styrene. ABS. Nice work. Three types of plastic and one that's right. So that's the harder plastic for the main body. They may use something like polypropylene or polyethylene for the various parts or pieces. You got your fabrics if you have capes and things like that. So weird. Well, no, I mean, even the little small figures had, like the jawas had capes. Not capes, but cloaks. I know. I remember. It weirded me out, too. And I think finally, I understand what it is that I don't like about the large GI. Joe. They had fabric clothing, and it was ill fitting clothing, too. I don't know if you had it or not, but the original GI. Joe, some of them came with a raincoat, but it didn't look like a raincoat. It looked like he was wearing a sleeping bag that had a draw string around his face. You sure it wasn't a sleeping bag? I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a raincoat, but I think that's what it was. It's just creepy, that was all. I guess. It's not actually the size. It's the creepy factor brought on by this clothing that didn't fit quite right. It's the kind of clothing that you would make for a son who was a serial killer, but you didn't want to turn them in, so you just keep them locked in the basement. And you got to make his own clothing. You have to make clothing for him. This is the kind of clothing you would make him. That's, I think, what creeps me out about it. Well, you're working through some stuff, so I'll check in with you at the end. We'll see exactly what it is you hate about the call. All right, cool. So the manufacturing process, you got to create the mold next you want to master mold, or maybe it might be more than one mold. And this requires the most time they send this article. About two thirds of the whole time is spent making these molds. Yeah, which makes sense. And it takes a few months. Again, is that arbitrary? Who knows? Yeah, this guy's, like, probably just takes a couple months. And then once you have the mold and you also have to make a decision when you're making the molds, do you want to make the torso and the legs together? Is he going to move his arms? If so, you probably want to do two different molds for the arms. So there's a pretty decent amount of decision making work that goes into just coming up with what molds you're going to make. And then once you make the molds, then yes, you have to make the molds. You have to operate them, and then you have to decide what kind of what's the word I'm looking for? Where you actually make the plastic figure molding, which I should have been able to come up with because we were talking about molds at the time. That's right. So there's different kinds. I looked up one kind called rotational molding. I guess that's what Star Wars was going to try at first, but they lost too much detail on the figures, so they went to, I think, an injection molding process. But with rotational molding, you've got a mold, and it's on this computerized arm, and this arm just kind of spins around inside an oven, and inside the arm is like powdered plastic resin, and I guess it just melts it by kind of slowly spinning it around. I don't understand what the problem is, but I guess injection molding is far superior. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, the deal with injection molding, they pump it into two pieces, and then they apply pressure to those two pieces to mold them together while it cools and hardens. But I think what you get there is which is why probably they wanted to use the rotational molding, is if you have those little Star Wars guys, or imagine GI. Joe. If they were injection molds, if you look at their body from the side, it's into pieces, and sometimes you can see a little seam that's true. On their head or on their arm or something, or probably not their arm, because those were separate. But yeah, sometimes you could see the seam where the two halves were pressed together. They wanted that smooth look for the rotational molding that that provides. But I guess the detail is the trade off. So that's the rotational molding. You don't have seams, but you lose fine detail. With injection molding, you can get the detail, but you can see the seams of where the two sides of the mold came together, I guess. But, man, I mean, how bad could that detail have been? Because when you look at those early Star Wars figures. The detail is not great. Had I been Mark Hamill be like, this is what you think my face looks like? Yes. I mean, it's gotten way better. Like, the stuff they're making today is amazing, but it's almost too good. You know what I mean? Yeah, there's some amazing stuff out there. But that was one of the great things about these, especially the three and three quarter inch guys. They were meant to be played with. They were meant to have imagination bestowed on them, and little child's hands not supposed to sit on your desk at work or something like that. Just as adornment. Like, they were meant to be played with, and they were subtly downgraded from the stuff that's out today. They were downgraded to an upgrade. Yeah. Like John Hodgman is literally screaming right now into his earbuds because we're nostalgic about something that was sorry, John. Decidedly crappier. Sorry. But it's true, though. For me, I think that they were great. Have I told you how I feel about the three and three quarter inch GI. Joe? No. We should talk about that some more. All right, so you've got this mold. Now press together. If it's injection, then you have to assemble it. If you have the arm separately, perhaps, or basically anything else that doesn't come on that original mold, you can have it to assemble it together, put all the little finishing details, maybe the clothing that you hate so much, maybe they're painted with a little more detail that you hate so much, and all the things that make a better action figure that you hate so much. It's not that I hate it. I don't know. I'm not quite sure how to put it back. I'm just teasing. Yeah. I don't hate it. I just really don't like it. The final key to this whole thing is packaging and shipping. So you think, big deal. What's the big deal with the package? But a lot of thought goes into the packaging, like you were talking about earlier with the GI. Joe actually advertising the other dudes on the package. Right, but that classic cardboard backed, clear plastic casing. Yeah, the shell that was sort of became the standard and what everyone came to think of as an action figure package. Yeah, and, man, that was another thing that with the wave of GI. Joe that I played with, that really put a lot of time and effort and thought into the packaging. And that was definitely part of it that really helped sell the action figures in a lot of ways. Yeah. Even though I could go right into it. Like I said, I disregarded the package. Well, with the later GI. Joe, there was a card on the back that had their code name, their specialty, their back story, and you clip them out and collect those as well. It was definitely part of it. I collected the Star Wars Trading. Cards, too. It's funny, I went back and got all my old cards not too long ago, and I didn't collect a ton of cards. I thought, like, maybe there'll be some ken Griffy rookie card in here with five grand. Foolishly, I thought I had something of value, which I did not. But I went through and I had some weird cards that I don't even remember collecting. I had welcome back cotter cards. No. Oh, yeah. That's twice that welcome back cotter has made an appearance in this episode. I was not expecting either one. I like the show a lot, but I don't remember buying these cards. I had jaws, the movie cards. I had lots of star wars cards. Some weird, like, I mean, I had football cards. I didn't even collect football cards. I didn't think yes, I did the same thing you did. I got all the boxes of baseball cards from my dad's house, and I was like, where did I get all these football cards? Who even collects football cards? It's untoward. It's weird. But the cool thing about the 70s cards is just the look when you could like yeah. You had to back the camera off so you could fit the afro into the card. And all these great haircuts and hairdo's that all these guys had back then. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Why is he holding that fist aloft and then chuck after the packaging, it goes to the stores and little kids like us buy it and love it. That's right. That's the end of the manufacturing process. Wow, what a journey. Yeah, that was something. We went all the way to china and back. He did. I don't think we pointed that out. A lot of times the molding process is in asia, so that's one reason it takes so long. Right, because they put them on slow boats. That's right. So you kind of tease this. Earlier you found a list of the rarest star wars figures. Yeah. And I looked at other lists, and they listed different figures, so I don't know if that's something that changes a lot as far as which ones are the most valuable, because I literally saw at least two different ones that were described as the holy grail of star wars figures. Yeah. So there can't be more than one holy grail. Nobody knows that. I do look forward to hearing from those in the know, but instead of saying these are the most valuable, let's just say we'll talk about some that are pretty rare and fairly valuable. I think that was pretty smart. So no one holds our feet to the flame, right. Yak face. I had not heard of yak face. Did you? No. So yak face was one of boba fett's. Either guards or mercenaries, but he worked for boba fett. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Star wars people. Stop. Stop. He works for job of the hut. He's not the same person. You just caused three car accidents, three Toyota Priuses. Right. Liberty Mutual is going to be like this. Josh Clark, we got to work in our actuarial table. Yes. He was part of the power of the Force line. He was canceled. And you'll find that here's a common thread here is rarity is what makes something valuable, and something can be a garbage figure, and they don't make many of them, and then it becomes viable. Right. And I think he wasn't necessarily a garbage figure. He was just released at a time when Star Wars figures, sales in general were waning. So they sent him over to Europe. And this thing says that he was never released in the States. I saw that he was, but it was for a very brief time in a very limited run. And then they sent him to Europe, I think, in 1985. Got you. Where Return of the Jedi had just come out. So they were crazy for anything that had anything to do with Return of Jedi. America was already like, who cares about Return of the Jedi? We're into Temple of Doom. Yes. Which I read an article about that recently. Supposedly, Temple of Doom was so dark because both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were going through breakups at the time that they were writing and making it. So we said, what can we do here? Why don't you pull out his heart and eat it? Right. That's what I feel like. Because that's what Tina did. All right. Weekly. So this is another job at the Hutt guards. Are you sure you didn't get those confused? I specifically went and looked up yak face. Okay. And he works for Job of the Hut. They even gave Job of the Hutts full name. And I just remember the job apart. He had more than that. Yeah, the Hut. He was a member of the Hutts, like the Race of Huts or the Tribe of Hut. So the job of the hut like Chuck the American. Got you. Well, I think I'm on record as being like I'm a big Star Wars fan. Loved them, saw them many, many times, collected the things, but then it ended. I'm not of the other half that really went down the rabbit hole. Who are still into it as much as before. Yeah. And even back then, like, new things, like Java the Hutt's full name. I never knew that stuff. I never read the books or anything like that. I did have some of those comics, though. I remember that now. I never had the comics. I was aware of the books, and there was a lot of books in there. Yeah. They still write them, too, I think, don't they? Sure. If it's a good thing, sure. Right. Is that good? I think we aswashed the people who are into the book all right, so we'll have another guard. Apparently. It's not super rare, but there is a limited edition version that is worth more. So the Carted mint condition Power of the Forest line in the 90s is worth a little bit more money. It says $35. That's what it's worth? No, that's what the normal one's worth. Okay. The one that has a special freeze frame slide, which I don't know what that is. Ah. Got you. That one's worth ten times that amount, according to this guy. All right. I remember the vinyl cape. Jawa was always worth a lot of money because they came out with a cloth cape. I know, it's creepy, so I'm going to throw that in there just off the top of my head. There's also, I think, a vinyl cape and a cloth caped. Imperial Guard. Remember the Emperor's red cloaked. Guards And I think Return of the Jedi, maybe. Empire Strikes Bank? I don't know. I'm afraid to say anything out loud now. I am, too. Let's just press stop. Let's skip that next one and go straight to Boba Fett. How does that sound? Okay. Boba Fett. Very famously, in 1979, there was a Boba Fett that actually shot a missile, which, as every parent knows, is chokable. The parents worst nightmare. Is that the term acokable a choke able, something you can choke on. Is that a real parents term? Yeah. That's awesome. I did not know. Yeah. Supposedly anything smaller than the size of a toilet paper roll tube. What is it? chokeable smaller than that? Yeah. So, like, if you can fit something through a toilet paper tube, then your kid can choke on it. Got you. That's what they say. Who said that? I don't know. The Today Show. Dumb parenting blogs. It makes sense, though. Yeah. Can't fit a football through that. Can't choke on a football. That's correct. The system works. You could choke on a tiny football, though. I guess so. All right. The choke abbot of Fett, obviously, they said this is a choking hazard, so they scrapped the plans and redesigned it. And so they did eventually release the figure, but it had that, and I had this one. Not the one that shot the rocket, because they never released that one. Right. I specifically remember being in the same room with one that shot a rocket. You sure it wasn't hacked? Here's the other possible explanation. I saw on an ad, and I'm confusing reality with television again, because it says here they never release them in stores. I saw that, too, but I'm like, I swear I saw one of these things. Or maybe we were just playing with it, and we're like, this thing sucks. If it actually shot the missile, it would be so much better. And I imagine what that would be like and then accidentally formed a memory. Who knows? I'm 40 years old now. I can't remember what was going on when I was seven or eight. As far as how valuable these things are, if you can get your hands on one, I mean, I've seen things all over the place. One was sold for $18,000 last year. Wow. But then I also saw one where supposedly $100,000 offer at a sotheby's auction was turned down. What? So I have no idea the value of these dudes, but it's a lot of dough. Is that the holy grail one? Well, this is one of the holy grails. Do you remember what another holy grail you saw was? Yeah. The other one is supposedly the most valuable is the double telescoping lightsaber for Obiwan, Darth Vader, and Luke. And I think Luke's is the most expensive, if you remember the little did you have any of these? I had a couple. So the lightsaber guys had a thing on the bottom of their arm, a little groove cut out with a little plastic knob that you would shove up toward the wrist, and lightsaber would come out of the hand as if it were turning on. Right. The double telescoping, because that's a telescoping feature. Double telescoping means that you could extend it even further out from the original telescope. And those supposedly are super rare and worth a lot of dough. So that one I saw actually online. Oh, man. I can't remember the site, but it's a great Star Wars action figure site, and they had a picture of it. Have you seen it? Yeah, I thought I had one, but I can't find it, so I don't think I do. The regular lightsaber that they had was just fine, but then the double telescoping part was just, like, this extra thinner, pointy piece of plastic that hung down at, like, a weird angle. It didn't keep going straight. Yeah, they always kind of bent, and it looked broken. Yeah. But even if I did have one, it's well worn, so it's not like I mean, I think all of these things it's always, like, mint condition in the package. It's worth this. Don't even talk to me if it's not mint. That's the slogan. So I would love some of this cleared up by experts. We'll hear from them. The Boba Fett matter. Yeah. I don't even know why I'm asking. The Boba Fett matter. Which one is truly the holy grail? What happened with the Kenner the Migo Star Wars deal. Right. And did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Yes. We need answers, people. You got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a big overview. There's clearly many more stories to be told. I got a couple more I just want to give shouts out all right, yojo.com. Okay, if you were into GI. Joe's and you want to feel nostalgic, go check that site out. It's amazing. And then I created a gallery a few years ago called hilarious knockoffs and bootlegs of beloved toys. That was great. And it's just like this slideshow of toys from around the world that are it's pretty obvious what they're supposed to be, but they're not. Like, the name is just a little off. They tried to come up with a new brand altogether, but it's just some cheap version of something great, so go check that out, too. It's kind of cool. Yeah, it was fun to put together. I bet. And that's it, man. That's all I got. Go watch the GI. Joe PSAs by Eric. Fenceler again. They still hold up. Oh, yeah. Do you remember those no. Where it was like just weird dubs of those GI. Joe PSAs, like, now you know and knowing it's half the battle. Yeah. You haven't seen these? I don't think so. Okay, I'll send them to you. You're going to die laughing. Good. Yeah. You'll love them. You've been trying to kill me for years. Delightful way to do it. But this time I won't be wearing gloves coming at your neck. That's it for me, man. Yeah, that's it for me. Okay, well, if you want to know more about action figures, you can type those words into the search bar of your favorite search engine. Since I said search engine and didn't do any buzz marketing, it's time for listener mail. We're going to plug Kiva, which we haven't done in a long time. That's a good idea. Kiva is a micro lending website that we've had a team now, stuff you should know. Team for jeez, how many years? Six or seven. I think it was 2008 or 2009. Seven or eight years. Wow, it's been a while. All right, so this is from Jordan, and then I'm going to go over a little bit more about how our team is looking. Hey, guys. Once I listened to a podcast where you promoted Kiva, I decided to Google the Kiva donation thing and eventually found it correctly. As Kibacom, I immediately love the site. It's the epitome of how to take the globalized world and use that for good. So often, donations come in the form of awkward late night infomercials or five second quips at the grocery line where you begrudgingly make an enemy out of the 17 year old clerk for saying, no, I don't want to give a dollar to needy children. While all types of donations are generally good, kiva makes you feel even more personal. And once one can certainly give their money to needs that are important to them, you probably get your money back, which is great, but no way did that motivate me to loan. And I suspect that most people who use Kiva would also be happy to have their money go to those in need without getting a return. However, if I do decide to receive my money back, I will certainly use those funds to circulate that Kiva site again. In other words, reload. That's one of the keys. I think I'm feeling preachy now for writing you an email on the basis that I just loaned what amounts to a small amount of cash. But I just want to thank you guys for sharing that site and allowing people like myself to make their lives better. It's from Jordan Bachelor, who claims to be a US defector. You can move from the US. I can't remember where he lives now. He was just being cheeky. I got you. So we started this Kiva team a long time ago, and right now we have over 9000 members, and we are almost at $4 million. Dude, that is insane. $393,325 loan. That is 143,155 loans, average of 16 loans per member. And just to give you an idea of how it works, you donate money, you will most likely get paid back, and then they say you can check out and take your money back, or you can roll that into another loan for sure. I started off with a couple of $100 way back when, and that now just because I keep reinvesting. It has grown to 1125.47 loans, and my default rate is only 4%. Nice. Yeah, the default rate is not bad at all. It's not bad. You can take $25 even and keep reloading that, and that in a few years, five or six years can be hundreds and hundreds of dollars reload to people. Right. Really makes a big difference. We did our research on Kiva. They're not perfect, but we think they do a really good job. Yeah, for sure. And we have a stuff you should know. Team. So we would love to see people sign up for it, push us over that $4 million mark, which is crazy. Yeah. We're not exclusive, we're not snobs, and neither is anybody on our team. It's a very welcoming group of people who are really active on the board. They're led unofficially, but de facto by Glenn and Sonya, who have emerged to be this great team leaders that just keep everybody going and motivated and moderate and make sure everybody's on the up and up. They send us emails and reminders about how we're doing. Hats off to those guys. Thank you guys for that. Yeah. So, Kiva.org, I think I said.com earlier, and just go to the team section search stuff you should know. Join the team, throw $25 somebody's way. You can give to people that are doing things that are close to your heart or maybe countries you've been to that you want to help support. You can give to women or men, and it's just you can really dial down and give very specifically how you want to give. Yes. And if you want to know even more about it, you can go listen to our episode on Microlending, and we've written a couple of blog posts on it, and I think there's something on HuffPo even that they published of ours. But I think why we land on Kiva and it really addresses a lot of stuff that people have raised, and we've said, hey, man, it's still totally worth it. Yeah, go check it out. All right. If you want to get in touch with us. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@householdworks.com. It is always join us at our home on the web. Stuffyhoodnow.com STUFFYou Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean you're dog halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-08-03-sysk-villisca-ax-murder-final.mp3 | Who Committed the 1912 Villisca Ax Murders? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/who-committed-the-1912-villisca-ax-murders | In a small town in Iowa in 1912 eight people were murdered in the grisliest of ways while they slept. Local reputations were ruined when accusations flew, but could a drifting serial killer working across the Midwest have been behind it? | In a small town in Iowa in 1912 eight people were murdered in the grisliest of ways while they slept. Local reputations were ruined when accusations flew, but could a drifting serial killer working across the Midwest have been behind it? | Thu, 03 Aug 2017 13:00:03 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=3, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=215, tm_isdst=0) | 44091027 | 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. There's Jerry. Put the three of us together, add a little of mystery, a lot of mayhem. You got the stuff you should know and one hacks yeah. How many is this? Three. Yes. And then this one, I couldn't think of any more. Well, it's funny because I looked, I was like, I wonder if we could do a spin off show just on ex murders. And Wikipedia had 30 listed. I'm surprised that's it there's like ten mentioned in this article alone. Well, we'll see why there are so many axe murders. This whole researching the Villizca axe murder kind of solved a question I've had that I didn't realize I knew had it pronounced Valisca? We just settled that by calling the vests at Town Hall. I know, that was a pretty great moment. Right before we recorded, I was like, are you sure there's a Valisa? Josh called the town hall and lied. Well, it was kind of a bet that you settled. Yeah, we just never put money on it. So whoever answers the phone at the Valisca Town Hall, first of all, thank you. You got a call today, so congratulations. Second of all, you just spoke to an internet celebrity. I don't know man, I think Valisca is on the map and it is 100% because of this murder. Well, if you just type in Valisca, almost all you see is stuff about the Sax murder. Well, yeah, the site Villiscaio.com is entirely dedicated to the sex murder. It's a pretty big deal. Yeah, no, it doesn't mention it at all, but all the copy is just in the outline of the shape of an X. They talk about like their boys club and stuff that they're doing their 4 July, but it's in the shape of an axe. The population in elevation is in a drop of blood coming off of the axe. Yeah, it's population not as much as it was on June 9. That's morbid. Did you hear about this before? Well, I think after Henry Kaifect, we had some emails from probably local Iowans, Iowania nights saying, hey, you guys should not into X murder. Get a load of it. If you're into reporting on grizzly crimes, you should check out the one we had in 1912. They were right, man. So before we get into it, I think it goes without saying, listeners, that this is a very horrific grisly crime that we're going to talk about in some detail. Right. Listen at your own discretion. Ex murder is in the title, everybody. Yeah. Just want to make sure we cover ourselves there. This is one of the most brutal crimes in American history. Yeah, and a lot of people don't know about it, man. Well, let's stop jabbering, get this crimino. All right. Where was this from, by the way? Well, one of the articles we researched was from Mike Dash, the Smithsonian magazine. They do great work. Great work. There's another guy named named Edperly who we have to give a shout out to, who has, like, a whole site called Ask Ed that's dedicated to this murder. I researched it for, like, 55 years or something like that. Does he write one of the two books, probably? Sure. Yeah. He's widely known as the expert on the Valiscaxmer. He knows everything there is to know, and he's got a really fascinating site. If you're even remotely into true crime and this thing floats your boat, go check out Ed's site. And you will just spend days pouring over it. Yeah. One thing I realized in researching this was it was way easier to get away with murder. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of agreement that had this been done today, they would have caught the guy very quickly. Sure. But yeah, 1912, it was like you wear gloves and you just confounded their only means of detection, basically. It's not from an eyewitness. Pretty much. Yeah. So we keep saying 1912 specifically, like you said, June 9 in the little town. Well, it was one of those things where it crossed over into midnight. Right. So June 9, 10th depends on if you're still at partying potato, potato. Valisca. Valisa, right. Yeah. But at 508 East Second Street in Valisca, Iowa, which is in the county of Montgomery in the southeast of the state, I believe. Not as far from here as I thought. No. Just looking on a map. And I was like, Wait. I was there. I thought I was, like, basically in Canada. No. Where is it? We're right in the middle of the country. I did not realize that, like, it doesn't look further west than, like, Dallas. I can believe that. But it was the north that gets you. The northern direction. That's what gets you. Sure. So on this night, June 19 twelve and this little house, there were eight people sleeping. There were a mom and a dad, joe and Sarah Moore, and then their four kids. What were their names? Charles, I believe. Herman, Catherine, Boyd and Paul. Right. And then downstairs, there were two additional people sleeping in the house. Little Lena and Ina stiltinger. And they were just having a sleepover, right? Yeah. They were friends of Catherine, the oldest daughter, or the only daughter, I guess, of the morse. And the whole group had been at church. They were Presbyterians, and they had been at church that day. It was Sunday for a special Children's Day mass that Mrs. Moore had helped put on and the kids had all participated in. And at that mass, catherine had asked her two friends, lena and IA, the sisters, to spend the night. And so they came back home with the Moors from the Children's Day Mass. And by, I think, ten or 1030, they were all at home in bed, and the lights were out the house was settled in dark. Yeah, man, they're still injured girls. I mean, this is all very sad, but anytime I hear of a fateful turn like oh yeah, we just spent the night there that night, right. And things go bad. It always, I don't know, bothers me more. Yeah, for sure. Twists of fate are terrible, especially when they result in terrible deaths. So very late at night, like you said, after midnight, someone crept in to the back of the house which was not locked. That's up for debate. Oh, yeah. All right. Locked or unlocked, they got in without raising suspicion. Right. Yeah. A two story house. And this is a small town. I don't even think 2000 people living there then and I think even less now than there were back then. Yeah, it's one of those places. So this person, and I think by all accounts, we can safely say it was a man creeps in this house with an axe from the property. Yeah. It was Joe Moore's own axe. Yeah. And as we will see, apparently they call these weapons of convenience because back in the day, every single house in the US had an axe. Like in the front or backyard. That just explained it. That was the question I didn't realize I'd had. Why were there so many axe murderers at a certain period of time in American history is because everybody had an axe. Yeah. And you would leave it just like chopped into the stump that you use as the chopping block or whatever. It would be like a weapon of convenience. Yeah. These days you would have to kill people with like a mailbox. Right. Just something that everyone has, like a silicone spatula or speed internet cable. There you go. Choke somebody with that. Yeah. Okay, all joking aside. So this dude creeps in there, he's got this axe he gets, and this is very key here, he gets the lamp, an oil amp from the dresser inside the house. He takes off the chimney, the glass and takes it off, bends the wick in half so the flame is smaller, lights the lamp and then turns it down really low and then commences creeping. Yeah. With an axe in hand in this low light oil lamp. And the other chimneyless lamp, which we'll see is a big clue. Yeah. So he goes up the stairs, apparently. So he passes the Stillinger girls first, goes up the stairs, he passes the children's bedroom and then opposite, I believe, the landing from the children's bedroom are Joe and Sarah's room, or is Joe and Sarah's room and they're sleeping. And he sets the oil lamp down, I believe, at the foot of the bed. And he raises the axe over his head and using the flat side of the axe, not the sharp blade side, but the other side, he delivers a blow to Joe's head. Joe, I believe, is lying on his back even though the Smithsonian article said something different. Yeah. Raised it so high he even gouged the ceiling. Correct? Yeah. Brought it down hard on Joe's head. Probably killed him instantly from that one blow. Yeah. Then apparently he didn't disturb Sarah at all because he did the same thing to her. And both of them were found in a position that they would have been sleeping, and there wasn't like the bed clothes weren't ruffled, their arm wasn't up to defend themselves. They died in their sleep, it appeared. Right? Yes. So he kills the parents either immediately or they die probably pretty quickly. Right. Leaves the room and goes next door. And this is really just almost too awful to talk about, but he kills all the children in their sleep, one by one, but again without waking any of them. Yeah. By the time he got to the Stillinger girls downstairs, it seems evidence points to the fact that they may have awakened finally. One of them, the older one, lingnan, I believe, is the older one. And then he dispatches with both of them in the same manner, grizzly, awful, awful murder. So that's bad enough, right? This guy just went around and murdered eight people, six of them children under the age of twelve or twelve or under with the blunt end of an act. That's bad enough, but then it just gets a million times worse. And this is probably why. This axe murder is just part of American history, whether we like it or not. So what the guy does next is, well, he took the axe and he flips it over and he takes the sharp side and he goes around and he starts bashing everybody's head in one by one. Apparently, Joe was later found to have been struck as many as 30 times in the head with the axe. Just one by one, he went around and completely caved in the head and face of all of his victims methodically, throughout the house after they were dead, which is a bizarre, horrible thing to do. Yeah. So then it gets a little bit strange. He goes around to the rooms and all over the house, really, and does different things in each one. He covers windows with sheets and things. He covers mirrors? Yeah. All the mirrors in the house are covered. He covered the faces of, I believe, all the victims, right? Yeah. One way or another. I believe all of their faces were covered with either sheets or pillowcases or I think in the case of the girls, he pulled their dresses up over their faces. Yes. We'll talk about that in a second. Yeah. I think in the serial killer or psychopath mode, though, I've heard of stuff like that before, though, right? You get the idea that the murderer doesn't want the victim looking at them, which may also explain why you bashed their faces in. Who knows? So the guy apparently hangs out for a little while. He does other weird things, though. The bacon. He grabbed a two pound slab of bacon and I saw elsewhere that there was another slab of bacon found in the house, but there was at least one two pound slab of bacon that he wrapped in a dish towel and then left on the floor of one of the bedrooms. So weird, there was a bowl of bloody water that was later found. He washed himself off. He washed off the axe, although he left it behind and he apparently hung out for a little while in the house before leaving, sometime before 05:00 A.m.. So the murders took place around midnight and then come 05:00 A.m., the house is dark still. It's 05:00 A.m.. So that's not the weirdest thing. Although we're talking about Iowa, so plenty of people were up at five, including the neighbor, a woman named Mary Peckham. And she noticed that there wasn't anybody up at the house, which was a little odd. It was a Monday morning now and by seven she thought it was just downright eerie that there was no sign of life at the house. She went over and let the Moore's chickens out so that they could pick around and feed. She called Joe Moore's store and said, hey, has Joe showed up and found from the employee that he hadn't? And finally one of those two get in touch with a guy named Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother. And Ross comes over and unlocks the door. The front door is locked and he goes inside and he comes almost immediately rushing back out, calling for the local marshall to be called. Yeah. Basically he gets hank Horton is the marshall's name. He gets him on the scene. And this is where things just kind of go berserk. It's such a small town, such a grisly crime. Any chances of preserving a crime scene, and this is 1912. I don't even know how much a small town like this knows about preserving a crime scene at the time. But any hopes were lost within those first few hours after the discovery because by all accounts, there were 100 or more people that went through that house, from doctors to coroners to investigators to just townspeople right. That were allowed to just go in there and check things out. Yeah. So the first group that comes with the marshall, Hank Horton right. Was two doctors and a minister. J. Clark Cooper. Right. Great doctor name, j. Clarke Cooper, and Edgar Huff and Wesley Ewing, who was the minister of the church, they were the first contingent to make it into the house after Ross Moore came running out. Yeah. So they go in and they know enough to not disturb things too much. Another guy gets brought in, La Linquist, he's the coroner. He tries to take some notes about the crime scene. But the person who got the most information was another doctor. His name was FS. Williams. Yeah. FS. Williams was the one who examined the body. And at a later inquest, he had the most details to offer about the bodies, the positions, all that stuff. So when those guys walked in, they were at least well versed enough to know, not disturb things as much as possible, or at least more than the townspeople. New and FS. Williams allegedly came out of the house pretty shaken and said, don't go in there, boys. You'll regret it to your last day. And the townspeople said, Nuts to you. We're going inside. We want to see some dead bodies. And they all regretted it, probably till their last day. Yeah, because they not only mess with the crime scene, they poked around. There was supposedly the town drunk, took fragments of Joe Moore's skull as mementos. The crime scene was toast, like you said. If it could have ever been preserved, it was toast. And even the local drugst showed up with his camera to help preserve the crime scene because he heard that the townspeople were tramping all over it. And Ross Moore, not understanding what he was doing through the guy out, thought he was being a ghoul, trying to get pictures. So the crime scene is utterly and completely lost. Yes. And one of the things about Velesca almost said Pasilla, is that it was a train town. There were about 30 trains every day that went through there. And so by this time, unless this person was local and maybe hiding out locally, by all accounts, the murder had probably hopped. The train was out of there by that time. But they didn't go. They didn't realize this until they had already released some bloodhounds. They searched the countryside. There was, like, a pretty big search to find whoever did this, and they didn't find anybody. So the town was just terrified. Town of 2000 people, eight, including six children, had just been murdered with an axe in your town. And now the sun is starting to go down and nobody's been caught. Right. So let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about suspect number one right after this. Okay? So suspect number one might be a little surprising when you first hear that he was a state senator, very well respected by some as a local businessman and a very prominent Methodist, since the town was pretty sharply divided between Methodists and Presbyterian those days. Right. That stuff mattered to those people. And his name was Frank Jones. And Methodists immediately said, no, he's got to be innocent. This is a fine, upstanding member of our church. Right. Pres materials are like, no, it's got to be him. And at first I was like, well, why would it be the state center? None of this makes sense. There were a couple of big things that made people believe that he could be the guy. Joe Moore worked for him for seven years and was one of his best salesmen on his farm equipment team. And apparently he left in 19 seven and was not too happy with the work hours, which were 16 hours days, six days a week. Who would be it's like us. And then set up a rival business and even took one of the clients, the John Deere Company. Yeah. That was a big one, I'm sure. So big that when Sarah Peckham called Joe Moore's employee to tell him the news, joe Moore's employee called the John Deere people in Omaha to let them know. Oh, sure. They were like the third people called after the bodies were discovered. So he takes John Deere with them. So this set up an obvious rivalry. And worse than that, apparently and I don't know if this is super confirmed, but at least the rumor was that Joe Moore had slept with Jones's daughter in law. From what I understand, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that's been understood is true. That's true. Yeah. So slept with his daughter in law, who apparently kind of had several affairs in town and was not very discreet. Yeah. Apparently, according to Mike Dash at Smithsonian, she used to set up her meet and greets over the phone. I think it's called a liaison. Oh, that's right. Over the phone. And this was at a time when there was a switchboard operator running the phones in the town. Yes. They could listen. Sat there and listen. Yeah. And this lady obviously didn't care. So apparently it was pretty well known that Joe Moore had had an affair with FF Jones daughter in law, which is huge. She put those two things together. They were not friends. The fact that apparently they used to cross to the other side of the street to keep from encountering one another, that's a big deal in that town. Small town. Right. So suspicion fell onto FF, apparently, from what I understand, within a couple of hours of the bodies being discovered. Yeah. And suspicion not that he may have done it, that Jones was actually the killer, but maybe Jones, because he was 57 years old and probably had some pretty good money, clearly. Oh, yeah. He was wealthy. He was building a bank, overseeing his new bank being built, when he got the news that the bodies were you're building a bank? You're rolling in it. Yeah. So everyone thought that he probably hired somebody out to kill him. And there was the Burns Detective Agency. There was a detective named James Wilkerson who said, you know what? I think you're right. I think he hired someone. I think that man's name was William Mansfield. William Blacky Mansfield. No, he wasn't already. He would later be, I believe, convicted of an axe murder himself. Yes. Which is probably one of the chief reasons he was suspect. Well, no, that came a couple of years after, I believe that was 1914 or 15, that he murdered his wife, her parents and their child. His child with an ax, right? Yeah. This guy was a bad dude. But there was one problem with James Wilkerson's theory. Blackie Mansfield had an airtight alibi. He was in Illinois, hundreds of miles away, when the crimes occurred. Not only did the foreman vouch for him, but the payroll record showed very clearly that he had not been in Villisca that day and couldn't have done it. Yeah. So he was exonerated. But a lot of townspeople still thought that how it was back then and still is today. To a certain degree. Sure. Especially in a small town. Yeah. People were convinced that he was the guy, and a lot of people probably went to their grave thinking that. So even though, Chuck, that Mansfield was exonerated and like you said, a lot of people thought that FF. Jones apparently went by. FF. Did have something to do with it. The Stillinger girl's father, and Ross Moore, joe Moore's brother. Both thought FF. Jones was behind this. Right. And Wilkinson made it like his personal mission to take Jones down and apparently ruined his political career, cost him reelection to state Senate. I would think that probably happened anyway. Just from suspicion. Maybe. But I think there's something between townspeople suspecting you and a detective, like bringing evidence against you and getting a grand jury to indict you. It was like the good old days when you could be suspected of an ex murder and still win a Senate seat. Right? Exactly. But Jones, he didn't win reelection. And apparently, to their dying day, some people assume that it was him behind it. Another sure candidate is not the right word. Lynn george jacqueline Kelly. He's a man with four names. He went by George Kelly, though. He was an Englishman, which was probably a little weird at the time. Sure. Do you live in there? No one had ever seen an Englishman in Iowa. Maybe he was a preacher, though. And it says in the Smithsonian article, a known sexual deviant. He definitely had some mental health problems, but there are some things in his case where we're suspicious and others that made him not a great suspect. One of which he was a little guy. He was five to \u00a3119. So maybe not the best suspect for swinging an axe like that. Yeah. Although he could have been strong as an axe. You never know. Sure. Tons of zoll guys. Yeah. But they're usually good with, like, jujitsu sleeper holds rather than axe swinging. They just scramble up on top of you before you know what, their legs are around your neck and you're losing contact. Yeah. Their thumbs are in your eyeballs and that kind of thing. Right. Yeah. So, fair enough. But he was left handed. And the coroner Linquist, did say that from their analysis, as rudimentary as it might be in 1912, it could probably at least determine that it was a left handed assailant. From the blood spatter, I believe, yes. On the walls. Good for them for being that advanced. So there are some other things that implicated George Kelly. One. He was in veliska. He was a traveling preacher. He and his wife toured around and they were in Vellisca the day of the murder. They were actually at the children's service that the Moors and the Stillinger girls were at. Again, this guy was a sex maniac is what he was known as. Yes. I kind of wonder about that. Does that mean you like to have sex? I guess. He placed an ad and this is in the he placed an ad in the Omaha World Herald looking for a stenographer who would be willing to pose as a model. And when one woman named Justinine Hodgson replied to his ad, he sent her a letter. Apparently it was quite lewd. So much so that the court that heard the case against him said that it was so obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy as to be offensive to this honorable court and improper to be spread upon the record thereof. I really want to know what was in that list. One of the things was that the lady would be required to type in the nude. Yeah, this is the no, that's what I'm saying. I wonder how it would be judged by today's standard, although by today's standard, if you send a potential job candidate a letter that says, going to require you to be typing in the nude yeah. You would get in some trouble for that. Sure. I just don't know that you would say it was obscene. Luden lacivia. No, I'm with you. They'd say that's kink, but I think the okay. George Kelly was a kinky traveling preacher who had his wife in tow. And he was in Villisca at the time of the murders, and he left the next morning on a train. Right. But there was supposedly a witness that said that he had a very intriguing statement when he got off of that train that very morning. Yeah. He apparently referenced the murders, but he had left town before they found out about the murders. But then later on those people recanted those statements. Correct. Right. So when Frank Jones, FF Jones, had a grand jury brought to hear evidence against him, he was exonerated. Same thing. Not with George Kelly. Actually, I should say he was actually the only person to ever go to trial for these murders. And he was tried twice. The first time the jury found eleven to one in his favor. The second jury acquitted him entirely. The evidence against him was just too flimsy, and it probably wasn't him. Yeah. I mean, the idea was they were like, he was at that church service, he's a pervert. He saw these kids in the service. He went back and peeked into their house and camped out in their barn. Right. And the evidence there was there were some hay bales in the barn that had depressions, as if someone had been laying on them. And if you laid down in one of them, there was a peephole right there in the barn where you could see the house. This is all pretty flimsy. There was also, though, I think, one of the reasons why the case was brought against him. He was specifically tried for the murder of Lena Stillinger. And that's noteworthy because although they don't say in the official court record directly that she may have been sexually assaulted or that some sort of sex crime had been committed against her, supposedly she had been found with her nightclothes hiked up over her waist, like above her waist. Her undergarments had been taken off and stuffed under the bed, and then her legs had been arranged so that her genitalia was prominent. Right. That was done after she had been murdered. And I think that's one of the reasons why they suspected George Kelly. Because to add a sexual dimension to this brutal murder, they said, wow, this guy is just enough of a sex maniac for that to be possible. Yeah. Oh, I forgot about this fact that he actually returned a week later and posed as a Scotland Yard detective so he could get a tour of the house. That is so George Kelly. Well, it's definitely one of those things that makes you go, wait a minute. Return to the scene of the crime. You lied to get in there and look at the house. Right. But apparently everyone wanted to go look at the house. And plus, posing, we've seen so many cartoony movies that somebody gets the deer stalker hat and a pipe and says they're from Scotland Yard. Posing could be like somebody saying, like, oh, you must be from Scotland Yard, and, like, grunting in the affirmative. Yeah, that's true. I guess that technically constitutes posing in the real world. Apparently signed a confession. Oh, yeah. That was a big one, too. Yeah. But the confession literally said, I killed the children upstairs first and the children downstairs last. I knew God wanted me to do it this way. Slay utterly came to mind and I picked up the axe, went into the house and killed them. But he took it back later. All that very specific stuff I said about Ging's family didn't really do it, so he was exonerated. So far, the little town of Valisca has looked around and said, we couldn't find any tramps. So who's the person that hated Joe More the most? FF Jones. Well, it wasn't him. Who's the weirdest pervert we can find? Who is in town of the Englishman? George Kelly? It wasn't him. So they didn't know. A lot of people went to their graves dying, not knowing what happened, and we still don't know what happened. But with the hindsight of, I guess, modern forensic techniques, modern profiling, and the work of dedicated historians like Ed Upperley, we have something of a clear picture emerging. And that picture seems to be centering on a serial killer. We'll talk about that theory more right after this. All right. So we've ruled out these local suspects localish, I guess, in Kelly's case, and now they're the modern take on this is that this was a serial killer because in 1911 and 1912, there were a lot of axe murders in the Midwest, at least ten, everywhere from Colorado Springs to Ellsworth, Kansas. And many of them had similar traits. Yeah. Like some very startlingly similar traits. Right. But not all of them. And some of them are like we'll go through these, but some are like well, in five of them, these same things happen. In two of them, the same things happen. So it makes me wonder if it wasn't if they're kind of grouping too many of these together. This does add up early, actually. Whittles it down to five, including Valisca. Oh, I thought three was at five. Five. So there's three that happened in 1911. There was one that happened in Colorado Springs, Colorado that supposedly kicked the whole thing off, followed by Mammoth in Illinois. I forgot. The S is silent. Ellsworth, Kansas. Then there was one in Paola, Kansas, and then the last one in Villisca. And those five crimes have some similarities that make them really suspicious. The idea of just, like, five different people or even a couple of different people separately committing these crimes, and as Edwards puts it, kind of dismissively the idea that these were local vendettas or that people were, like, argument over farming or something. Right. Yeah. That's not what these crimes reflect at all. They reflect the work of just a straight up nut job psychopath who are few and far between. The fact that these things occurred between October of 1911 and June of 1912 suggests strongly that there was one person doing them. Yeah. Well, there was that final one in Columbia, Missouri in December 19. Twelve. And one of the theories is that a man named Henry Lee Moore killed Georgia Moore in Columbia, Missouri, who was his mother. Mary Wilson. Is that the guy? No. It would be weird to commit a series of murders and then finish up with your own family. Right. Usually it's the other way around. Yeah. Right. So, like, if you're going to go off on a killing spree, usually start you practice on your family first, get a feel for it. All right. This guy Henry Lee Moore, aside from having three names, is not a good suspect for the serial killer. Right. He apparently wanted the deeds to his family house. And like you said, it's very rare for a serial killer to go back. You know the deal with the three names. They don't all have three names. No, I know, but so many of them do. Well, no, the news reports it that way. To distinguish them from every other Henry Moore in the world. Got you. So everyone's always like serial killers have three names? No, they're just reported that way. That's awesome. Yeah. I love it when things are just explained. Yeah. I wrapped up in a nice little bow. Thanks for that. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, I think, went by Lee Oswald. I think you're right. Yeah. So if anyone ever writes a story about Charles Wayne Bryant, we're in trouble. Oh, yeah, I'm in trouble. No. I wouldn't kill you. Thanks, man. I wouldn't kill you, either. Hey, you want to shake on it, Jerry? Witness so the Henry Lee Moore thing, he's almost like a red herring, like a lot of people say, well, he was the one. He was the serial killer behind it. Because the serial murders started right after he got out of prison in Kansas. Yes. And then they ended right after he got caught in Columbia, Missouri, with his family. Yeah. I mean, it kind of makes sense. It does. But that's where the whole thing really begins and ends. So a lot of people say, well, it wasn't Henry Lee Moore, so it wasn't a serial killing. Sorry. But his killing his own family was about obtaining the deeds to his family house. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Oh, so that was greed motivated. Right. Okay. Not a serial psychopathic, sex based serial killings free. Right? This guy was just a jerk. So since Henry Lee Moore is associated with the serial murder theory, once somebody then finds out that it wasn't Henry Lee Moore, they stopped thinking it was a serial murder right up early. Says, not so fast. Just because Henry Lee Moore is out of the equation doesn't mean there's not a serial killer involved. Yeah, he's like, consider the similarities between these five cases. And they're pretty thick. Right. In a couple of the cases, there were oil lamps found where the chimneys were removed and set aside, and the wicks were bent in half to keep the light low. Yeah, that's a big one. Axes were used in four of the five, but he says that's just probably a matter of convenience. A pipe, I think, was used in the Mammoth, Illinois case, which is, again, an implement of convenience, too, right? Sure. Don't have an axe handy. Go for a lead pipe. Right? Yeah. You probably didn't bring that with you, right? Tell them about the mirrors, Chuck. Well, I mean, at several of these places, the mirrors were covered up. I mean, that's a big one. Mirrors and windows in one of the places, the telephone was covered. And the thought there is that, like you said earlier, they don't want the victims to be watching them even after death or to be seen in the mirrors and windows being covered. But the phone, apparently, it was one of those old box phones on the wall that you crank, and it sort of looks like a face, right? When you look at it, it looks like two eyes and a nose. And so the thought was that that even looks like a face to the deranged serial killer. So they'll cover that up as well. Right. Because nothing else makes much sense in 1912. You're not getting phone calls after midnight. You probably don't get more than a couple of phone calls a week in 1912, right? Most people have phones. Yeah, and throwing a sheet over it wouldn't disable it anyway. No. There was another female victim, a young female victim in Monmouth who was found basically the same way that Lena Stillinger was found, with her nightgown thrown up over waste and her undergarments removed. And apparently there was a similarity in, I believe, Mama and Valiska, one other town, too, where the killer went on to try to kill again. Yeah, this was the most interesting to me either successfully did kill again. There was one where he went to an adjacent house whose backyard connected the first murder house and then went in and killed another family right afterwards. That was Colorado Springs. And then in Villisca, the telephone operator, who was like, sleeping in the telephone switchboard headquarters because no calls were coming through. She reported the doorknob being tried about 2 hours after the More house members were murdered. Yeah, like heard footsteps come up to the door, try to open it, and then heard the footsteps leave. Yeah, that's a little shaky. But the last one was the one that kind of sent the chill up my spine. It was the one in Kansas specifically. You said paola. I bet you there are people there laughing because it's probably pronounced Paola or something. Probably, but who knows? P-A-O-L-A kansas. There was a second family, mrs. Longmire, the Longmire family. They were awakened, she and her daughter, at about midnight to the sound of broken glass, went downstairs and saw a dude in their dining room who had just broken oil lamp, chimney and then got the heck out of there through a window. They actually saw a guy. So think about that, Chuck. Think about that. They woke up and saw the man who was about to probably bludgeon them all to death with an ax. This probably leaving the house. Yeah. And these were all train towns, so they were all linked by train depot. So by all accounts, there was a train going serial killer for a couple of years in the Midwest killing people, hopping trains never, ever caught. Isn't that nuts? It is nuts. And the Villisca Axe murders were probably one of his crazy. But we'll never know now. You know, when you say stuff like that or when you see stuff like that in print, too, we'll never know who it was. It makes you wonder, like, what kind of technology are we going to have in the future? Like, will we never know or are we going to come up with something one day where we're like, oh, it was this guy. Yeah, like, now we know. You know? Who knows? The future knows that's who knows? We should do one on edge. Okay. That's kind of one of the big ones we haven't covered. Okay. I got a couple more, too. Yeah, I don't want to even tease them yet. Okay. Okay. True crime. Maybe we'll do one like this October. Okay. We used to do multiple kind of creepy episodes. I think we did last time, too. Last October. Yeah. All right, we'll look forward to another ghoulish serial killer type thing. Okay. Yeah, we did hinter K FEC. I think so. Yeah. Okay. If you want to know more about the villisca ex murders, well, again, strongly recommend you go look up Ed Upperley. You can read the Smithsonian article, the Ex Murderer Who Got Away. Which is great. And there were plenty of other articles that we relied on that we loved. Thank you for those. In the meantime, you can also hang out with us on Hostelfworks.com and our famous search bar. And the search bar. Got it in there. It's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. Love the show. And now I have even more reason to promote your podcast to everyone I know. I work in a small family business with my cousin. In this previous January, started experiencing severe gastrointestinal issues. I love this email. Yeah. Remember this one? It was, like, from yesterday. I won't go into detail. But for months afterward, he saw specialist after specialist hoping to find out the route. Tested for crohn's, ulcers, IBS, everything under the sun, none of which had a positive result or diagnosis. Couldn't focus on anything, no energy. Took a ton of time away from work. He felt totally lost and even sought the help of a psychologist because of his diminished work ethic, deteriorating quality of life. You see where this is going. People think listeners might know. And he was Southern. One day last month he was Southern, actually. He came in after a doctor's appointment and said he developed an iron deficient anemia to add to his list of issues. At first, it sounded disconnected, until and I kid you, this is an all caps I kid you not, Josh and Chuck. I was listening to your hookworm episode that day, man. When you got to the part about the aggressive iron deficient anemia, I lost my mind. I looked up hookworm infection symptoms, immediately brought it to my cousin, and he had every last symptom. His doctor prescribed a medication, and he is currently being dewormed. From the first day he started his treatment, he had a noticeable increase in both mood and energy. I don't know how these symptoms could have slipped by a half dozen GPS specialists, but I truly can't thank you both enough for your podcast and its wide range of topics. That is James in St. Pete, Florida. That is so awesome, man. Dude had hookworm. Can you believe it? Thank you, James. Good luck to you, cousin. Way to go for being so smart to connect the dots, too. I think your cousin owes you a pizza or a beer or whatever it is. Maybe both. Trip to Chuck E. Cheese drunk. If you want to get in touch with us to tell us an amazing story like James did, you can tweet to us. I'm at Joshua Clark and S-Y-S-K podcast. Chucks at Charlesw Chuck Bryant and stuff you should Know on Facebook. And you can send us all an email, including Jerry at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at home on the Web stuffyshow.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 Kilgarriff 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." | |
1b7f0f18-6a1f-11ea-bcf3-d71db21ffb05 | SYSK Distraction Playlist: The Amazing History of Soda | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-distraction-playlist-the-amazing-history-of-s | The soda we get instantly mixed at a fast-food joint owes a lot to a rich history going back to the Roman baths, that features drugs, diseases and explosions. Learn all about soda and soda fountains in this surprisingly interesting episode. | The soda we get instantly mixed at a fast-food joint owes a lot to a rich history going back to the Roman baths, that features drugs, diseases and explosions. Learn all about soda and soda fountains in this surprisingly interesting episode. | Fri, 20 Mar 2020 11:15:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=11, tm_min=15, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=80, tm_isdst=0) | 45942830 | audio/mpeg | "This episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery, a professional blog, or an online store, it's all possible with the Squarespace website. And right now, listeners to Stuff You Should Know can start a free trial today. Just go to Squarespace.com and enter the offer code St UFF, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace set your website apart. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry. And this is stuff you should know. You're going to love it. I think I just said this is remarkably interesting right before we hit record. Well, you're right, because I don't know. What are you going to call this thing? You trailed off. It's not the best title. Well, it's a well, that's been gone to before. Oh, sure. It's really the history of soda, kind of. Yeah. This thing gets interesting. I never really thought about it. I didn't, either. And this is Chuck, to me, one of those great examples of how you can take anything and really tease out all these different parts to it. Sure. And that just about everything is more interesting than it appears on the surface. Yeah. Because soda, as we will learn, affected America in the world and continues to yeah. Basically, all American dominance from the mid 19th century on is because of soda. But you are from Ohio, so do you say pop? Used to. Yeah, you depopt. I don't even know. I'm saying soda now. I say Coke. Yeah, I do, too. You even say Coke when you want a Sprite. Yeah. In the south. I want a green Coke. Can I have a Coke? What kind? Well, we're in Atlanta. This is the birthplace of Coke. It is. Which we'll talk about. We'll talk about. But the initial, I guess, thread that we took into this topic was soda fountains, right? Correct. And when you think about a soda fountain this is a good example of what I was saying. When you think about a soda fountain, you think about, like, bobby socks. Teenagers, right? Bill Haley and the Comets. Yeah. The fawns sure. Hair, like, perfectly in place. Yeah. The fawn is all drunk. Penny lord, did he get drunk? No, that was the joke. Like Happy Days is so squeaky clean. Wouldn't it really be a great episode if the fawns was hammered? Everybody just tried to avoid them. Yeah. He'll break the jukebox again. Yeah, that would be great. Do you know that's what Laverne and Shirley spun off of? Yeah. Morgan Mindy. Yeah. That's just bizarre. That Morgan mindy and Jonny loves chachi. Well, sure. Yeah. But Morgandy was set in the very weird oh. Thought it was the 70s. Was it 70s based on the Down West? It was the right? I'm pretty sure. All right. So regardless, when you think of soda fountains, you think of the right. And Happy Days wasn't in the came out in the man. There was a big revival of 50s culture in the. Like there are Greece. There always is. People tend to reflect back 20 years or so. Nostalgia. Yeah, with nostalgia. Things were so much better back then. There's a great podcast episode. One of the funniest things I've ever heard in my life from the great Andy Daily that centered around Shaun On. And I can't remember who he did it with, but it was might have been Matt Besser. No, I can't remember. But they did these characters and was all about trying out for Sean and I, drinking egg creams and being a professional water skier. It was very, very funny. They were just making it up. Yeah. I mean, I'm not doing it justice, but just seek it out. Just type in Andy Daly, Shaun On, and just sit back and get ready for Delighted for an hour. That's awesome. I'll check it out. I'll check it out. But yeah. 50s purity bobby Socks soda fountains. Good clean fun. Here's the thing. You're totally wrong if that's your conception of soda fountains. That's right. By the time the 50s rolled around, soda fountains were already so far on their way out. Yeah. That basically by the 50s, what would happen to bars in the fern bar? That already happened to soda fountains by the that's right. What was once handcrafted drinks made from freshly prepared ingredients that were mixed there on the premises yeah. By soda jerk. Right. Had been replaced by pre mixed stuff and canned ingredients that were put together by people who didn't give a darn about you or your family. That's right. The were not the heyday of the sort of fountain. It's actually much older than that. Yeah. Boy, that's a set up from the old days. It's getting in the wayback machine. And go back to Europe when everyone was like, you know what? These mineral waters, we've been drinking this stuff for hundreds of years. And even before that, the Romans bathed in it. Yeah. It's great for you. You drink it, you bathe in it. You splash it on your sister. You want her to be well deliver. Right, right. It'll cure everything. It's the cure all back in the days where they thought, like, drink this one thing, it'll cure up your STD and your headache, your hangover, all at one time, when really all it did was cure an upset stomach. That's right. That was the dirty little secret. But the idea they didn't do that, though. No, they didn't. They didn't. For centuries, as a matter of fact. Yes. But the idea that you could drink, like, naturally carbonated mineral water and that it could cure your health, or at the very least, it was delightful. People wanted to figure out how to get that if you didn't live near a naturally carbonated spring. That's right. Which, by the way I was researching this, did you know pellegrino is not naturally carbonated? I don't know anything about pellegrino. Well, it's a natural mineral water, but they carbonate it there. I didn't realize it wasn't carbonated. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. It surprised me. Are you boycotting? No, I love stuff. I was just surprised. Is anything these days naturally carbonated and bottled? Dude, now that you say that, you've just given me a great opening to mention this book I just read called The Dorito Effect. You have to read it? Yeah. Good. It's about the food we eat today and just how incredibly manufactured it is. But the really refreshing thing about it is that anybody can read this book. It's basically apolitical. It doesn't lay this at anybody's feet, it doesn't blame anybody, it doesn't suggest there's anything nefarious going on. It's just like, here's our food right now. Wow. It's really interesting. I'll check it out. Really approachable. Interesting book. They don't even blame Big Dorito. No, I mean, they basically trace the origin of our current food standards back to the invention of the dorito, hence the name. But it's a really great book. Definitely worth reading. I'll check that out and people ask us for book wrecks all the time. That's fine. Yeah. Pay attention. Yummy. Got that for me and I read it in like, two days. Will she read it? She hasn't read it yet. I grabbed it first. Oh, I got you. Yeah. So she bought it for the family. Oh, yeah, okay, sure. I thought it was a gift. Like, I read this and now I'm going to give it to you. No, she read about it. Got you thought about me. Mine bought it and I said, Give me. All right, so mineral water was very appealing, and human beings said, you know what, that would be great if we could bottle this junk ourselves. Right. Even though bottling isn't really a thing yet, or at least not anything that worked. No. Carbonated water, stonewear and a cork. Yeah. Does not give is when Joseph Priestley, we've talked about before no, two. Yeah, more than once. British chemist, he said, you know what? I figured this out. Fermented some yeast mash and put it in this water, get you pretty messed up. Yeah. And look at it bubble. It's delightful. Everyone's like, Whoa, that's a decent approximation to semicarbonated water. Yeah, not a bad first step, though. Nice going, Priestly. So, 16 years later, there was a Swiss scientist named Johan Jacob Schwep. Yeah. Sound familiar? He said, you know what? I actually built a device, this hand crank compression pump, and I can make this stuff and I'm going to found a company called Schwebs, because that's my name and you're going to be hearing it for centuries. Yeah. And he was definitely on to something. What Schwepp figured out was not just this invention that he made, but he also realized that to carbonate water, which let's talk about carbonating water, shall we? Artificially carbonating, I should say, to carbonate it. There's some conditions that are most conducive to carbonating water because CO2 molecules and H, two O molecules do not like to get together. Yeah. You don't just throw it in there and they'll start hugging it out right. And say, Great, now drink me. Yes. As a matter of fact, their bond angles, I believe, are totally different, and they're at such an angle that they just do not go together very well. But Yakov Schweb said, you know what? I wonder if you use really cold temperatures, like near freezing water, that would help. He was correct. Correct. And also, if you put it under pressure, maybe, say, seven atmospheres yeah, it would help. He was correct with that, too. That's right. And that's what you need, cold and pressure. And if you get that going, then that gas dissolves into the liquid, and those molecules start to party and hug it out. And it's pretty amazing that someone figured that out way back then. But it's even more amazing that it wasn't like he's like, I'll just take the CO2 canister and the cold water and put it together under pressure. This dude had to make his own CO2. Sure. So he used the old sulfuric acid and powdered marble combination. That old trick. Right. Which is we'll talk about it's kind of dangerous to put together. To create carbonated water, Schweppe had to first create carbon dioxide. So he had a lot of stuff going on. He was the first guy to come up with a mechanized version of creating carbonated water. Yeah. Pretty amazing. Yeah. But it took many more years before it became even close to a perfected process. Yeah. As you'll see, it happened. Many people chipped in over the course of a lot of time, namely Mr. Charles Plaint in 1813. He invented the I don't know if he invented I think he might have invented or at least he perfected the soda siphon, which, if you've ever seen an episode of The Three Stooges, we've got one. You don't have one of those? No, I don't have one. You got to get one. I got a soda stream. I'm all good. Okay. Yeah. You don't need 118 13. And that means he could either squirt someone in the face and have a comedy routine, or he could serve you some carbonated liquid. Yeah. Which is great. But you had to keep refilling that thing at the source. Yeah, that was the problem. And especially if you're having to make your own CO2, it's one thing to just use those little chargers today. It's not much of a problem. But if you have to make your own CO2 first before you create the siphon, that's a big process. Sure. So, again, these guys are kind of, like poking away at the edges of the problem of coming up with mass produced carbonated water. A big problem. Right. And they're contributing and adding to this nutcracker. But no one's actually cracked the nut yet. It would be 1832 when a man named John Matthews yeah, he's American, born in England, best of both worlds. He developed a chamber, a leadline chamber where he could actually mix, he could actually generate that CO2. Right. So swepts had already generated the CO2 before. Yeah. Got you. Yeah. I thought Matthews was the first to do that. No. Okay. Schwez actually was creating CO2. Got you. He didn't have this self contained apparatus that Matthews came up with. That was his huge innovation. Who, matthews? Yeah. I mean, he mixed it together without water, and he created carbonated water, and you could bottle it. But bottling wasn't like a big you couldn't mass bottle it at this point. No, he came up with this invention that he came up with was it was big enough to serve a decent sized clientele, going from the schweppe AA invention, where you could make 20 of these a day. 20 carbonated drinks a day. Sure. All of a sudden, with Matthew's invention, you can make, like, hundreds. Yeah, but it was immobile. So it was either good for bottling, which at the time, bottling sucked in America, the glass wasn't good enough to bottle stuff under pressure, or you could make carbonated drinks there on site. And that's what it led to, was directly the creation of the soda fountain, the place where you would go get a soda. Hooray for him. Yeah. So we'll take a little break, and we'll come back with one final gentleman who, although he failed, he had a big impact on the soda fountain industry. You know how when you get something done with just the click of a mouse and you get to put it off of your to do list once and for all? It feels so good? Yeah, buddy. That's the feeling of stamps.com, Chuck. I like that kind of simple action, my friend. You can get your mailing and shipping done without leaving your desk, thanks to stamps.com, because it turns your PC or mac into your own personal post office that never closes. Yeah, right there. On your own personal post office that never closes, you can buy and print official US. Postage for any letter or any package using your own computer and printer. Then you just hand it off to your friendly mail carrier or drop it in the mailbox. You'll never have to go to the post office again. That's right. And we have a pretty sweet deal right now if you sign up for stamps.com, all you have to do is use our offer code stuff, and you get the following special offer a four week trial plus $110 bonus offer, including postage and a handy dandy digital scale. Yes. So don't wait. Go to stamps.com. Before you do anything else, click on the microphone at the top of the home page and type in stuff.com. Enter stuff. All right. Benjamin Silly Man Sullivan, I believe, is probably how he preferred to have it pronounced. Don't you think? He was very serious. He probably was. He said, you know what? I may be a failure in my businesses, but I'm going to go down in history as maybe the guy who had the most to do with the creation of soda in a massive, ubiquitous way. Right. He was a professor of chemistry at Yale. Jeez. What is Heale? Hoya's. Right. Or Bulldogs? Hoya's is Georgetown. So I think it's the bulldogs. Yale Bulldogs. Got you the Yale Hodgmans. That's your mascot. He's a Yale. He isn't me. Yeah. He went to Yale. Oh, you don't say. Yes. So he, because he was a chemistry professor at Yale, did make a ton of money. Want to make a little dough on the side. And his whole jam was kind of going back to the old days. His stuff is medicinal, and I'm really going to move all my chips in on the medicine angle, which turned out to not be the best move. No. And it wasn't necessarily that he just focused on the medicinal aspect of it. It was apparently he didn't know how to create, like, a fun time establishment. Right. He was a Yale chemistry professor. He created two of the first, basically, soda fountains in New York City based on Matthew's design, which, again, was a lead chamber where you put the calcium carbonate and the sulfuric acid together, created CO2. It bubbled up through water to purify it, and then that purified CO2 entered a very cold spring water chamber and bubbled up and created carbonated water. Right. That's making me thirsty. So Silly Man created two of these houses, and he set them up at two very elite places in New York, the City Hotel and the Tanteen Coffee House right there on Wall Street. Right. And he started serving this stuff, but again, he was serving it as medicine. And the impression I have is that it was kind of like, please give me your money. Great. Here's your medicine. Drink it, please get out. There is no fraternizing. There's no talking. Some other people noticed this and said, that's a really great idea. Costs have finally come down enough to where I can get some investors and we can open our own pump house, our own soda fountain, but we're going to throw in some books. We're going to promote people talking, and maybe they'll stick around and order a second one. Right. Yeah. I don't see that's weird, though, because the Tantini Coffee House was like, a very social place where people hang out. Well, then he did something wrong that other people didn't do or that did better, or maybe they were just drinking coffee because he went under. Well, the whole thing competitive. Soda fountains buried him, but he was the guy who came up with the idea, so he created the legacy. He just wasn't very good at business. That's right. Hats off to you, silly man. Hats off. All right. So these other gentlemen opened up more successful shops. Then they started popping up. Of course, once it happens in New York, the next place is going to be Philly Baltimore. Yeah. And it was a legit business. It was a thing. But it was tied to Pharmacies as well. Yeah. Which seems weird, but not when you think about it. No. And one of the big reasons why it was tied to Pharmacies is because it took tremendous skill to properly create carbon dioxide. They blew up. Yes. You could die at a soda fountain hanging out. They blew up. The sulfuric acid could leach into the finished product, and you could be served a couple of sulphuric acid. Not very good. There were a lot of things that could go wrong in mixing this. So this is technical expertise that Pharmacists already had. So it made sense for them to say, we got this. Which is why it does become less weird to associate the soda fountain with the pharmacy, which it would very soon become basically like hand in hand with yeah. I grew up in Stone Mountain, and the old village of Stone Mountain had a pharmacy straight out of Happy Days, and it was like the sounds like the 50s, but I would like to walk down there and get, like, a Coke float, and they would put it on my parents tab. Oh, yeah. And this was literally Happy Days Time. Sure. But it was 85. It was 85, yeah. I was like twelve or 13. It's pretty great, walking down to the old pharmacy, thinking about how cool David Hasselhoff is. Yeah. Actually, I didn't watch Night Rider. I didn't either. I wasn't on the Hasselhoff train. Big fan of his music, but not Night Rider. But yeah, they would just jerk me a soda. And I don't even think we said why they were called soda jerks. Because that's the motion that you would make. Yeah. You jerk the tap handle. Yeah. Or soda jerkers. I've seen them call that as well. Or soda throwers, I thought, too. I like that. The reason they were called soda throwers is because it took a lot of skill to mix these drinks on the level of the bartenders that were working at the time. And as a matter of fact, some bartenders, especially during Prohibition, became soda jerks. Yeah. There was a lot of showmanship involved. Right. It's kind of like a cool job to have. Yes. But we haven't reached that point yet. We're at about the mid 19th century when it's really starting to get popular and it's spreading through the major cities of the US. Correct. So they're in Pharmacies, like you said, because they had skill at doing this, and it just made sense. And it had the old medicinal tie in, like, Here, drink this tonic that I've made for you, this ginger ale. Or this beer. And apparently by this time, everybody knew that carbonated water didn't have any real medicinal properties. Oh, yeah, that was kind of the joke. Not the joke, but the joke was on them. So the pharmacist would say, well, I'll put some real drugs in here, then let's see what happens. Yeah, like, it didn't have to have minerals at this point. Right. But people love the fizz. Right. They were crazy for the fiz. Still do. Right. And putting, like, herbs and drugs and stuff into a drink was not an American mid 19th century invention. Right. It goes back really far. This is folk medicine. And actually, in Europe, there was all sorts of stuff that we brought over. Like, the idea of root beer is actually way older than Charles Hires invention. It goes back to Native America, indigenous European groups, just basically anybody who ever put roots, embark and boiled, boiled it. And the reason they were making this stuff was because the water supply was questionable at the time. So you were basically purifying water by fermenting it, by brewing it and making an alcoholic drink. And it would be called small beer. And small beer was a drink like that, like the original root beer, the original ginger beer. These were small beers, and they were used to basically drink instead of water. And kids would drink it, everybody would drink it. It usually had pretty low amounts of alcohol in it. But taking that same idea of using things like sassafras or sasparilla ginger. Yeah, or whatever, and putting it together with this new sparkling water that you could get from a tap at a soda fountain, that was the big innovation. Remarkable. Yeah. And pharmacists at the time, they were adding some booze, like, not negligible amounts, like alcoholics. If they were broke, they might go to the pharmacy to get what amounts to, like, a shot of whiskey and their little elixir, because it wasn't taxed like alcohol was, so they could get a cheaper drink. And I guess it was more socially acceptable, too, because you're going for medicine rather than going to the bar for leisure. Let me get my medicine. Right, exactly. What else? Drugs. Like, not just alcohol, drugs. Drugs? Yeah, like drugs. Just go ahead and say it. Drugs. Heroin. Yeah. Heroin. Morphine, opium. Cannabis. Strict nine. Yes. And this is Pre Food and Drug Act of 19 six that this is going on. So if you wanted to pick me up, you would trot down to the store in the morning, to the pharmacy, and you would get your cocaine drink. Yeah. And I guess the heroin wasn't a pick me up. That was a take me down, take me down. You had that at the end of the day. Yeah. You remember in the bars episode, we talk about bitters and cocktails. They were originally, like, medicinal, supposedly. Well, people still swear by that stuff for, like, a tummy ache. Right. I guess I could see bitters giving you a tummy ache if you had too much, but you'd be the one to know. You like your bitters, right? I like bitters. You know me, I don't drink a lot of that stuff, but just the name itself turns me off. So I came across something in here. Phosphates. Right? I'm like, what is a phosphate? Is it a type of drink that you could get around this time mid to late 19th century and even up into the 20th century it was a very famous type of soda fountain drink. Like here son, have a nice cold. Phosphate. Yeah, exactly right. And a phosphate usually was some sort of sweetener, some kind of usually a fruit maybe like cherry syrup or something like that. And carbonated water. And then this stuff called acid phosphate. And acid phosphate is this compound that gives, it brings out like the sour notes in whatever drink it's in. It gives you a little bit of a tingle, a little bit of a kick. It's weird. And I looked, I'm like, is this stuff still around? Surely enough it is. So I am going to get some and try to figure out what to do with it. It's going to be awesome. But phosphate, that was another thing you would put into originally phosphates were thought secures things like hypertension. So like all these things that really just kind of came to form a taste or a flavor or a mouth feel of what we now see as a soft drink originally started out as medicine, booze or drugs. Right. And then all of them would be put together and you would go drinking in the morning and say, I'm just getting some medicine. Well, and this is a time of course like this article points out where'd you get this by the way? This is really good. This is actually we should give it a shout out already. This is a Collector's Weekly article. Yeah. Into our own Hunter Oakman Stanford, who just has written some pretty interesting stuff. Yeah, Collectors Weekly. It's like really bizarre that they put out some of the finest articles on the internet. Why is that bizarre? Just because you would think it'd be so niche that it would just be too narrow. But they're actually really good at taking in the expansiveness of whatever they're talking about, the history of stuff. I bet this is a time they point out in the article in the late eighteen hundred s when the quote here is cocaine was a wonder drug when it was first discovered, it was marvelous medicine that could do you no harm. Right. The early days of cocaine when they were like this stuff just makes you feel great, right? What's the problem? Yeah, it's great. It's a bracer. Yes. Which was what people thought all the way up until like 1990s. What I thought was funny was that the person who was talking about how much cocaine was usually found in a drink 100th of a gram, and then the person goes on to say, about a 10th of a line of cocaine. Right? Yeah. And then they say, or a bump. Right. Not that I would know. They also said, I'm joking about the bump part, but they did say a 10th of a line. That's what he's talking about. Bizarre measurement. It depends on the line, I guess. Too right, sure. I mean, it's a weird thing to quantify, right? But I've seen, you know what I mean, like a ten of a line, like a normal line, like a hog, just like, you know, a respectable way. It's a little rail. Yeah, I thought that was an odd quote from that guy. Too and here's the thing, as far as cocaine being and we'll talk about Coca Cola coming up, too, but I found a lot of varying amounts, from negligible to significant. I found one thing that said it took 30 glasses to produce an actual dose of the drug, but I've also seen this guy says it's like a bump, so I don't know who to believe. And I think the secrets probably died with the people that had these recipes back then. Right. I don't know if we can know for sure how much cocaine CocaCola still officially says that there was no cocaine, but no. Do they I think that's their official stance. Well, everybody else says there was definitely cocaine in it. You want to take a break, then, and talk about Coca Cola? Yeah. All right. Josh, whether you're wearing suits, sweatpants, or a Canadian tuxedo, you're going to spend 24 hours a day just about in your underwear. That's right. So if you're going to spend so much time in your underwear, you might as well make it excellent underwear, which means you might as well make it me undies. That's right. Every pair of me undies underwear is made from sustainably sourced modal to fabric that is twice as soft as cotton. And, boy, does it feel good. Yes. And me Andies is so sure that you're going to think they're the world's most comfortable underwear if you don't love your first pair of me. Andy's, they're free, no questions asked. Yeah. And not only do they feel great, they look cool. They have dozens of styles, lots of limited edition prints. They're going to help you make a statement with your underwear. Yes. And shipping is free in the US. And Canada. Plus, you can save up to $8 a pair with the me and the subscription plan. You can get that subscription plan or even just a single pair. Either way, you'll get 20% off your first order when you go to meetundys. comStuff. That's right. That's meundys. comStuff for 20% off your first order. So, Chuck, we were talking about how you can find everything from heroin to cannabis to, well, cocaine and drinks, and most famously, you found cocaine as far. As everybody, apparently. But Coca Cola says in Coca Cola yes. If you work at Coke or something like that, please write in and explain to us how everyone else in the world says that there was cocaine in it. And apparently, if unearthed recipes for Coca Cola that involve cocaine. But how is it not in Coca Cola? I want to know if that's the case. Set us straight. Unless they change their stance. But this thing I found that says their official stance is that it did not. Okay, so we'll see. All right, so it's late 1800, and there's a former colonel in the Confederate Army, civil War vet named Doc Pemberton. They call them Dock. His parents didn't name him Doc. He went on to be a pharmacist, John Pemberton. And he's trying to find a solution for Civil War soldiers who were addicted to narcotics. Painkillers. Right. Because they did pretty lousy battlefield treatment. Sure. And they did the best they could. Yeah. Well, it wasn't good enough. Medicine wasn't far long back then. Right. And so he concocted this thing called CocaCola. That was the original Coca Cola. Is it true? Do you have in there that it was originally made with still water and that no one liked it? And then he tried it with carbonated water? This seems senseless because carbonated water was all arrayed yeah, it didn't make any sense. I could see that, though. A misstep, perhaps. Maybe. And it was first sold at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, for a nickel. Where is that? That was downtown. Okay. That was all there was of Atlanta back then. Sure. Like Eman Park was the suburb was considered a suburb. And for those of you who don't know, emman park now is just a neighborhood right off of downtown. And the suburbs are 40 miles outside of them. 40 miles in a four hour car ride. So Doc Pemberton makes it, sells it at Jacobs Pharmacy. His partner, Frank Robinson, was a bookkeeper and partner. He's the one actually named at CocaCola. He designed that script that they still use today. Oh, wow. He came up with the first, I guess, slogan, which was the pause that refreshes. And they started giving away coupons for the stuff for, like, a free Coca Cola, which got its name because it contained elements from the Coca plant and cola nuts. Right. From Nigeria, I believe, is where they originate. So it's like a very on the nose. And Cocoa Cola plants have, like, tons of caffeine in them. Yeah. So cocaine and lots of caffeine. Right. So it's doing the job, basically. Yeah. And in 1916, they developed that distinctive contoured bottle, which it took a lot longer to get that patented, I think, like the something oh, really? Surprising. Well, but I think they said the idea was they wanted you to be able to tell it in the dark, groping around. Yeah. If you had a Coke bottle in your hand so coke wasn't the only one putting drugs in their drinks. No, of course not. Like we said, there are plenty of other drugs. Seven up very famously had lithium citrate in it until I think the even maybe lithium, of course, is a very famous mood stabilizer used to treat things like bipolar disorder and depression and all sorts of stuff. Interesting. So you could think seven up. So we jumped ahead a little bit, going back again to the early eighteen hundred s is when these flavored sodas really first kind of came on the scene and they started a lot of citrus drinks. And the theory was that people used to eliminate being a refreshing thing. Well, plus, also, again, this is a medicine. Citrus was used to treat scurvy. Yeah. And you could get those citrus oils pretty easily, right? So, yeah, there was a lot of like orange and lemony flavored things early on. What else? Cherry vanilla were some of the early flavors. Wintergreen was a big one. I don't know about that. I wouldn't want a winter green soda, I don't think. Grape, nutmeg, pomegranate, cherry. I used to love the grape drink when I was a kid. Oh, yeah? Like Fana or Nihai grape. Sure. Fago was what we had up in Ohio. Yeah, we didn't have a lot of Faygo. I remember Fago great, but Faygo had a pineapple drink. Is it good? It was so good. And then their red pop was really good too. Yeah, I never got into the reds either. I still am an orange guy. I'll drink a fan of orange. Like, I'll drink like ten of them a year. Yeah, and it's just such a treat. Nice, delicious. Like all ten at once. One day a year. I do, I get so sick. You're like, I don't ever want to see this again. My dad, man, he would drink the nehai peach like it was going out of style. Oh, yeah. Never have one of those. I'm not into the peach that much. Dude, we just got back from Japan. They got peachdown pat over there. What do you mean? Growing the trees? No, the flavor in candy or whatever like that? Yeah, because it's very delicate. It's not like punching you in the face. It's almost like your tongue is chasing after the taste because it wants a little more. Oh, wow. Really good, man. That should be their motto for whatever. All of it. Right. They were using generally simple syrups. Very sugary, simple syrups. And like you said, they would mix them up right there. They had cool names. Who's this guy? Deforres Sax had a book called Sax's new Guide. Or hence the soda water dispensers. Like all the books back then, there was an or in the title. He would serve you an opera bouquet or an almond sponge or swizzle fizz. That's a good one. They just sound delicious. Swizzle fizz. It's amazing how this relates to our bartending episode. Well, okay, so I'm glad you brought that up because if you walked into a really great hotel bar like the Waldorf historia in the 1880s, or would just be like, oh, my God, this place is amazing. Even still today, they're pretty great. But they were like brand new marble, brand new polished wood, grass and mirrors and onyx and all sorts of just beautiful stuff, right? Yes. If you looked a little further along the bar, you would say, all you'd have to do is put in a row of carbonation taps and you'd have yourself a soda fountain. Because they were the same type of establishment, it was just one served alcoholic drinks and the other one served what are considered soft drinks. As they got further and further away from medicine, especially after the Food and Drug Purity Act, they took drugs out and replaced it with sugar. And this was the big American innovation. But at the time, the bars and the soda fountains competed with one another, and the best ones looked very similar to one another. And they would have equally capable bartenders or soda jerks who could mix up some amazing stuff that would knock your socks off. And then that made it really made to be like the champion of the temperance movement. Oh, yeah. So when the temperance movement came along and like the late 19th century and really started to get some traction all the way up until 1919, the year before Prohibition that was 1920. Right. The last good year, people were like, soda fountains are the place to be. Yeah. And there's a lady that there's this woman that wrote a book called Soda Shop Salvation named Ray Catherine or I May. And she kind of makes a case for the good that came out of Prohibition, which was pre Prohibition. There were bar and saloon culture where the men went and drank and left their families at home and left their kids at home. And she argues that because of Prohibition, the soda shops won out, or at least for a while, and there was a big boom. And all of a sudden women and children were going out to eat more as families with their dads, and there was like, more dining out. There was a big rise in sugar as a whole. Like, this is when ice cream really started to boom. Right. Maybe part and parcel to the floats, like soda floats with ice cream. Right. But, yeah, she said some good things came out of Prohibition. She said the USA needed a reset was how she put it on drinking, just period. Like the sort of the cultures that came around because of Prohibition was we were heading down a dark road, she thinks. I see with the saloon and bar culture and leaving the families out of it. I thought it was a pretty interesting take. Yeah, I remember that from our bars episode too, that after Prohibition, because the speakeasy, didn't have any rules to follow. It was like a new thing. Right. Women started showing up, and they've been going to bars ever since. But before that, it was strictly like mail. Interesting. And so even before, but including after Prohibition, Chuck, the soda fountain was just immense, huge. I can't remember somewhere in the 19th century, the mid 19th century, new York City had like 600 something soda fountains in it. Just New York City. Right. There are thousands and thousands of them around the United States. In 1929, there was something like 60,000 pharmacies in the United States. 75% of them had a soda fountain. Amazing. There was one in New York called the Pennsylvania Drug Company. It was at Penn Station. They sold the names of it all. They sold on a good day, they would sell drinks to 9000 customers. Wow. They made 250 grand a year selling soda soft drinks, which is like three and a half million dollars in sales in 2015 money. And then all of a sudden, it starts to dry up. Like we said, by the they become quaint. By the 70s, they were down to I think a third of pharmacies had a soda fountain. Still not today. Good luck finding them. There's just a handful around. Go into CVS and ask for, hey, jerk me a soda. They'll throw you out of there. There's a kind of a revival going on now, but they just virtually disappeared. And what's interesting is they've actually tracked what killed the soda fountain. And there's a few factors that were pretty interesting. Yeah. One of them, and we've talked about car culture and the culture of the expressways and highways in the suburbs and how America grew, shunning public transportation in favor of cars and highways. And that was one of the big things. People the little downtown Stone Mountain Pharmacy wasn't as popular because people didn't live anywhere near there anymore. Right. I mean, some people did, of course, but people were flying the coupe, basically. Yeah. Spending time out on the open road, you didn't really have that. You didn't want to spend as much time, like, hanging around a soda fountain. Maybe you just wanted some refreshment to go. Right. The drive through culture. Yeah. And then probably the bottle cap was the thing that really killed the soda fountain. Yeah. Because I could enjoy it at home. Yeah. Or you could buy it on the road and just take it with you. The bottle cap, probably more than anything, killed the soda fountain. I read a thing, too, that said Coca Cola invented the six pack. Is that right? Yeah. At one point they started selling them in six packs, and it became like the number. That's really surprising. Yes. Or at least they like to claim they take credit for that. No, cocaine came up with the six. I don't know what the truth is anymore. You ever been to the world of coke? Oh, sure. I haven't been to the new one, though. I haven't been at all. You've never been to the World of Coke? No. It's one of those things in your hometown that you ignore. Have you been to the center for Human Rights? The Human Rights Museum? That's amazing. The MLK Center? No, this is newer. Okay. It's just a couple of years old, but it's down. It's like the aquarium World of Coke. The Human Rights Museum? No, I haven't seen that. You gotta check it out. It's a downer. But in all the oh, I'll go to that, but I'm not going to the World of Coke. Yeah, it's like New Yorkers. They don't go to the Guggenheim or Central Park. What? It's just one of those home down things you ignore. Yeah, kidding. Of course. So, you got anything else? I got nothing else. If you want to know more about soda fountains and soda pop and all that kind of stuff, you can search the Internet for it. You can type those words into HowStuffWorks.com in the search bar. And also, we want to give a shout out to, again, collectors Weekly, the Art of Drink. And today I found out all three of which we used as some source material, too. Yes. Along with our own houseworks article, how Soda Fountains Work. So, thanks to you all for making great stuff. And as I said, that it's. Time for listener mail. I'm going to call this we changed a life. Hey, guys, I want to say thanks for all the great shows. Let you know that you had a big impact on my life some time ago during a listener feedback I'm sorry, Facebook Q and a young listener asked advice on career paths, and he said that you should do what they love. Trust me, that's not like the most innovative advice ever, but that's what we said at the time. I was being made redundant from a career in buying, but knew it wasn't what I loved. I took your advice, got some experience volunteering at school, having always learned to love and share ideas, and that started a whole new career path. Now, I've just finished my teaching qualification, which was really tough as a mature student, raising my own kids, and next week, starting my first job as a class teacher at Y Six Primary. Nice. I think this is the end of elementary school for you guys. Ages ten to eleven, kids. I hope I can engage and inspire children in my class the way you do with your listeners. So I wanted to say cheers. You can use this in the classroom. That's one good way. Yeah. And that is from Catherine. A-K-A Mrs. Young. Thanks a lot, Mrs. Young. That is very awesome. Congratulations. Way to go. Yeah. And she was gutted to not see us in the UK. We gutted a lot of Brits. Yes. I think it's hilarious. It's a popular term. They all said the same thing. They were gutted. Interesting. Well, thanks, Mr. Young. Again, nicely done. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. Or Joshua and Clark, you can hang out with us on Facebook at charleswchuckbryant or facebook.com. You can hang out with us on Instagram, and you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstoughfworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshoodnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Summer school is out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid 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/2017-02-28-sysk-optical-illusions-final.mp3 | How Optical Illusions Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-optical-illusions-work | Now you see it, now you don't — optical illusions can fool us into seeing what's not actually there. But what causes that disconnect between perception and reality? Learn all about this visual trickery in today's episode. | Now you see it, now you don't — optical illusions can fool us into seeing what's not actually there. But what causes that disconnect between perception and reality? Learn all about this visual trickery in today's episode. | Thu, 02 Mar 2017 08:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=8, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=61, tm_isdst=0) | 39284479 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, March is tripod month, my friend, and you know what that means. Yes. That means it's time to let people know about your favorite podcasts. Just to share the sheer joy of podcast listening. That's right. It's tr y pod side still in nascent industry. A lot of people don't know what podcasts are, and it helps everybody out if you would go out and just say, hey, family member who I see at Thanksgiving once a year, you should try out this thing called a podcast. Here's what they are. Here's a cool show you should try, and here's how to get it. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be our show, just any podcast you like in general that you think someone else would like. Just share it. Yeah. So get on board the tripod train. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and this is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there is what? Jerry just disappeared. Chuck did she? She did. Oh, there she's back. David Copperfield's in here with us as well today. He made the Statue of Liberty disappear. And now Jerry jerry is drawn by MC escher. Oh, that's nice. So how do you feel about optical illusions? I feel happy about optical illusions. No, I'm not asking Josh from the third grade, but I feel sad about articles on optical illusions. Yeah. In general, it's a really difficult thing to write about as we're about to demonstrate. It's an even more difficult thing to talk about. Yeah. But I think the idea that every article has to inherently describe an optical illusion and then basically follows that description up with and scientists don't really know what's going on here's a couple of guesses that will be fully discredited in 20 years. It's just dissatisfying. Yeah. Because we're the kind of dudes who like concrete answers or at least like really solid hypotheses. Some of these are flimsy to me. Yeah. So we would encourage folks if you are listening at home or work, because you can blow off work, let's be honest. Look up some of these. We'll describe them as best we can. And most of them you've probably seen before, because, as you will learn, many illusions, optical illusions were drawn and conceived many years ago and have just been sort of played upon over the years in different ways. Right? Yeah. The 19th century was like the classics, the foundation of optical illusions, which not coincidentally, coincided with the foundation of psychology and brain research. And optical illusions were created to kind of test the stuff or explore this stuff. Right. Most of the stuff today are just variations on these themes. Yeah. So like I was saying, if you're able to just kind of just Google this junk, as we say, and you'll go, oh, that thing. And Chuck, actually, there's a website called Michaelbox de yes. Which is Deutschland or Germany in the English, but it's M-I-C-H-A-E-L-B-A-C-H. De. And this guy just listed he's got links to every optical illusion you could possibly imagine. So that would be a good place to go. Just sit there and click on his site while we're talking about these things. Yeah, and what I found is that I get a bit of optical illusion fatigue when I look at too many of these things in a row. Well, that should be studied. Well, I mean, we know so little about optical illusions. That's kind of groundbreaking. Well, I don't mean fatigue as in, like, scientifically. I just mean, like, I'm tired of looking at this junk. Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, it just bores me after a bit. Plus, a lot of them require ugly color combinations or unpleasant color combinations, so I think that probably contributes to it, too. Yeah, for me, we don't talk a lot about Escher in this one, but he deserves his own show. Sure. Esher and Geiger. Maybe we'll do a combo show with those two. Oh, HR. Geiger. Yeah. That guy's brain is beautiful. Yeah. There's a lot of cultural icon biographies that are floating out there. Mr. Rogers and Dr. Seuss. I know we've talked about those. So maybe we'll go on a kick. Okay, I'm ready for some kicking. All right, so let's go back a little bit to the history of thinking about or studying optical illusions. Right. Okay. As with most things in the west, the basis of optical illusions, the first mention of optical illusions in the literature comes from the Greeks and Aristotle in particular. Yeah, he probably munched on some weird root and stared at a waterfall for a little while. Sure. And he said, hey, dude, if you stare at that waterfall long enough, man, and then you quickly look at that rock, it looks like the rock is moving. Right. And the rocks, like, arm not moving. Aristotle. But that actually has a name, correct? Yeah, it's called the waterfall illusion appropriately, or what's the other word for it? The motion after effect. Yeah, that's what I was looking for. If this is true, the explanation for it, then I'm just disappointed with our brains. Hit me. The explanation is that when we're staring at the waterfall, our neurons tracking the movement of the water become tired, out, exhausted, overwhelmed. So when we stop looking at it and they take a break, all the other ones that weren't at work are suddenly working overtime and making things move that aren't actually moving. Right. That's a stupid explanation. I don't know. I buy that. I mean, it makes sense, but I think it's stupid. It's boring, just worn out neurons. Yeah. I'm tired. I need to sit down over here. Yeah. And then if we go forward a bit in the 19th century, like you were talking about, that was when people got really sort of interested in studying these things and what was going on in the brain because it sort of coincided with studying perception and how our eyes worked and how our eyes worked in relation to our brain. Right. And then I guess some of the earliest optical illusions kind of prove, though, was this long standing idea that our perception of vision, our visual experience, was based on how the eyes interpreted objects. Yes. And what these early optical illusions started to prove was, no, it's actually the brain that's getting messed up here. And now we're starting to get into here at this point, like, some theories that make sense to me that I think are cool. But what this early study started to reveal is that the brain is extremely lazy and it likes to take shortcuts. Right? Yeah. I thought this is actually pretty interesting. Are you talking about the lag time? The lag time, but also yeah, there's plenty of other stuff. The lag time seems to me to be like one specific slice of the general tricks of the trade that the brain uses to cut corners. Yeah. And the lag time is basically when everything seems to happen instantaneous. When you look at something, your eyeballs pick it up, the neurons start firing, and the brain tells you that's a coffee cup. Right. But there's just the slightest little lag in the time it takes for that to happen. And one of the theories with optical illusions is the brain is trying to predict in that slight, slight, slight I'm not good with small units of time. Is nanosecond short? Yeah, nanoseconds definitely short, but I think we're talking 10th of a second. Okay. So the brain basically tries to predict what should come next based on what we're used to seeing in real life. Right. Is that a good way to say it? Yeah. And the reason it would do this is because at 10th of a second, something can change, like a tiger can suddenly appear. So the brain is constantly looking for clues in the environment to predict what a 10th of a second in the future is going to be like, right? Yeah. I think things move slow enough for us humans that it usually works pretty well. But what this researcher, Mark Chang says is an optical illusion. Some of the optical illusions are actually reliable ways to trick the brain into making the wrong decision about what the future is going to hold. One of the ones that classically falls into this example is what's the one that he talks about, where it's the one with the so that you've got two parallel lines running horizontally, just separated by a little amount of space, and then in the background, there's radio lines all going toward the vanishing point on the horizon. Right? Yes. I can't remember the name of this one, but the point that Changisi makes is that the radio lines, lines that radiate from a center point, our brains use as a shortcut indicator of motion. The herring illusion. Thank you. H-E-R-I-N-G so these radio lines that we see tell our brain, oh, we're moving, and we're moving towards this vanishing point in the distance. So these horizontal lines that are in the foreground actually appear to be bent in the center. Bent outward from one another. Oh, yeah. Very much so. What Shank is he is saying is that the brain is predicting, since it thinks we're moving forward towards this point and then toward these lines, that as we get closer, they have to bend to basically allow us to enter in another way. But the thing is, they're not moving because it's a static image, but it's the brain being tricked into thinking we're moving forward and changing our perspective unnecessarily. Yeah. Because the brain is used to the way we move forward in real life. IRL right. For your kids out there. And so a lot of it seemed like the brain almost kind of negotiating with itself. Yes. But part of it. So that lag time one makes sense. Right? Sure. Another one that makes sense to me as far as why the brain makes shortcuts is that the physical world is in at least three dimensions that we interact with it in. Right? Yeah. But our eyes are giving us two dimensional representations that the brain then has to reconstruct into three dimensions. And it's learned to take all sorts of neat little clues to put together a pretty good prediction of what it's looking at. Yeah. And it can also flip flop between two different views. Like the necker cube. I love that thing. Ne cker. And it's sort of that classic cube that you learned to draw, the one that's slightly more advanced than the basic cube that you first learned to draw. Right. It's the second cube that you learned to draw. Right. What was those things that you put on your books in high school? Oh, just like homemade book covers. Right, exactly. Yeah. Basically, a brown grocery sack is what I used. Yeah, same here. That's because we were poor. Plus those things held up. Oh, sure. Yeah. So you look at the necker cube, and the fun thing about the necker cubes, you look at it and your brain is able to flip back and forth between the queue, basically having two different positions. Is that the best way to say it? I keep saying that, but again, these things are kind of hard to describe. Well, yeah. It's kind of like the cube is transparent and you can see all corners of it. So your brain is saying, okay, is that corner close to me or furthest away from me? And it can be both. It changes perspective. Yeah. So thanks to the wonder machine, we can put people in these things and see the neurons responsible for the different perspectives flipping back and forth depending on how we're looking at it. Yeah, exactly. Pretty helpful. At this point because you had the 19th century where they started to suss out the ideas that the brain was responsible for this. It was the brain messing up. And then not a lot happened in between then and the 2000s when fMRI came into widespread use. And then now we're starting to see a lot of these early theories are actually correct because we can see the neurons responsible for them. All right, well, let's take a little break here, and then we're going to come back and talk about the Herman illusion and what the MRI said about that one. 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. Erman, I'm not sure how to pronounce that. Hermann. The Herman Grid, conceived by Ludemore Herman in 1870. Nailed his first name. Yeah. Well, it's one of those classic illusions that we've all seen, and it's really simple. It's just a black and white grid of squares. And that's the one where if you're just looking at it, it looks like there's these little gray circles, little gray dots in between where these things intersect, and there's really nothing there. Though, of course, when you focus on that, it goes away. Right. And the MRI showed that when you're looking at an illusion like this and others like this, the neurons are competing with one another to see the light in the dark. And basically one set of neurons wins out over the other and then influences the message to the other for what you end up perceiving. Right. Fairly interesting. I think it is. And this one kind of stands on its own or in its own class, and that it's not really the brain that's being duped. It's because of the physiology of the eyes and the light receptors in the eyes. Right, right. So they're arranged so that they sense distinction, like contrast between light and dark. Right. Yeah. And if they're sensing both. They create this blob. There's spillover where some receptors in a single cell are getting dark and some are getting light. You can create these blobs in the intersection, but then when you focus your attention on the white part, the intersection between the black squares, you're using your Fovial receptors, which have far less inhibition or spillover so that the gray blob disappears and what you see is white. It's actually really, I read probably like four different explanations of it before it started to sink in. It's straightforward, but it's tough to explain, I think. In other words, yes, I totally agree. And one of the reasons we know that these neurons are sort of individually picking things up is because in 1981, these two dudes, david Huble and Torsten FISA great name. You're going to say that in 1009 they won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine because they found out that there's actually a process in how the brain picks stuff up and what the eye sees. And they found that each neuron is actually responsible for one little part, one little detail of that pattern in the retinal image. And so that explains why these neurons can duke it out, basically on what it's seen. Yeah. And it's not just like neurons competing, seeing light and dark. From what I understand, the understanding of our brain and vision is that an individual neuron is responsible for, say, a circle. It sees circles and it's transmitting any circular information to the brain. Another neuron is responsible for seeing dark, another is responsible for seeing light, another is responsible for seeing red, another is responsible for seeing texture. And all of this sensory information, this visual information is coming to the brain all at once. And these various brain regions responsible for vision, putting it together the best way it can to see a red ball. And there's a lot of cues that the brain uses that just fascinate me for basically what's called monocular vision. Right. Yeah. So when you are using both of your eyes, especially when something's up close, you're getting two separate pictures of the same thing. And the differences between these pictures, the brain can use to easily translate it into three dimensions. Right. To handle things like perspective and stuff like that. But when something's further away, the brain has to use other little tricks of the trade. Right. So you've got things like inner position that's a pretty straight up one, where if one object is in front of another object, your brain says, well, the object that's behind is further away. Yeah. Is that what explains like force perspective? Yes. And art. Yes. Right. I do like forced perspective stuff. I do too. It's kind of cool. It's neat stuff. I guess that's probably part of the opart movement. Right? Yeah. When it was at like sixty s and seventy s. Yeah, it seems like it. Yeah. And kind of coincided with drugs, not surprisingly. And then there's another one that I hadn't heard of called atmospheric perspective. Had you heard of that one? I had not. So Atmospheric perspective is basically the dust particles and the water vapor in the air. The further something is away, the more of an effect those things have on the detail. You see, your brain says, well, that's a little blurry. That's a far away object. And then there's plenty of other ones. But the gold standard is object size, right? That's where you know roughly the size of an object, and you can use it to compare to see whether it's far away or close, depending on whether it's small or large or if you don't know the size of an object. But, you know, two objects are identical and one is smaller than the other, well, then, you know the smaller one is further away. So the brain is, like, constantly using all of these little cues and tricks to put together a conception of what it's seeing at any given point in time and then what optical illusions are again, these things you can produce to reliably trick the brain into making these wrong decisions. That shows its hand. It reveals how the brain functions to take these shortcuts and the tricks it uses. Right. Like a brain. You think you're so smart, you're really dumb. Look at this. Yeah. The brain says, oh, stop looking at those things. Look at normal things. I kind of like the apparent motion ones, although I can't look at a lot of them. Those are the ones where something is drawn in such a way that it looks like it's moving when it's not right. The very famous snake illusion is a great example. And this is another one of those theories that to me is a little weak. But one of the theories is that there are these almost like unnoticeable rapid eye movements that we make. How do you pronounce that? Saccade. S-A-C-C-A-D-E-S. Yes. Saccad ccades. I think you could probably get away with either one. All right, well, that's what they're called. And it's like Pruitt. Taylor vent syndrome. Do you remember him? Yeah, he's a great actor. Yeah, he is. So those little movements usually get smoothed out by the brain. So we get like a static picture. But what it's causing in this case is perceiving motion where there is no motion. And then the other theory on this one for apparent motion illusions is there's just so much information going on that there's just confusion. Right. I saw one that actually combined the two that basically said the secuds are creating the illusion of motion. But what they are really doing is because the brain is being hit with all this visual information that just totally doesn't make sense. It would never happen in nature, except maybe in motion. That these two cards. Actually, each time your eye makes this tiny movement, it refreshes this overwhelming overload of information onto the brain, which creates the sensation of movement. Oh, yeah. Pretty cool. Well, one of the cool aspects of all of this to me is the fact that once you've seen the illusion and the trick to it, you can't undo that. Right. So the brain is like, I got this one, the famous one, the old lady or the young woman, the black and white. It's a classic illusion. And once you can stare at it and be like, I just see the young lady, or, I just see the old lady. Once you've seen both, then your brain, like I said, it says, AHA, and it files that away as prior knowledge and a little folder in the brain. Right. And you can't undo that. So once you've seen it and you've seen the trick, you can always look at it and kind of make that flip in your mind, right? Exactly. And it's the same thing, too, with contourless figures. Where is it a wine goblet, or is it two people's faces facing one another kind of thing, right? Oh, yeah, the negative space. Yeah. And apparently the trick to those is you focus on the black or the white, and you see whichever one appears to be in the foreground, because what your brain is doing is saying, I need a foreground and I need a background, and then I've got something to work with. And depending on which one it's looking at, it decides this is the foreground or this is the background. So it's either a wine goblet in the foreground, or it's two people's faces in the foreground. I wonder if this stuff if they know anything about because they didn't see anything in the research, but if they know anything that this is like a brain exercise and helps you out, like playing sudoku or doing word puzzles, or if the brain is like, stop looking at these. I don't like this. I can't take any more, like, literally. Or if it causes stress on the brain by taxing it in a way that it is not accustomed to or, say, doesn't like, obviously the brain doesn't have a little person. Right. But you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I know what you mean. But even if it's not a little person, it could still not like things. Right. So let's take another break, and then I want to tell everybody what my favorite optical illusion of all time is. 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 longterm commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, chuck? Yeah? I'm ready. Well, there's two one I like slightly less than the other. Okay. So start with the second place one. Okay. I knew you were going to say that. Yeah, I think that's a great way to do it, too. So you've got I don't know the name of it. I'm sure there is a name, but actually, I think it's the contourless figure as well. You take three circles and you cut a pie slice out of all of them like a pacman, and you orient those pie slices so that each one forms what appears to be the corner of a coherent square. Okay. And you look at it and you're like, well, there's a square right there with some that's overlaying four circles. But if you stop and think about it, there's no line whatsoever that makes that square. It's your brain exclusively filling in some suggestible information to say, well, there's a square over a field of four circles. It's pretty neat to me. I like that one. So what's number one already? Yeah, it's called the adelson checkerboard. Okay. Surely you've seen this one, right? I'm looking it up as we speak. It's from the 90s. There is an MIT vision researcher named Edward Adelson, and he created this checkerboard where on the checkerboard there's dark and light squares like a normal checkerboard, and then there's like, I think, a cylinder on the checkerboard, and it's casting a shadow. And so he says, look at this white square, and then look at this black square, which is lighter, which is darker, and you say, well, that's easy. The darker square, figure B, say, is obviously darker than figure A. And he says that's wrong. That's absolutely wrong. Figure A and figure B are exactly the same color and shade. Yeah, I'm looking at it. I've seen that one for sure. The whole thing really works because it takes advantage of two different tricks that you can play on the brain, or it takes advantage of two different shortcuts the brain makes. Right? One is that cylinder is casting a shadow that appears to be putting figure A well into a shadow. Right? Yeah. So your brain automatically makes assumptions that if something is in a shadow, it would normally be lighter, which is, in this case, an incorrect assumption. It's actually the same shade as the other one. Right. And then the other assumption it's making is that because that square is surrounded by squares of a darker color and it's in a shadow, it seems to contrast it where the other figure, figure B, is a dark square surrounded by light. It seems to be darker because it's surrounded because of the context of the squares that it's surrounded by. So your brain is using two different things, the presence of a shadow and then the context where if something is surrounded by lighter stuff, it seems darker. If something is surrounded by darker stuff, it seems lighter. And that's just not always the case, obviously, because Edward Adelson proved it not. So you want to know my favorite? Yes. The classic Evanhouse illusion. Oh, that's a good one. E-B-B-I-N-G-H-A-U-S. This one is sort of similar, but it's not so much about color, but it uses adjacent objects and a lot of these do too. They use other things surrounding something to trick your brain. Right. And in this case it's the classic one. Go look it up. You have two orange dots. One on the left, let's say, is surrounded by six larger gray dots and the other one on the right is surrounded by eight smaller dots. It's very simple. That's why I love it. And the orange dots are the same size, but they look completely different sizes. Yeah, and it's so simple. And I think this is one of the ones that they have this contest every year, I think, for like, I don't know, it's been going on for at least ten or twelve years. Right. For new illusions. And as we said earlier, a lot of these new illusions are still just sort of riffs on the classics. But the one that won a couple of years ago in 2014 was a new version of the Ebbing House illusion where it's actually a video that you have to play. So it moves the outer dots, it looks like it pulsates and well, it is pulsating. They get bigger and smaller and the orange dot stays the same, but it looks like it's shrinking and expanding. Right. So it's kind of cool. It's just to play on the Eddinghouse illusion. Right, but that's what we were saying earlier, too. It's almost like they invented all of them in the 19th century and then now we're just able to perfect them a little more. Yeah, pretty cool. Another thing I thought was really neat was that there is this biological basis that is the same for everyone on planet Earth, obviously, but they did find there's some across different cultures that they didn't take the same visual cues necessarily. Right. And the classic Mulleraya illusion that everyone has seen and that's just the really simple one of two straight lines, horizontal lines, and they have arrows on the end. On one of them the arrows are pointing out. On the other, the arrows are pointing. In, and those two horizontal lines appear to be different lengths. Right. And so they did a study in South Africa and they found that most of the European South Africans thought, yeah, look at them, they're different lengths. Then they showed it to the Bushman of South Africa, and they're like, no, dummies, they're the same length. Can't you see that? And the researchers are like, what? Yeah, they have some theories about it that kind of makes sense, that Western societies may be a little more used to these things that are built in straight lines and a little more geometrical, where the other culture might be, like, just more attuned to nature, where there aren't so many straight lines. Right. Because the explanation for the what was it? The myer the Mueller liar. The Mueller liar effect or optical illusion is that depending on which way the arrow is pointing, whether at the end of the line or away from the line, the brain is used to seeing corners, right. Two walls coming together at a ceiling make that same kind of arrow, and one that's pointing away means the point of it is further away, so it would make the line look longer, whereas one that's pointing inward would make it look like the corner is closest to us. Right. So it would seem like the line is shorter. Right. But the explanation was that, well, bushmen have never seen two walls come together at the ceiling, so that's why it didn't happen to them. But the thing that disproved that is that they trained a computer to look at this stuff, and they didn't train it on a three dimensional objects. So it wasn't familiar with walls coming together with the ceiling, and it was fooled by it as well. So they were like, well, we have no idea what's going on. Then bushmen or magic is what they said. I wonder why so many of these illusion enthusiasts seem to be, like, German and Austrian. I think I had to do that was largely where psychology took off. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I guess Escher was Dutch. Was he? Yeah, he was Dutch, but it seems like a lot of these are, like, German and Austrian. Yes, I think it has to do with that was where the hot seat of psychology and brain research was at the time. Interesting. Yeah. You got anything else? Yeah, actually, I do have one more. There was a guy named Herman von Helmholtz. Oh, he wasn't German, right. Nice Irish guy. He was from Indiana. Von Helmholtz came up with these squares, right, that are not actually they don't have confining lines or defining lines. They're just equal lines equally apart that form to the brain of square. But ones that are horizontal seem smaller and shorter than ones that are vertical. Which is weird, because if you are wearing, like, a horizontally striped shirt, everybody's like, you look fat in that shirt. Well, if you've on helmholtz. You don't you should actually look slimmer. Which surprised me. So I started wearing horizontal stripes as a result. You got your Charlie Brown shirt out. Yeah. Because that was sort of the old I don't know if it's true or not, but they said that the New York Yankees designed their pin stripes to make Bay roof look thinner. I could totally buy that, but I don't know if that's true. I thought they had pinstripes before then. Bay Bruce was eating a steak while they were fitting them for and he said, thanks for thinking of me. But he wasn't even using silver, he's eating it with his hand. Yeah. And he also blended a steak into a milkshake and drank that along with his regular steak. Right. And he didn't take a cigar out while he drank it. He just put that in the corner of his mouth. Yeah, sure. And it's after dinner, cognac that's why we love Babe Ruth. Yeah. You know what? We didn't get into it all, and I don't know if they even count as illusions or if there's something else. And they were a boy. They were all the rage in the early ninety s, I feel like, were those magic eye yeah. Where you stare at the thing and all of a sudden a ship pops out at you if you're lucky enough to be able to see it. I know a lot of people that would just endlessly not be able to see them and it would frustrate them to no end. I think if I remember correctly, they advised that you stare into the middle ground yeah. And sort of, like, unfocused your eyes. Yeah, I was looking those up. There's a mental floss article on it that was pretty brief and it made sense. I think they were machine vision learning researchers who were like, hey, let's make some money on the side. If they start with, like, a depth map of something and put it in grayscale, and I think they make two of them. So your eyes are getting the two different versions of it, but one is smaller than the other, so it really makes it pop as far as depth goes. Right. And then somehow the random repeating pattern that overlays it transmits that information to your brain unconsciously. You did look it up, then. I did. I don't know if I got it fully right, because it's actually kind of complex, but I thought they did a pretty good job of describing it. Could you see those? Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, I always could see them. And that's another one of those where once you see it, you can just immediately draw it out. And of course, there's the one ethan suppley and Mall Rats. Sort of the one joke through that movie was he just stares at this thing, like through the whole movie. Oh. And he couldn't see it. Couldn't see it. Poor guy. What a great joke. Speaking of, that something that's always bothered me. Stephen King said in one of his books or something like that, he was talking about how you can't unsee something. I thought you said he was talking about mall rats. And he used the man in the moon as an example. He's like it's like the man in the moon. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Right. I don't get it. I've seen the man in the moon before and I totally can't find them again. So you can unsee it. Stephen King is wrong. What is the man in the moon? What are you talking about? You've never seen the man on the moon? No. So I guess probably look it up. I think it would help to see somebody else pointing it out. And then when you look at the full moon, you should be able to see it. But there's a man looking down it's. Jackie Gleason. Are you looking it up right now? Yeah. I never knew that was a thing. That's weird. And then the Japanese think it's a rabbit and that the rabbit is up there making mochi. Really? I don't know what other cultures think. Those are the two I'm familiar with. Yeah. So mochi. All right. If you want to know more about optical illusions, type those words into the search bar, how stuff works. Better yet, go to Michaelbach De and just have some fun. And since I said de, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Aussie slang. We love our. And I said aussie. I meant aussie. Right. We love our Australian listeners. We've got a lot of them. They've long supported the show, so we'd like to shout them out. Yes, Australia. He said, get a fellows. It's pretty good. I'm not going to read the whole thing like that, but I will. Just nailed Canberra. I'm a devoted listener from Down Under and I'm doing my best to get through your podcast. I love the show and finish every show with a smile and some new fact to tell my mates about. Anyway, I got a quick story for you to have a laugh at and possibly be very confused by. The other night, my mate and I were going on a Macas run. M-A-C-C-A-S-I think we've talked about that before, right? No, in that beer. I don't know. Fosters was Australian and he goes, all right, mate, after we've been to Maccas, we can drop by the Servo, grab a pack of dairies and then the bottle o, grab a slab of VB stubbies and head back to yours and get pissed. Okay, so let me see if I can translate this. Oi, mate. Hello, friend. After we've been to Macas, I don't know what that was next. Can we drop by the Servo? We can go hang out with Tom Servo. I bet you anything a Servo is like a gas station. Okay, grab a pack of Durries, get some milk. And then the bottle, though, get a bottle, grab a slab of VB stubbies, get some ribs. I think I think that's Australian for ribs. It is. And head back to yours and get pissed and then go to sleep. I think you're right on the money. Yes. I know you guys don't often do requests be rad if you guys did a podcast on all these slangs history and meaning, mostly because I would love to hear Chuck's Aussie accent. Oh, well, granted, he didn't translate it himself now, so we'll never know whether I was completely right. Someone will. Okay? And I'd love to hear both of you pronounce as much Aussie slang as possible, but also because I'd like to have facts about why I speak the way I do. Stay rad. And that is from Liam. And he said, PS. We swear a lot down here, and if that's why you can't do an Aussie slang podcast, I don't blame you. Well, I swear a lot IRL Liam, but we just keep it clean for the show. That's right. Nice. Yeah. Well, thanks, Liam. I'm not going to do an Australian accent because it would hurt everyone's ears. If you want to get in touch with us, like Liam did, you can tweet to us. I'm at Joshlarkpodcast chuckson Facebook Comteyshadow and Charles W. Chuckbryant. And you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepherscom. As always, hang out with us at our home on the web stuffyhw.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 app and listen today." | |
43db31c4-53a3-11e8-bdec-cbea3e379716 | How Hurricanes Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-hurricanes-work | Hurricanes are perhaps the most destructive force of nature we have to deal with here on Earth. When a mind-boggling number of factors all fall into place just right, the outcome can be an enormous system of storms that is as awesome as it is powerful. | Hurricanes are perhaps the most destructive force of nature we have to deal with here on Earth. When a mind-boggling number of factors all fall into place just right, the outcome can be an enormous system of storms that is as awesome as it is powerful. | Tue, 28 Jul 2020 13:31:13 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=13, tm_min=31, tm_sec=13, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=210, tm_isdst=0) | 51152005 | 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 pre order 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 and say, oh, thank you. I 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@stuffyadbooks.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 Bryan over there. Jerry's around here somewhere. So this is stuff you should know. Everybody. The Wrath of God edition. Hi. Hi. I've been singing that Bob Dylan song all day. Oh, yeah. You know, it's weird. I have two and I hadn't realized it until you just said that. Really? Yeah. My brain is ft. Which song? Hard rain is going to fall, or yes. Hurricane, hurricane, hard rain is Going to fall. Are you crazy? Well, that would fit, too. I guess it would. It hadn't even occurred to me. Great song, Hurricane. Now I'm going to be singing Hard Brain Is Going to Fall, which is not nearly as good as the Hurricane song. I'm surprised you know any Bob Dylan song. That's shocking. Those are the two. No, more than that. No, that's it. I know that one that goes easy. What's that one? Oh, it's all of them. Got you. God bless him. He's got a new album out. It's great, dude. How many does that make? He's got a lot of records. Yeah, he does. Well, good song. It is. It was a good movie, too. Sad I didn't see that. Yeah. Denzel Washington, I believe, played him. And yeah, I mean, if you like injustice, you're going to love that movie. Well, you mean if you like movies about fighting injustice. That's what you mean, right? Yes. Either way, you're going to like the movie. I love injustice. Right. Sadly, there are people who say things like that these days. That's true. So, Chuck, we're talking about hurricanes, not the Bob Dylan song, but about the actual weather system. Weather disaster anomaly, I guess you mean typhoons. No, I mean hurricanes, but that's the same thing. And so is Chuck. You mean cyclones? Kind of, yes, all three of those are the one in the same did you know that? I think I knew that and just sort of forgot because when I read it, I was like, oh, yeah, I think I knew that. Right. It just depends on where they occur in the world, basically, aside from exactly where they occur, where they make land and then the way that they turn and move. They are the same thing. They start the same way, they're the same group of weird weather coincidences that happen to assemble into something. And hurricanes, to me are as good as it gets natural, disaster wise. I mean, they are as interesting as they come. They are so ridiculously destructive, and then theoretically, what they could do if they got even worse, which they may, it just boggles the mind. I'm a hurricane fan in a way, but I hate Miami as far as the university is concerned. You hate the U? No, not really. I'm just teasing. Yeah, and I think the other thing about hurricanes is so fascinating is it's a regular thing. It's not like a volcanic eruption or a tsunami or an earthquake. Every year there are going to be like 100 tropical storms and 30 to 50 of these are going to develop into hurricanes. You can count on it. Right, Jack? Yeah. And they actually have seasons, to tell you the truth, depending on where you are in the world, in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in the Atlantic, you've got what's appropriately called the Atlantic hurricane season, and it runs from about June 1 to November 30 down under in the Southern Hemisphere, they have a hurricane season that runs from about January to March. And again, there's some differences to them, but it's essentially the same thing. It's just that hurricanes tend to form over the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific, and then cyclones are over the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, and then typhoons tend to hit the Northwest Pacific Ocean around Asia to the Middle East. That's right. So I think the Australians would call them cyclones. Is that right? Yeah. And we call them good old hurricanes. That's right. And actually hurricane, since we're just spouting out facts about hurricanes at this point right now, it actually comes from an old Mayan word, hurricane, which is the name for one of their gods of destruction, of thunder and lightning and wind and I believe maybe rain, who brought the flood that destroyed almost all people and then made it recede because humanity had gotten too wicked. And if that sounds familiar, that's because there's a flood story in basically every culture in the world, which makes me really wonder, like, what happened? What is everybody talking about that actually may have happened at some point. I just find that fascinating. Yeah. And how hurricane forms can get very convoluted as we realized when we started diving into this research and we'll describe it in a bit more detail, but you know, me and my Earth Science for Kids websites, there's a door in the very simplest of terms. Hurricanes form over warm ocean waters near the equator, in the tropics, and that warm, moist air rises up and then is replaced by cooler air, and then that air warms up and starts to rise. And that just causes a cycle that starts these clouds to form and they start rotating and they get a little more organized. And if there's enough of that warm water, eventually that wind is going to pick up and you're going to get a hurricane. Yes, and they move in the northern hemisphere, especially in the Atlantic, which we're going to kind of focus on Atlantic hurricanes here. But again, most of the stuff we're talking about applies to cyclones and typhoons too, but in the Atlantic in particular, they usually start off of the west coast of Africa and move down toward the equator, where they slide over through the Caribbean and then up along Florida, the Carolinas, sometimes to New England. But most of the time they'll hit the Gulf Stream and will be carried up to England, where they peed her out and show up for a pine at the pub. Yes, and hurricanes, they eventually will die out. 100% landfall will make them die out because that's the worst part for people living on planet Earth, because that's where it hits the land. But that actually means the hurricane is dying because there's not that warm water anymore. Right. Or the further north they go, the cooler that water gets. And that will just peter it out as well. Yeah. If you really think about it. When you take all these factors into consideration. Just those two. That it needs warm water and that it can't be over land. A hurricane is a startling series of coincidences that happen again and again. Repeatedly during a certain section of the year. In certain sections of the world. And it just takes everything being perfect. Like a perfect storm. But over and over again for these things to happen. And like you said, there's so many different storms that form off the west coast of Africa or off the west coast of Australia that can form into these things, but they don't. They usually don't, because all of those factors just aren't working just perfectly for the thing to not only kind of catch to ignite in a way, but also to kind of develop steam and to really pick up and become a problem. Yeah, and I know what you mean about loving hurricanes in a certain weird way. Obviously, the landfall and the destruction is terrible and we don't wish that ever. Absolutely. But when you see those images from above of the hurricane rotating and how big it is, it's humbling and just sort of mind boggling display of nature at work, right? It is. I mean, that hits it on the head. It's definitely not all the death and property destruction that I'm a fan of. No, of course. I'm like, oh, man, I love injustice. I know, man. This is what happened to you overnight. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about how hurricane actually forms and then what it forms into. Okay, we're going to do the Earth sign. Okay. I'll take over, everybody. I hope you like my voice, because that's all you're going to hear for a little while. I think if they're listening, they're probably used to that. Do you know when we first started this, I couldn't stand my voice. Couldn't stand it. Yeah. I finally reached the date. Right now I reach the Daytona with it. Okay. I just ignore it. So, Chuck, you've got air, right? Oh, boy. Okay. Air over the ocean and over the land. The stuff that's closest to the surface is actually the warmest, which, as you know, if you've ever been Skydiving, it's really cold up there. I haven't. No, it's really cold up there. Trust me. Like, if you ever like if you climb a mountain or something, it's always cold up there. One reason why is because never done it. Just trust me. Trust me. The upstairs in my house is cooler. It shouldn't be. It should be much warmer because heat rises in your house. Yeah, but the AC up there, there's fewer rooms. It just really packages. Okay, you're making this Earth science thing way hard. So the air at the surface of the Earth is warmer because it gets warm by the Earth or by the ocean. Right. Ocean temperatures kind of tend to warm with the seasons, and so by around June 1, which was when hurricane season starts, you've got an ocean with surface temperatures hovering around 79 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay. Yeah. And I think 80 is where you've got to be kind of that's the threshold to even get if you want to talk about hurricanes, it's got to go to 80 degrees exactly, and not just at the very surface. I think it needs to be that down to about 150ft, because hurricane mix a lot of water together, and if it's not warm water that stays available, it's just going to peter out. Right? Yeah. So you need 80 deg at a minimum surface temperature, water down to 150ft. And so you've got that going on in the ocean around certain times of year. And if we can travel into the interior of Africa all the way to Sudan. A little monarch butterfly will flap its wings. And that creates an air disturbance. And weeks later. That develops into an even bigger disturbance. And it moves further west across Africa and finally off the coast. And it will encounter that warm water and warm air that's being heated by the water. And that disturbance will actually encounter that water that's evaporating and rising and as the water evaporates and rises. It's becoming less dense. Right. The molecules that make up the air with the water vapor are further apart than cold air that's above it. Well, nature abhors a vacuum, right. And when the air leaves that area right above the surface of the ocean, cold air starts to move in below it, right. Which pushes the other air further upward. But then that cold air is warmed up, too, and that starts to rise. And so what you have under this disturbance in the air that was created by a butterfly's wings in Sudan is this motion in the ocean that's all that covers that is kind of the upward trajectory of air constantly moving upward. And it's full of water vapor. So when it gets high enough up into the cooler regions in the atmosphere, it condenses and forms clouds. And those clouds eventually start to rain. And as it condenses and starts to rain, that actually heats up that area. The latent heat of condensation heats up that area. So now you have this column of warm, moist air rising up, moving with cold air, trying to come in and replace it as the warm air moves. And you have a lot of air movement, you have some storm starting, and you have all the ingredients now for what could become a hurricane. That's right. And that heat exchange is going on, and that's going to create a lot of wind, and that's just going to make everything worse because those winds converge at the surface and they're colliding with each other, and that's pushing that warm, moist air up and up, and that cycle just starts to happen. That rotational cycle that's so tied to the image of a hurricane. Right. And those winds get involved and everything kind of just synchronizes. Right? Exactly. That's what I'm talking about with all the different coincidences that have to, number one, be present, then have to work just right. Because if that wind that's converging at the surface to replace that warm, moist air that's rising man, I've never seen moist this many times in my life and been okay with it, but I'm all right so far. How are you doing? I'm great. Okay. If the speed of that wind that's coming in at the surface is different than, say, like, the speed of that higher up in that column, you're going to have what's called wind shear, and it's going to keep the storm from being organized into a cohesive hole. So just that factor alone that somehow the winds at different levels of this storm that's starting to organize have to be moving at roughly the same speed. That's a big one. Right. And then because of these thunderstorms that are starting, and the more condensation that they're heating more and more, so they're creating more and more storms. So you've got all these storms that are kind of starting around this area, and they start to get organized together. And then eventually this is called a tropical depression. And eventually, if everything that we're going to keep talking about happens just precisely right, it's going to organize into a tropical storm and then a hurricane. And then the hurricane, as we'll see, goes through different stages of categorization. And it all has to do with the speed of those winds that have now kind of organized into this rotational monster, which is really a tight or sometimes a loose collection of storms that form one big storm. That's what a hurricane is that are all kind of moving in the same direction at about the same speed. And it all has to do with that thing that started all this, that rising moist air in that one spot. Because as these different storms assemble into a larger, more Cohesive hole, the center, the lowest pressure center, right. The warmest, moistest air is rising up. It also has the lowest pressure. And because nature abhors a vacuum, higher pressure air is trying to come in to fill it. But there's something that we have to talk about call the Coriolis effect. And here's where things really run off the rails for us. Take it, Chuck. Yeah. The Coriolis effect is when you see that hurricane rotating, that's a byproduct or I guess a product of that Coriolis force, which is we've talked about it before, but it's the natural phenomenon that makes fluids. And any kind of free moving object either go to the right of their destination if you're in the Northern hemisphere or to the left in the Southern hemisphere. Right. Not toilets in Australia. I thought we said that. Okay, so I thought I said it wasn't true and somebody showed us that it was. It was the opposite. Yes, I think it's not true. We'll find out again. But at any rate, in the northern hemisphere, your winds deflect to the right. In the southern hemisphere, they're going to deflect to the left. And it's that deflection that gets the storm spinning. And that's why you get different rotations in each hemisphere. They rotate counterclockwise here in the Northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. Right. But we do need to keep going with the Coriolis effect. Sorry, I didn't mean to scare everybody. But the Coriolis effect does two things. It makes the hurricane rotate, like you were saying, basically on an axis around that lowest pressure center. And then it also moves the hurricane physically itself as it kind of travels southward from West Africa toward the equator, which is really bizarre because at the equator, the Coriolis effect is at its absolute weakest, its strongest at the poles. But for some reason, something about the Coriolis effect moves the hurricane like a hurricane could theoretically cross the equator from the Northern hemisphere to the southern. Who knows what would happen when it transferred over to the other? Like the opposite coriolis effect. As far as we know, that horizon probably as far as we know, it's never happened. But we've only been keeping track of this stuff for about 100 years, but it just doesn't ever seem to happen for some reason. The Coriolis effect, despite being weakest of the equator, moves hurricanes back upward, over and up, back into the left, right? That's right. So the Coriolous effect has two very important things for hurricanes. But probably the biggest one, the most important one as far as the hurricane itself is concerned, is to keep that thing spinning around in the same motion, clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on your hemisphere. All right, I think we should take a break and we can come back and talk a little bit about what these different categories mean right after this. So Chuck, before we talk categories, I have to pop one more thing in about the Corioles. It's important. Are you ready? Sure. So that lowest pressure center, what's called the i, that is actually the clearest part of the hurricane. Sometimes it's clear skies, beautiful, eerily calm, and the reason why is because of the Coriolis effect. The lowest pressure center is never overwhelmed by the higher pressure air that's trying to get in. The whole reason that hurricane spins around the center is because all that wind from sometimes hundreds of miles away is traveling to that center, trying to fill it. But the Coriolis effect deflects it. They end up going around that center, the winds, and then up to lifting more warm air up and they never make it to that middle, which is what causes that. And the stronger the winds, meaning the stronger the pressure gradient between the center of the hurricane and the outer bands beyond the eye wall, the stronger the difference between that gradient, the stronger the hurricane is going to be, because the stronger the winds are going to be trying to fill that low pressure void. That's what causes hurricanes to spin around clockwise or counterclockwise. That is absolutely fascinating to me. It's very cool, the eye of the storm, calmest place in the world. It really is. Although it's counter intuitive, it is. So these categories, category one, and this is all broken down and very sort of it's pretty stiff. As far as how they categorize these things, it's not willy nilly. They don't say like, it's getting pretty bad. I think it's a two. They actually measure things and they're demarcation lines by usually wind speeds is one of the big parts. 74 to 95, category one. And I could blow a tree branch into your roof. Sure. Or get some shingles shuttering. You might have to get out the Pruners. Category Two is 96 to 110 mph. That's getting pretty dangerous and you're going to get some pretty extensive damage at this point, like the siding of your house, the frame of your house. Shallow trees can be snapped or uprooted. At this point you're probably going to get some power loss. Right. Number three is a major hurricane. Category three is 111 to 129 miles an hour and they rank this as devastating damage and lots of trees uprooted. You definitely will lose probably power and water for a period of time for the category three. And then you've got your category four, which is 130 to 156. Category five is 157 or higher. You're probably not going to see many cat fives, but the cat four is pretty catastrophic and those are the ones that we've seen more and more of in more recent years. Right. Category five are just that's extreme catastrophe. They're monsters. Monsters. So category four and five, there's not a tremendous amount of differences, both, like you said, considered catastrophic damage causing hurricanes. But I get the impression that the difference between a four and five in real life is substantial. But either way they're going to leave so many trees and power lines down that whatever area gets hit substantially by one of those category four or five are going to basically be isolated both without power, but also the roads are going to be made impassable. And sometimes you can be stuck in the midst of this for weeks before you can be reached again. The destruction can be so bad from them. Yeah. And if you are a coastal liver, this is a part of your life every year. Hurricane season is a big deal. You've got your house retrofitted. Ideally at this point, I think almost any coastal house these days is on stilts if it's built in the last 20 plus years. Well, not just that. I think after 2005 I want to say it was Hurricane Andrew, florida in particular passed new building codes that said if you put a roof on, it has to have this kind of choice and whatever windows are put in have to be like wind proof up to 130 mph. They've definitely started to take that seriously because so many people were dying before, but also because of the billions and billions of dollars of property damage that would happen every year. Yeah, I mean, here in Atlanta, obviously we don't get hurricanes, coastal Georgia, we certainly do, but we do get the outer bands of the hurricane and we can get some really bad wind and rain and some flooding and stuff like that. But we're obviously far enough inland to where the eye of the hurricane is not going to really affect us. But if you're in the Gulf or along the Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, up into Virginia, even like you said, they can go higher. Maryland and New England and even New York City. But generally I think kind of from Virginia down is where you're going to be the most worried in hurricane season. So you mean I have a place in Florida. Right. And we were down there once and I think it was Hurricane Michael a year or so ago, came through and we got out of there and came up to Atlanta and that thing followed us all the way up to Atlanta and knocked the power out at our place there. Was that a shaggy dog story? Do you know what a shaggy a shaggy dog story is? A story that seems worthwhile or worth saying to the person saying it, but not to anybody else. Oh, I don't think so. And why did they call it a shaggy dog? I have no idea. We need to get to the bottom of that someday. No, I think it's a great story, and I remember when that happened, in fact. You do? Sure. Wow. I love it when my life is part of your life. I know. It's like happens two or three times a year. Sure. And every Tuesday. That's right. Yeah, I totally remember that. And you've also like any good coastal river, you've got hurricane shutters and stuff like that, right? Oh, yeah, for sure. And like the high impact windows and all that stuff. Yeah, you just got to do that stuff these days. Oh, you definitely do. And it's really kind of scary if you're out there. Not like that because it was 2005 when they passed that billing code. There's a lot of places that haven't been retrofit, and it's like the whole community kind of comes together to take care of everybody who needs help around that time, which is pretty cool. But one of the reasons why everybody has days to prepare for this kind of thing and go to the store and buy every banana you can get your hands on and like five loaves of bread and all that and put up sandbags and stuff is because of the modeling and forecasting that has been developed in the last 50. 60 years that's really saved a lot of people's lives because we didn't have warnings before. It was just the sky started to look pretty bad, and an hour or two later, your town was gone. Yeah, I rent the beach house on Isle of Palms every usually, and all those houses are 15ft off the ground on those legs. And it's just crazy to me to think about the old days when you would just have a house sitting on the sand, like 75ft from high tides. It's just such a bad idea because such a bad idea. One of the big problems that make hurricanes so destructive, Chuck, is that not only is it the wind that can come through, and once it reaches, I think, like a category three, four, or five, that's when you're going to start to lose your deck. Not just your decks are your roof decking is really what I meant. You'd be like my deck, which would suck because decks are kind of expensive, but it's your roof decking that you'd really be worried about. And that happens when the wind itself pierces the envelope of your house, like it breaks a window or something like that. Now, all of a sudden you've got a pressure difference inside and outside of your house, which can actually pop the roof right off of your house, which, once that happens, your walls start to give away. It's a bad jam. Wind is very destructive, too. But the reason people started putting houses on stilts is because the wind is so strong and the hurricane can be so massive that it actually pushes the ocean inland. It's not like a huge wave here's. The ocean way further inland than it should be, and it's called a storm surge. And it's a huge problem with hurricanes. Yeah. And I've been to places before and after, just from year to year on vacation, and it can literally remake the coastline. They look vastly different after a hurricane. I think that one of the years we went to Isle of Palms. It was after a hurricane. And instead of the walk to the beach from the house, instead of that sort of gradual decline to the water, it was in some places, like a 1215 foot drop of just a sheer wall cliff of sand. And people had ladders and stuff like that. You would literally have to climb down a ladder to get down to the ocean beach part. Yeah. And that's not good if your house is built on that sand that used to be there. And as we saw in our we're running out of sand, and that really matters episode, that we need that sand. We can't afford the ocean to just come reclaim that. That's our sand. Yeah. Well, the good thing about Iowa Palms, those houses are set back a great deal. They're not on that sand. There's a big area of sea grass and just shrubbery and stuff in between. And so it's just a safer bet when you're trying to book a place, because it's not hurricane proof. But by the time the water gets there, that would have to be a really big surge. Yeah, but it happens. It does happen. A storm surge can be pretty bad, I think. Hurricane Harvey in Houston in 2017, one of the reasons it was so destructive, from what I saw, it was the second most expensive storm that's ever hit the US. It cost $128. That's it. It costs $128,000,000,000 in damages. And one of the reasons why is because of that storm surge and not just flooding houses and causing property damage. That kind of storm surge can overwhelm your sewer system and mess with your drinking water supply and do all sorts of horrible stuff that can kill off tons of wildlife, because that's something that gets overlooked in hurricanes. We humans are so worried about us and then our pets and everything, the wildlife itself can really take a hit. Like fish. Hurricanes can kill fish. That's how destructive they are. They slam them into, like, underwater outcroppings and sandbars and stuff and just kill the fish. That's how forceful these things are. So there's a lot. Of other problems that arise from the hurricane, in particular the storm surge too that we've only really started to kind of grasp in the last few decades of examining hurricanes. Yeah, but you were talking about tracking, it's gotten so much better these days on the ground. There's something called the Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers and this is just basically a network all around the world of global centers that are designated by the World Meteorological Organization. And they are the ones who track these things using weather satellites, using infrared technology and infrared sensors. They are going to detect all the minutiae of the temperature differences, cloud heights, all these things, how you mentioned that all these things have to kind of be perfect. They have all these ways of measuring these little bits of perfection as they align and they know pretty well now things can change and things can reverse course. I know people get frustrated when they keep changing the path of the hurricane and they don't keep changing it when they report on changes, but I think people kind of act that way sometimes. No, they do for sure. You make me leave my house and this thing didn't even make landfall. Yeah, they're doing a pretty good job and they're doing the best they can. Well, it's problematic too, as far as forecasting goes, because if you do that to people in a coastal area, a couple of times in one year they're going to stop listening to you and you might be 100% right and something's going to make landfall right on top of them and they're not going to leave. So there is definitely a fine line and there is kind of a balance between knowing too soon and not knowing at all. And we're kind of working our way toward that sweet spot for sure and it's gotten way better. But very famously, if you ever follow hurricanes as they start to kind of come toward the US. There's the spaghetti model. Have you ever seen one of those? Yeah, so all of those are just a tangle of tracks of the hurricane that have been forecasted. So the European model is typically thought of as probably the most accurate and that's put together by an agency in Europe and they say, here's what the track that we think. Then there's like ten or a dozen or 15 different agencies and groups all forecasting a track. When you put them all together, it looks like different colored lines of spaghetti over the map and you get a pretty good idea of just where the thing is going to go based on all of these different predictions. Kind of like the wisdom of crowds, you know what I mean? Where the more information you have and you put together, the more guests you put together, probably the closer combined they're going to be to accurate than any one of them individually would have a chance to be. Yeah, and the cool thing about spaghetti models, and this is true of, like, percentage of rain and stuff that you might see every day is a lot of it is based on past data, like what's going on now, for sure. But then when you plug that into all the past data and behaviors of storms in the past and what they've done and how they've moved and behaved, you can get a pretty cool model. And I've always loved that about whether they use so much historical data to predict what could happen this time. Right. That's what they use to produce the cone of Uncertainty, which is oh, that's right. One of the most confusing meteorological models, maybe any kind of model there is on the planet. It's a really great useful tool if you know what it's talking about. If you don't know exactly what it's talking about, it's seriously confusing and really misleading in a lot of ways. But with the cone of uncertainty is everybody's seen it. It's like kind of like this funnel. It looks like a tornado, basically. That looks like it shows the path and width of the hurricane. It goes from kind of smaller to wider and wider and wider. So it looks like what it's showing you is the track of a hurricane and how big the hurricane is going to grow over time. That's not at all what the cone of Uncertainty shows, what the cone of uncertainty is. Instead, it's a plot of, I think, about five different circles representing the next 24, 48, 72 onto five days out forecasts. And it says here's all the data we have, and we're crunching those numbers, and then we're comparing them to how accurate we were in the last five years for predicting hurricanes that were five years out. And then all of a sudden, when you put that together, that forms a circle. And that five day out circle is always the biggest one because it's hardest to predict weather patterns five days out. But what it looks like when you take those increasingly larger circles and connect them with the line is that it's forming a path. And really what it's showing is this is the potential distance between the track of the hurricane, the center of the hurricane, and it could land anywhere in here. Not the edges of it. We're talking just the center. So every time hurricane season rolls around, people go and look up what the cone of uncertainty means, because it doesn't mean at all what you think it does. Hopefully, I've cleared it up for, like, two people, and I probably just confused the other million even further. The cool thing about those two is that they can be changed with a sharpie. That's right. It's really neat. Seen and done. All right, I think we should take a break, maybe, and come back and talk about these hurricane names. A little history. How about that? Let's do it. All right. So hurricane names are named after people. Now, this wasn't always the case, and I didn't know this. This is kind of cool. But for many hundreds of years, if you were in the West Indies, you would hear hurricanes named after the Catholic Saints Day on the day that that storm made landfall. So it would be like hurricane San Felipe hit Puerto Rico. And on September 13, 1876, another little fun fact is if another hurricane hits on that same day, which actually happened in 1928, on September 13, they would name it the Second. So that was Hurricane San Felipe. The second during World War II is when we started to give human names. And they were all masculine names, though. Yeah. And kind of followed that whole, like, Bravo, Whiskey, Tango thing. Yeah. How does that I don't understand that. Well, it's like, what do you mean? Those aren't names? I don't understand it either. From what I saw, we didn't really start to use names in the west until I think, the so masculine names like Bravo and Tango, they're calling that a masculine name? I guess so, because I think we started using human names in the we started using male and female names in the they were ladies, right? Yeah. And they said, well, that's not cool to name that after a woman. And every time you guys show, like the weather model, the forecast model, it's not a hurricane. It's a woman with rollers in her hair and a rolling pin yelling, it seems sexist. And everyone finally said, you know, you're right, that is sexist. So we're going to start to alternate between men's names and women's names. And so at the beginning of every hurricane season what is it, the World Meteorological Association? Yes. Organization. Sorry. They released a list of all the names that the Atlantic hurricane season could possibly have, and each name starts with a different letter, ABCD and so on. Can I list this year? Yeah. You got Arthur K. Bertha. Nice crystal ball. Yeah. You got Dolly, you got Eduard. You have Fay. Okay. And we should mention, too, that they use names from places all over the world now, which is great because hurricanes affect places all over the world. Yeah. So you have faith and you have Gonzalo, you have Hana, you have I don't know even how you pronounce this. I-S-A-I-A-S Isaiah. I-S-A-I-A-S sure. Isaias. Isaias. Then you got Josephine. Nice name. You got Kyle, you got Laura, you got Marco. You've got Nana. Sweet Nana. You've got Omar, Paulette, which for some reason sounds funny to me. Hurricane Paulette. Yes. You've got Renee, Sally, Teddy, Vicky, and finishing up because they don't have Y or Z for some reason. Wilfred. That's a good one. Hurricane Wilfred. Sounds tough. Or an X. Yummy's. Predicted that Hurricane Nana is going to be a particularly bad one, which is the sweetest grandma name. I think so, yeah. And there's actually a longstanding myth that was supposedly found to be correct by some study a few years back that people don't respect the female names of hurricanes. But yeah, so there's this whole okay, I don't know what's wrong with me, I'm putting everything so terribly a day. But get this. There's this urban legend that hurricanes that have women's names are the most destructive because people don't take them as seriously and they don't leave. So there's more people present to be killed when a hurricane lands for a woman named Hurricane than a man named Hurricane. And for a long time it was just this kind of old wives tale or something. And then this study found in, I think, 2014 or something like that, they know this actually is true. Somebody sat down and crunched the numbers and then finally, I think two years ago, they're like, this study was terrible, and that's absolutely not true if we looked at the numbers too. And that's just not the case. All right, well, that's good to know because that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It is kind of dumb, but it has like this weird kernel of truth to it. It's like a perfect urban legend, you know what I mean? Yeah. Because it's believable. Yes. And who's ever going to sit down and prove it one way or another? Yeah, that's true. Wait, hold on. One more thing, Chuck, while we're on name. Yes. There are different names elsewhere in the world. So the names you just said, those are for Atlantic hurricanes. In Australia, they have their own set of names that they name cyclones. And then elsewhere in the world, there are 13 member nations that name typhoons and some cyclones. Countries like Bangladesh and India and Thailand. Each one submits 13 names and each list contains 13 names from each one of those countries. So you have 160 names to choose from every year. So depending on where you are in the world, weather patterns going to have a much more localized name than what you would expect. That's right. And if a hurricane is really destructive, they will retire that and using air quotes there because they really just put it down for ten years. I don't know why they don't do it forever. There should never be another, like in eleven years. Surely they won't have a Hurricane Katrina or an Andrew or a Harvey, right? I don't know. Why would they? There's so many names. I don't know. Why bring it any name back? I have no idea. I think they're like, we have better things to do than come up with more stupid names. Yeah, they obviously do that to avoid confusion. And once a storm is sort of this legendary storm, like a Katrina, there's just no reason to ever name another one that no, I'm with you. I agree. Even if you don't believe in luck, I just think it's not a good idea. It does seem like ten years is a little short. I could not see them doing another Katrina. That's just not going to happen. No, there's no way. So let's talk about climate change. You want to? Yeah. Well, before we talk about climate change, just quickly, as far as the historical record goes, there's always been hurricanes and this will kind of segue nicely into climate change because things are getting worse. But there always have been hurricanes. Even way back in the day, we didn't have great records. But you can do research on like cave wall drawings and things like that seem to indicate stuff like hurricanes. And I think there was an LSU team that studied thousands of years of lake bed evidence and they can tell that over, I think, like 3400 years, there have been about a dozen category four or higher in that area, most of which were in the past thousand years. Right. It seems low, doesn't it? Yeah, it does, but I mean, that's just for that area. Another one. There was a really big hurricane, historically speaking, when Genghis Khan was going to invade Japan in 1274. The Mongols were invading Japan. There's a fleet that had something like 100 or 200,000 people on board and they were really going to invade Japan, and hurricane blew in and sunk the fleet. And the Japanese had a name for this incredible, miraculous act of mercy by whatever God was watching over them. They named it Divine Wind. Yeah. And that actually would come into use later on in World War II because Divine Wind in Japanese is Kamikasi. Kamikasi. Yeah. And that's the chapter in our book. Right? I'm so glad I was teeing you up. I was like, come on, Chuck. I didn't know if we could reveal that. But yeah, we got a book coming out this fall and you can preorder it now. Plug, plug, plug. And there's a great chapter on Kamikaze in there. Yes, the whole thing is just great from top to bottom. Chuck, I'm wondering when we'll be allowed to do some of those chapters as podcast episodes, if ever. I don't know why you give us that permission. I think we give ourselves that permission. Okay. It's up to us. You're right. Okay. Maybe a couple of years after it's out, we can start doling those out a little bit. Harvesting it for parts. Sure, that's another way to put it. Right? They could have another life. Well, I mean, the stuff that we talk about, they're not like necessarily entire podcast episodes. There's definitely more to be said about it. So we could take any single one of those chapters and turn it into a podcast episode. So, climate change. Here's a startling statistic. Since the 1970s, the number of cat five and cat four storms has just about doubled. And to the casual observer, a couple of things. It seems like they're getting worse and more frequent. And you don't have to be a genius to figure out if you need warm water to make a hurricane and ocean waters are warming due to climate change, then you're going to have more frequent and more severe storms, right? Or now. Yeah, I mean, that's how logic goes. And they basically think that's a given, that we're going to have more frequent and more powerful storms. But at least according to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, there are plenty of X factors left. That it's not like we just definitively understand how bad hurricanes are going to be or how many more we're going to have. Because remember, the surface water has to reach down about 150ft for a hurricane to form. And one of the big questions is, if there is global warming going on and it's heating the ocean, how deep is it heating the ocean? Because if that warm water went beyond 150ft, then hurricanes should ostensibly be able to become bigger and bigger. And similarly, if the surface temperature of the ocean is rising, then that just means more evaporating water, which is the key that's the fuel to any hurricane is that moist, evaporating water that's rising, that the more you have with that, the bigger amount, more powerful a storm can be, the more energy there is for the storm to use to become big and huge and destructive. The question is just how bad is it going to be? But there does seem to be just general consensus that, yes, climate change is happening and it's going to result in worse hurricanes. Already there were two name storms this year in the Atlantic before hurricane season even started. So they think hurricane season is going to last longer, it's going to start earlier and last longer. There's going to be more of them. They're probably going to be more destructive. There's something else that I thought was really interesting, though, too, is that this particular year may not be as bad as it would have been otherwise. It was supposed to be really bad because of the warm sea levels, because it started earlier, and because it's a La Nina year, which actually pushes hurricanes back out to sea eventually, because there's La Nina, those breezes are kind of still, comparatively speaking. So any hurricanes that do develop are just going to sit on land like Dorian to the Bahamas. A year or so ago, it just sat on the Bahamas for 48 hours. That's not supposed to happen. And they were worried that that's going to happen because this is a lot of Nina year. But you know the Saharan dust storms that's going on? Yeah. They think that that's actually drying the air and preventing hurricanes from forming. Right now, the question is how long that will last. Will it last through the whole hurricane season or will that eventually stall and hurricanes will come raging through in August and September? Who knows? Wow. So there's hurricanes, everybody. That's right. I think we're going to release a bonus add on some day into our feed where I try again to explain hurricanes and the cone of uncertainty. This stuff drives me nuts, man. Yeah. You're ready? I'm ready. Well, obviously, since we're done talking about hurricanes, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this the other side of the coin. We always like to keep things fair and balanced here, right? Right. Hey, guys, discovered your show about two years ago and wondered, where have you been? On my life. I love the show. Don't change a thing. In the Robert Barron's episode, he said that conservatives, josh said, conservatives say people aren't perfect. We can never have a perfect society to let people do whatever they want. That's kind of right, but it's oversimplified and therefore misleading in our view. And I take it, Tim, as a conservative, he says, since humans are all corrupt, obviously some more than others, no government can be uncorrupt since it's run by people. Therefore, we should limit the power of government and give people more freedom, since people will generally act in their own best interests, let them decide how they want to spend their money, who they work for and who they hire and fire. As long as the government protects people's basic rights from others, we will have a pretty good society. I've always been conflicted about anti monopoly laws, but the longer I live, the more I think they're a good thing, because we should limit the power of large companies, just as we limit the power of the government, since those companies are also run by corrupt people. Capitalism says, of course you're selfish and so am I. So if you want my money, you have to give me some kind of product or service that makes my life better. Again, we can never have a perfect society, but it would be far worse if the government has too much power to decide how we spend our money because again, they are corrupt. Also, thanks for all the great research and the super fun way you present it to keep it up. That is Tim in Minnesota. That's pretty awesome. Thanks a lot, Tim. That was a really great email. Well, I'm a Conservative now. Wow. All right. Yeah, I'm pretty weak willed as it is now, but Tim, that was great. Thank you for explaining it further because I definitely knew I was oversimplifying things and just kind of have the T's crossing the I thought that's very helpful. We're going to have to bring you on to explain hurricanes one day. Yeah, and that was a better email than a lot of the blowback we got, which wasn't so instructive and more just like you guys just reduced that and it's not true. Yeah, blame I guess you can put it well, if you want to get in touch with us like Tim did and just be a champion hero, you can do that. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at 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 ESP Works(?) | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-esp-works | Even though almost half of Americans believe in it, ESP usually is treated as a load of bull by skeptics. But some respected researchers have dared to apply the scientific method to investigate ESP and a few have found some surprising results. | Even though almost half of Americans believe in it, ESP usually is treated as a load of bull by skeptics. But some respected researchers have dared to apply the scientific method to investigate ESP and a few have found some surprising results. | Tue, 03 Mar 2015 15:53:30 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=15, tm_min=53, tm_sec=30, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=62, tm_isdst=0) | 52609426 | 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 Jerry's over there. I didn't even have to look. Why? I just knew. Yes. And dudes. And dudettes. We are in our new studio. Yeah. Can you tell? Does it sound different? It's the very first one and it's tiny. What do you mean, it's the very first one? Very first podcast that we recorded in here. I got you. Yeah, I was going to say I said tiny, but it's not tiny. It's cozy. But it is all hours. Yeah, all hours. Everybody else works. Doesn't really know that yet, but they will. Yes. Because when we actually have butt detection and when someone sits down in these seats that aren't us to get a shot. Yes. And plus, an alarm goes off at our desks. Yeah. What's that called? DMR TMI. How are you, sir? I'm pretty good. I feel like this is fancy. This is our first real studio. That's not true. No, I'm trying to remember. The last one was no, but it's not a utility closet, it's not a lactation room, it's not a murder room. It's not like an office with office furniture. Yeah. It's a studio that was built out for the specific purpose of recording podcasts. Yes. All we have to do is put up our Aaron Cooper originals. The artwork. Got a couple of those waiting to get and we got to work on the lighting in here a little bit. Yeah. Seriously. She can hang some china balls for us. Yeah, she keeps pushing the china balls. So, anyway, enough about that. We just wanted to say we're super excited to be in our new office and our new studio. It does feel good. Yeah. Kudos for that intro. I'm not going to say that. I knew you were going to say that. Yeah, I was going to say that, too. I knew that you were thinking of saying that. Chuck? Yes. ESP. Do you believe in ESP? No, not at all. What do you think it is? Because surely just about anyone could agree that humans have some sort of ability somehow to make good guesses or to predict the future, whatever you want to call it. Do you agree or do you think it's strictly just us selectively paying attention to random instances over others? I think it's that and as we'll talk about, I think it's just the nature of coincidence is going to happen because so many things happen every day that something is bound to seem like something you dreamed about the night before at some point in your life. Yes. But the other millions of dreams you have that don't, I think those are the ones that are the tell. I got you. I don't know. I want to. I spent so many years of my life believing and stuff like that and wanting to go to Duke University to study at their parapsychology department. Did you really? Yeah. Believing in ghosts and all that, that's how I spent my childhood, just reading about stuff like that. Voraciously. So Ghostbusters really did a number on you? Yeah. When that came along, I was like, sure, this is made for me. But as an adult, it's not so much that I believe in ESP, it's more that I refuse to just utterly disbelieve in the possibility of it. Sure. Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah, I got you there. Because we don't know everything about everything yet. Right. But yeah, I'm in the other camp, and I'm not even going to say the skeptic camp because people just bug me. That's bad name due to some bad apples. Not all skeptic. No, but there are some that are horses asses. Can we say that? I don't know. We'll find out. All right, well, let's talk about and I thought this is interesting because I never knew that ESP is just a big collective term for all manner of paranormal phenomena, which you can also call cy. Yeah. And so a dude named J. B. Ryan, who we'll talk about later, he coined ESP the granddaddy. And then in the forties, another guy coined the term psy. And Sigh is a Greek letter, and it's equated with psyche or the soul. Yes. PSI. And the reason that the guy chose Si is because he felt ESP suggested it was something supernatural. Sure. And sigh, he suggested that this is a normal part of humanity. We just don't understand it. It sounds like science. You're right. But there are several categories of ESP, and this is the one. I never knew the actual definitions for these. I sort of just threw them all in a bag together. You have telepathy and that's when you can, you know, you're over there reading my thoughts. Yes. Like, Chuck is really not happy to be in the new studio. That's not true. He'd rather be at home on the couch. I'm reading your thoughts right now, and I know that you like this place. Okay, well, you're a telepathic, right? Clairvoyance. Which is the ability to see events or things, objects happening somewhere else at the same time. So are you clairvoyant? I am. I'm seeing your couch right now, and I'm seeing it's not that comfy. So you're not missing that much at the moment. I know somewhere Jonathan Strickland is waxing his head. That's just a logical assumption. Okay. Then we have our precogs. Precognition that's when you see into the future retrograde, you can see into the distant path. That's a widely accepted definition of retrocognition. Like seeing, like, tuktuk running around with the dinosaurs like you do, which I guess never would have happened. Yeah, but there's another term for retrocognition, whereas something in the future affects something in the past. So a decision you make in the future affects your past. And an example given is that you have a dream about a dinosaur. Let's say a spotted dog, okay? And then the first thing the next morning, you go outside to water your lawn, and the same spotted dog or a similar spotted dog walks by. The idea isn't that that was very coincidental or that you had ESP in your dreams, but that you seeing that dog in the morning effects in your dream the night before. Okay, so that's another definition that's emerging for retrocognition. It's getting a lot of traction because of the stuff we're finding on the quantum scale. Just weirdness like that. All right, then you have your mediumship, and that's Ms. Clio, who can channel Dead spirit. Yeah, I forgot about her. How much money that woman grossed in the 90s. She made a lot of dough. I hope so. Yeah. I mean, she was working hard. She had a finite window of opportunity, and she worked that whole time. She didn't, like, buy a sailboat and sail around the world after her first million, she worked. So you're not in the camp of, like, she's taking people's money and taking advantage of people. I see that argument. Sure. For sure. I also see, like, if people want to spend their money on that and they get something out of it, knock yourself out. All right. And then you have psychometry, which is the ability to read info about a person place by touching the person or object. And that's what I like to call the dead zone. Right. Christopher Walken, he would place his hands on you, and he would see something. Man. I think we talked about it recently about how that movie holds up still. Yeah, it's such a good movie. Yeah, it really is good. Chris Walking, there's another one, Chuck, called Telekinesis, which is like Yuri Geller stroking a spoon in it, bending. Right? Like being able to manipulate matter just using a light touch of your mind. But there is no spoon. All right, so basically, like you said, JB. Ryan is the granddaddy of all this. And he actually started studying. I mean, he was a legitimate scientist. He wasn't some quack 30s where he started at Duke University studying parapsychology, basically. And he wasn't the first. He was one of the first laboratory experimenters in academia to really study science. Right before him, probably about 40 or so years before him, william James and some of his pals at the Society for Psychical Research really laid the groundwork for applying the scientific method to the study of paranormal phenomenon. And they did two things. They outed frauds, like fraudulent mediums, like, very famously, Madame Blavarsky. But then they also investigated ones. Like, they approach them typically with, like, an open mind, and if they found somebody that they just couldn't explain, they studied them. So they were studying each one with an open mind. And the ones they figured out were frauds, they outed as frauds. The ones they figured out couldn't quite explain. They sought to investigate scientifically rather than just saying, oh, they're fraud somehow. Right. So that was the groundwork of the study of sigh. What was Madame Blovarsky's deal of the coney? Allen Blovatsky, she was almost a cult leader. You could argue. She was she created oh, man. It's called Theodism. I think it was a huge movement in the 19th century where you go to, like, a seance and there was a medium there, and they would channel the spirits of the dead relatives of people who were there, holding hands in the circle and stuff like that. And she gained a lot of power and wealth and prestige until she was outed as a fraud. I don't remember it's theosophy. That's what it is. Not Theoism. Theoism has to do with Theo. Huxtable did you see The Source Family, by the way, that documentary no, I haven't. About the La cult in the saw the icon on Netflix and I clicked as a good it's really good, and it's awesome. Actually, I recommend everyone see it. It's one of those where they interview a lot of them today, and they weren't like they didn't commit suicide. Everyone was like, it was pretty great. Yes, they're all fine. They're all just a bunch of hippies. Still. They were out in La. Yeah, right, in Hollywood. There was a documentary I saw about a cult in Miami, and they were, like, super fundamentalist Christian, but they also were the basis of their religion was formed on pot, too. Well, that's what the Source family was. I wonder if they were related. Well, it was the 70s. Yeah, there were a lot of pot cults, I bet. But did they turn into, like, huge pot dealers? No, I don't think so. This cult did. They had a band, though, called The Source. I can't remember the name of the band, but it's pretty interesting the Way Manhattan Transfer. It's a really good documentary, though. It's just funny to see all these people now, they're like, It was awesome. Had a lot of sex and smoked a lot of weed. Yeah, these guys didn't seem to have a lot of sex, though. They were, like, real, like, compartmentalized, gender wise male dominance and all that. But they just smoked a ton of pot all the time, including their little kids. Well, that's not good. Like, four year old smoking pot. That's terrible. Yes, it was in the documentary. It's worth seeing. I don't remember what it is. You had me up. You lost me there. I lost everybody there in that documentary. Yeah. All right, so back to this ESP thing. JB. Rhine yeah. JB. Ryan well, basically, there's a lot of different outlooks on what ESP might be. Some people think that everyone's got it, but some people, it just pops up every now and then. Like, I might have a dream that comes true, or whatever. Other people think that only certain people have it. They have the gift as they say. Right. And that they have to be in this special, like, mental state to access it. The Shining. The Shining. And then other folks say that everyone has that potential, but some people are just, like, in tune with it and some people aren't. Right. And you fall into none of those three camp. So we'll talk a little more about some ideas of what ESP is right after this. So, Chuck, you said that basically how people see ESP is either everyone has it, some people have it, or no one has it. Basically, whether you're a skeptic or a believer. Right. If you are a believer in ESP and somebody comes to you and says, okay, explain ESP, like, what is it? Right. There's actually a couple of very common suggestions or proposals. Yeah. One made sense for a while before we knew a little more about the brain. And that was that ESP was some form or fashion of the electromagnetic spectrum, that we were receiving information from outside of our usual senses. Yeah. And like you said, it fell out of favor because basically it didn't explain anything about how it moves through time or you didn't pick up on some special part of your brain that receives this message. Did you see that study I sent you? That was, I think, from 2010, where they put people in an MRI and then showed them different pictures or whatever. I put you in the wonder machine. Okay. And now I'm showing you a picture of the flower. And that's it. Okay. It's lovely, except it sounds like a German rave. Okay. A little bit. But that would be the non ESP stimuli, the control group to test ESP and to see if the brain reacted differently. And then to see if there was a part of the brain that's picking up on ESP. I would show you the flower. And then in the other room, I would also show Emily that flowers think about it and send you the thought of that flower. So you're getting ESP stimuli and then nonesp stimuli. And from the MRI, they showed that the brain didn't react differently. Got you. So it suggests that there isn't a sensory organ or region of the brain that's responsible for picking up ESP, which doesn't debunk the possibility of ESP. It just undermines the idea that there's a region of our brain that would be responsible for picking that up. Plus, the family is over there. My first guess is going to be dog every time, and it's flower. Well, it wasn't about guessing. It was just to see, like, showing you the ESP version. Right. And then the non ESP version of the same thing. You weren't guessing. Do you understand? Yes, I get it now. I would have guessed dog or wine. There wasn't guessing. That's what I guess. They only think she has a gift a little bit. So she would have been disappointed. She's got the shin. Yeah. A little sheep thinks, but I think she's just super observant and intuitive. Well, that's definitely one explanation for it. Yeah. Which we'll get to, of course. So these days there are other theories, one of which is that it's called spillover, that there's basically another dimension that doesn't have our laws here in our dimension, and that sometimes stuff just sort of spills over from that and we see the future or the past. Yeah. And if you're a skeptic, you probably just pulled a decent sized clump of your hair out of the side of your head at that point. Yeah. Because this is something you can't prove, obviously. It's, like, completely and of course, they'll say exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I got the impression from this article that they were making that point. Like science is just chasing its tail and trying to explain ESP because it's not currently capable. And science doesn't work like that. At least with the electromagnetic spectrum explanation, it was pointing to something that we already know exists. Right. It's just that there's no way to show that we would be getting how we would be getting information from it, because the electromagnetic explanation basically says if you compare it to other findings from ESP, it makes even less sense. Right. Because with ESP, one of the hallmarks of it is that no matter whether you're out there outside of the studio thinking about wine or a dog or something, and I'm picking up on it, or if you're in China and I'm here and we're doing the same thing, the signal doesn't weaken at all. Yeah. And that just flies in the face of all we know about electromagnetic rights. Exactly. No good. Right. So there's a lot of things wrong with the proposals of what ESP is. Yeah. But the reason why people still believe in this stuff is because of either hearing a story about their friends who said, listen to this crazy thing happened, or experiencing it themselves in some way or another, having a dream that something similar happened, and all of a sudden, you're like, I might have the gift. Exactly. Or It popped up in me, briefly, at least. I mean, there's a lot of evidence of strange and unusual occurrences sure. That support the idea of ESP. Yes. This article gives a really good one about an 1898 book called Futility that was written by a guy named Morgan Robertson. Right. And in it, the guy details this book or this boat called the Titan. Ship? Yeah. Ship. A big old boat which is sailing across the Atlantic and hits an iceberg at night and sinks, and a bunch of people die because they weren't enough lifeboats. Yeah. This is 1898, and if that sounds familiar, the Titanic did the same exact thing. The Titanic, not the Titan, did the same exact thing 14 years later. Yeah, there are a bunch of similarities. The Titan struck an iceberg in the book on the starboard side on an April night in the North Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland. And the real Titanic struck an iceberg on the starboard side in April in the North Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland on the starless night. I don't know about that. Okay. They were both said to be unsyncable. More than half of the passengers of the Titanic perished, and more than half of the passengers and crew on the Titan perished. So there's all these things in there, but you do a little more digging and you find out that Robertson, he was a seaman and he knew a bunch of this stuff. And it's not unreasonable to think at the time they wanted to build the biggest ships. And the word Titan would be a great name back then for a super big ship. Right. And that sailing route was a common one, and they were iceberg, and April might have been a common month for that kind of voyage. So all of it can be explained away, kind of. But it is definitely something you look at and go, interesting. It is interesting, and it's an amazing coincidence. And it focuses the attention and captures the imagination. But then, yeah, once you hear about Robertson's background, it becomes slightly less impressive. So then, kind of over the years, that little colonel got erased and added to it was that this idea for this book came to him in a trance, which bolsters the ESP. Yeah. Is that true or is that just been added? I'm sure it was added over the years. Okay. Which is a big problem with this kind of anecdotal evidence, is that it gets embellished in urban. Yeah, exactly. And it's not enough that this is a really interesting, unique circumstance or coincidence or whatever. There has to be this extra layer of proof, like it came to him in a trance. Come on. Yeah. So back to Ryan. He did some, like I said, in the 1930s, he started studying this stuff with one of my favorite inventions by his colleague Carl Zenner, of course. Have you seen Ghostbusters? He was using a version of Zinner cards. The shapes weren't all exact. I think there was one that was different in Ghostbusters, but the original Zinner cards were a deck of 25 plain white cards, with each of them had one of five symbols. A circle, a plus sign, a square, a star, five pointed star, and the three wavy lines, like water, a river. Is that what that is? Maybe. Okay. And the idea is that just like in Ghostbusters, you hold it up and ask not showing them the card, obviously not the symbol, and say, what do you see? And they say what they see. And then you record after the deck how many they got. Right. But the person holding the card is supposed to be thinking about what they're seeing. Sure. So that the other person, the target, the receiver can pick it up. Telepathically. Yeah. And I did. They have these online. I took the test yesterday and I went through the 25 deck and I only got six out of 25. And at the end it just said, you are not a psychic. Really? Yeah. That was kind of funny. Statistically speaking, for just one trial, that is more than chance. You did better than chance. So maybe you do have a touch. What would chance be? I guess chance would be if there's five different ones, it'd be 20%. And so this was six of 24 would be 25%. No, that's less. Yeah. No, you did six of 24. You did 24 or 25. 25. So five of 25 would be chance. Okay, so I got one more. Yeah, well, and I think like three of the first eight or so or six I got and I was like, oh, I've got the gift, but I didn't know it's randomly generated. So it's not like someone was on the other side thinking of that card. So I literally I was like, what do I do? I was like, I'm just guessing. So that brings up some interesting stuff. There's evidence that when a machine is involved, there is no telepathy. There would only be clairvoyance. Right? Yeah. So if telepathy is you picking up within someone else's mind, and the computer is mindless, then you shouldn't be able what you were saying, like you should not be able to know what Zen or card it's going to pick next. Right. But there have been investigations using computers and using machines that show above chance that there is some sort of weird interaction. It's like a random number generators. Yes. So Princeton University has a department called the Princeton Engineering anomalies Research Department. Pear. Right, of course. And Pair has been doing studies for a couple of decades. They've done millions of trials. And basically they'll say this is a random number generator, or this machine operates randomly or whatever. We want you to think of a number and we want to see if you can influence the numbers that this computer spits out. Oh, so you're thinking of the number then. Okay, that makes sense. Like the human is trying to affect the computer, the output, the behavior of the computer. Of course, if you're sitting across the room or in another room thinking about a number that a random generator should put out, it should have zero effect whatsoever. It's a computer. The weird thing is what Princeton has found is that yes, over enough trials, there is a very slight but measurable effect that human thought has on a random number generator. Come on. It's on Princeton's website. And this is stuff that is apparently accepted in the scientific community. The trials that they are running are so widespread and so repeatable and have been done so many times that the data that they're coming up with is significant. Well, Ryan, with his undercard experiments in the 30s did find that some people got what they thought were pretty impressive results. Like a few I can't remember their names, but hubert Pierce, was he one of them? He was the one. What was his percentage? He had one where he got remember how you got three in a row and you're like, oh, my God. He got 25 in a row once. What? 25? Come on. No, I'm not kidding. He was also documented as selecting 558 correct. Out of 1850, which is the odds of that happening by chance, were 22 billion to one. Now, were these the early experiments? Yeah. Okay. Because I did read that and this seems like I can't believe he didn't check this, but apparently the early cards were a little translucent. Oh, really? Yeah, some of them were. And then he corrected for that and the percentages went down. And then I know other scientists said that you are somehow influencing with your body tell. Right. Basically, you don't have a good enough poker face. Yeah. In the earliest Ryan experiments with Zenner cards, he would hold the card up and he'd be making eye contact. Right? Yeah. The guesser would be like is it the wavy line? Yeah. He starts shaking his head almost imprecise. That's called sensory leakage, where you the person who is holding the card and knows what the card is, somehow there's some detail about your face that when you do 1000 trials with somebody, they start to pick up on and it affects their guests. It influences their guests. So to correct for that, to control for that a sensory leakage. Isn't that correct? Yes. They came up with something called the Gans Field experiment. Oh, yes. German Gonzalez. That means whole field in German. And that is when they started putting people, they would start depriving their other senses. Basically, they would be in a dimly lit room with red lighting and they would have white noise and they would have their eyes covered with these special glasses or ping pong balls cut in half like Kermit the Frog. I guess later on they said we should just make some classes. Exactly. We've got the funding. So basically the idea was, let's rule out any of that gross sensory leakage which smells yes. Apparently, later on in Ryan's experiments, after he started controlling for stuff, the percentages started to drop. Yeah. He's generally a respected researcher for a couple of reasons. One, whenever evidence of some sort of bias or fraud or something was brought to him, he corrected for it. Yeah. He wore glasses and a white coat. Right. That was another one. But also he was daring enough to stake his entire career on a field of study that will get anybody mocked. Sure. Publicly, privately can really shut down a lot of opportunities for you. This guy and his wife, Louisa Ryan, both dedicated their careers to establishing the field of parapsychology and really studying it rather than just walking away from it. Yes. I don't think he was like, I really want to prove this is true. Was he did. That was a huge criticism of him. Got you. He wanted to believe he was a definite believer. I don't know what the guy's deal was, but one day he was visited by one person, and the interviewer who went on to write a paper, I think in Scientific American to expose them, he said he kept a file of people of the results of tests where people he suspected were purposefully getting things wrong because they didn't like him to mess with his data. He just took those and never published them. He didn't include them in the results, which would definitely affect the number of correct hits. Right. That was a huge criticism. That's not good science at all. But he was definitely a believer, which was another criticism of it, but he was daring. And there was another story where it's called The Levy Affair, where a guy named Levy, who was an electrical engineer working in the lab, unplugged, I guess, a sensor that would correct negative hits for a little while during a trial. So that all that were recorded for a little bit. We're positive hits, and then he plugged it back in. Well, this one guy saw what the guy was doing and went to Ryan, and Ryan went to the guy Levy and said, did you do this? And obviously, yes, he's like, you're fired, and just, like, threw the results away and all that. So he was a true believer, but he wasn't just some outright fraud. Right. But he was and still is under the microscope as much as probably any researcher in all of academia ever has been. All right, well, right after this break, we'll talk a little bit about what skeptics say about ESP. All right, Josh. One thing you'll hear skeptics say a lot is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I have to agree with them. And it is an extraordinary claim here. And so far, there hasn't been extraordinary evidence. And one of the things I pointed to earlier that I think is what's going on. If you look at statistics, you look at 6 billion people on planet Earth and them thinking a gazillion things each day, and that is scientific, by the way, gazillion. At some point, somebody is going to think something that mirrors something that happens in the near future, and it's just chance and coincidence. I have a great example of that. Man okay. It happened this very morning. What? Yeah, it did. I was at the printer. We just moved offices, and I was at the printer, and I had, like, an extra piece of paper that I didn't need, and I realized we have no paper recycling here. So on my way back not yet, that is, everyone out there is like, what kind of office would I recycle? Have we a 55 gallon drum. That we throw stuff into. It catches on fire. Yeah. And then we send it out to you. We have a burning drum. That's what it's called. No, we're getting those soon. Right. And we are getting them soon. I know this because on my way back to my desk, I popped into Izzy, the It guy, who is also the head of all recycling and stuff here. Sure. I was like, Izzy, we need a paper recycling bins by the printer. And he goes, I'm writing an email right now to everybody about that very thing. You almost did your Izzy impression. Yeah, I thought about it. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. But it was about nine in the morning, and this is a company wide email, so it'd be something that Izzy would probably knock out about that time. The reason I was thinking of is because I was just at the printer, we just moved into this office and we didn't have bins yet, so it was still a potential thing for somebody to be thinking about or doing or writing an email about. There's all these different really overlooked variables or factors to this whole thing that you don't think of. Instead, it just seems like an amazing coincidence or ESP. Right. To me, the really significant thing was that I happened to be researching ESP while this happened. That's what really kind of stood out to me. Yeah. But if you really kind of look at it like there's a finite amount of things that people could think about on any given day, in any given context in an office or something like that. Had I been a goat at a petting zoo and I went over and talked to the cow and the cow was writing the email about recycling bins? Maybe, but we're in an office, I'm talking to the guy about recycling bins. There's just a lot of stuff that you kind of once you take that into account, it becomes less amazing. Like the guy writing the Titan Titanic book. Yeah. You know what used to happen to me, now that I think of it, is I used to and it's weird, it was only with phone landlines, it hadn't happened with the cell phone, but I used to know the phone was going to ring right before it rang. Oh, yeah. Like almost go to reach for it. It's not like it happens all the time, but it happened enough times where I was like, oh, that's weird, sure, I know what you're talking about. But that was all it was to me. It was not like, I have the gift. But think about it in that respect, too, you know, 1520 people. So was it you knew who was calling, or just that the phone was about to ring? No, just that it was about to ring. Yeah. That is weird. You definitely do have ESP. Yeah. I don't know, maybe the phone made a little tick noise right before it rang that I didn't pick up on, but only subconsciously. Well, that's another explanation for you today. There is subliminal stuff in the environment that is just too weak in nature for us to pick up unconsciously. But our unconscious does. Our subconscious does, which, frankly, opens up a whole other can of worms as far as how real is that kind of thing. But probably a little closer to reality is the idea that our attention isn't focused on everything that we're picking up at all times. Like, I see your beard and I see your shirt and everything, but I'm still also picking up sensory information from Jerry's computer that I can see in my peripheral vision or whatever. My attention isn't focused on it, but my brain is still receiving information. So the idea that our brains can put it together, all this information that we're not aware consciously that we're receiving, but we're still getting impressions from it, that could be a great explanation for ESP as well. Yeah. And you know what? Now that I think about it, the fact that it's never happened with my cell phone sort of makes sense because maybe it was a mechanical function, a landline. Right. Yeah. Like you said, a click or a tick. But I think you meant, like, a click. And it wasn't even the newer model. This was back in the day when it was a ringing like bell. So maybe that does explain it. Yeah. I've got another good example that came across and researching this. Let's say that you and I are hanging out yeah. And you're humming Baby on the Firework. Right. Just over and over again. I don't know that's all, but I'm reading. Yes, you do. Who is it? Katy Perry. I don't know. Katy Perry. Anyway, although I will have to say, I did love that half time show. It was great. Well, it was hysterical. What's up with the sharks being a meme now? I think they were really significant. She looked like she worked at Corn Dog on a Stick. I don't know what that is. I thought all corn dogs were on stick. No, it's that place in the Hot Dog on a Stick. That place in the mall where they wear those big giant no. I don't know anything about Katy Perry, but it was the funniest. Most like the crazy just kept coming. And I was like, this is the best thing I've ever seen. Anyway, in this universe, you're well aware of Katy Perry and her song Firework, and you're humming it to yourself. But I'm sitting there reading The New Yorker, and I'm engrossed in it, and I don't notice that you get up to go make some nachos, and you come back in and you catch my attention because you're coming back in with some nachos, and they smell awesome. And now my attention is directed to you, and you're still humming Firework. Right, right. And I'm like, I was just thinking about that song Firework. I had that in my head. How crazy we must be connected. I didn't realize that you had been humming it earlier, and beneath my awareness, I picked it up. Although once I became aware that you were humming it, it seemed to me like I had ESP. Well, yeah, and that ties into another explanation, is that people who do seem to have that gift are just really hyper observant on minute details. Like the same people that can pick up on micro expressions. They might feel like they have the gift because they're just really in tune to what's going on around them and not just like a big long head walking around. So a lot of people who believe in ESP say, yes, we agree with that. Especially parapsychology researchers. And there are still plenty of respected ones out there. There's a guy named Darryl BEM. Yeah, I saw that thing. You said he's been doing this for a while now. Legitimately, we should talk about him. But to button up that point, there is a lot of parapsychologists or even just plain old psychologists who are researching ESP who say, yes, that definitely most likely accounts for almost all of it. Right. And that's good for us to be thinking about that. And that in and of itself deserves, like, academic inquiry and research. Right. Yeah. But there are still some experiments that are being produced by guys like Darrylbam that are showing some weird results that go beyond this kind of explanation. Yeah. We'll talk about the problems with even this research, about it being reproducible in a second. But he did a couple of experiment. This is from NPR. Yeah. Crowwitz wrote this. Oh, really? Yeah, from Radio Lab. Nice. I didn't know that. These are the two that he pointed out. He did nine different experiments, but the two that he highlighted was at Cornell, which is where Ben does his work. Right. Yeah. And he's, again, a very respected psychologist. And this study of these experiments was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which is a respected journal. Yeah. The first one was a computer quiz. They took 100 students, 50 males and 50 women, and basically they showed a computer screen with two little curtains on it side by side, and said, behind one is nothing, a brick wall, and behind the other is something sexy. I was about to call it pornographic, but who knows? Maybe it's art. Nakedness eroticism. Eroticism. Yeah. Gross. Does this make you feel like your dad saying it or something? Yeah. Well, this room is too small for you to see. So basically he would say, you tell me what you think you're going to see. And they were all hooked up to machines to read what's going on in their body, of course. Right. And you would think it would be a 50 50 result, but they actually got a 53.1% result for the what crowd calls erotic stimuli. And basically they think, or at least that's what Ben thinks, is that one possibility is if they think they're going to see something erotically stimulating, then it got passed back through time. Yeah. That's kind of his position. It's that retrocognition thing. Yeah. That somehow their future selves who saw the erotic image was stimulated enough that that stimulation traveled backwards 3 seconds and influenced their choice because they would be slightly stimulated physiologically right before they get and he said before the computer even chose which one to show. Right. They were making their choices often correct. Before the computer chose to show an erotic or non erotic image. And 53%, it doesn't sound like much, but Crowd points out a couple of things. One, that when there was a control group that was shown just non erotic pictures, they did 49.8%. Correct. Which is chance. And they were 50 50. And they're all not happy. Right. They're like, I don't want to be the control. They're like, can we get a little steamier in here? But he also pointed out that 53.1, to be specific, doesn't sound like much, but apparently that's a .2% chance on a scale of between zero and one, where zero is it's not going to happen, and one is that it's definitely going to happen. Yeah. And apparently, as far as correlation goes, or links between two things, something affecting another two is about the same as the link between aspirin and heart attack prevention, the link between calcium intake and bone mass, the link between second hand smoke and lung cancer. So things that are touted is like pay attention to this. Yes, exactly. So stuff that we accept, if you're around second hand smoke, you can get cancer from that. This is probably the same. Exactly. It is. And later on, a meta analysis of Ben's experiments, some other experiments that were carried out afterwards, and then some other experiments all grouped together, a meta analysis showed that it wasn't statistically significant if you took all of the existing body of literature of these experiments. Right. But it was a New Scientist article, and it was pretty cool. In the comments section, somebody said, yeah, it's not reproducible, but a lot of science isn't reproducible. And it reminded me of our Scientific method episode, where apparently a lot of trials that pharmaceuticals are based on aren't reproducible. Isn't it like 50% of them? Yeah. Which doesn't surprise me, of course. Yeah. All right. And then there was this other experiment that I need you to explain to me because I didn't understand it. Okay. You're ready? I got the first part, but it didn't make sense to me because it's a little mind blowing. Yeah. So you know how, like, if you are studying something sure. And you write it down, it gets in your brain a little more. Yeah. So that when you're tested on it later, you will recall it more easily. Yeah. That's a common study method. Write something down. Okay. So Bam carried out a very simple experiment that did the opposite of that. First, he showed some people a bunch of words, 48 random words, I think, nouns, like tree or something like that. Yeah. And he told them to visualize it, though, right? Right. So they saw all 48 words and thought about them not visualize the letters, but visualize the thing. Right. Like, see the tree in your head just to kind of try to memorize all 48 words. Then the computer randomly selected 24 of those words. And then after they'd done that, BEM gave them a test of recall to see how many they recalled. Right? Yes. So the people had to type out the words they recalled. Then after that, the computer randomly selected 24 of the 48 words for the people to type after they'd already taken the test of recall. And those 24 words are the ones that people more consistently got right on the earlier test. Okay. So it's another example of that retro cognition that these people getting the words in their heads after the test somehow went backward and influenced their recall and memory got you for the test that they took before they learned them. That makes more sense. A little. Yeah, it is a little bit. See, time travel melts my brain, too. Right. So this guy published this stuff in 2010. Yes. And it made a huge splash, huge criticism. The academic journal was criticized, and Ben was pilloried and all that, but he still put out these very reproducible, understandable simple exercises that still showed, statistically speaking, there were some significant results that went beyond chance. So when it comes to debunking ESP, one thing that you're not going to you said fraud. You're not going to see a lot of people call researchers outright frauds, because that's just sort of a dangerous thing to say. Sure, it's not nice, but there are people out there who I guess are criticized for basically trying to call out, and this is something completely different. But these on stage psychic shows, like Crossing Over with John Edwards yeah. It's easy to pick those people out and say, you're a big fraud. And this is not true, of course. And all you're doing is cold reading. We talked about in the animal Pet Psychics episode. That's basically when you get up on stage and you say, sir, I'm sensing someone you're having some trouble with, another man in your life with the name of J or is it H or O, maybe P, or maybe it's P. Yeah, P my boss, Peter. Yeah, exactly. And that's all a cold reading is throwing out these really broad things that anyone can latch onto. Right. So it's really easy to call those people out. And there's a guy, sort of a guy famous for doing that. His name is James Randy, and he's famous for his offer of $1 million to anyone that can prove their psychic ability, which, of course, no one stepped up to do that. But then he gets poopooed a little bit, like you're just making a mockery of trying to legitimately disprove something. A mockery is absolutely the right word. Yeah. And to me, the presence of mockery indicates the absence of objectivity. Right. So what you're dealing with then, with a guy like that is a set of beliefs, a belief system running up against another belief system. Right. Just like a couple of religions or something like that. It's not objectivity against fraud or anything like that. It's belief against belief or something. Yeah. The idea of lumping together John Edwards with Darryl Beam? Yes. That's fraudulent in and of itself. Yeah. They call that theatrics just like the onstage theatrics of a stage psychic. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, I do, too. I think there's a definite room for a healthy scientific inquiry into just about anything, whether skeptics believe in it or not. Sure. If you can get some funding for it, who cares? That's my motto. Yeah. You got anything else on ESP? Let me think. No, I've got one more thing I found. I came across Nightline with Ted Koppel, where the news broke that the CIA had been studying ESP and trying to do remote viewing. What Ronson was talking about and the men who stare at Coach. Oh, yeah. John Ronson. When it finally became declassified in 1995, ted couple did, like, a 20 minutes Nightline segment on it. Totally worth watching. It's some pretty softball questions, but Robert Gates, who would later become the head of defense, he's on there just basically trying as politely as possible to show that he does not believe in any of this, even though he's a former CIA director, and it's just neat. Plus, you get to watch Copple again, right? He's great news, man. Yeah, I miss those dudes. I was just thinking yesterday about a broker. Yeah, rather. I was always a broker man. I like Peter Jennings. He's great. Yeah, all of them were great. I don't even have any idea who does Night in the news now. I don't watch it. It was Brian Williams until about a day ago. Did he get fired? I know the whole kerfuffle, but he didn't get fired. I'm using my ESP to predict that by the time this comes out, he will not be there anymore. Wow. I think this is getting big quick. Interesting. Yeah. Twitter's involved. Oh, man. The Twitter take down. Yes. If you want to know more about ESP, the Internet was virtually set up for you to go find out more about it. You can start by typing ESP in the search bar@howstepworks.com. Since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Yeah. Before we do listener mail, I just want to give a quick shout out to my buddy Isaac McNarry. If you remember, I did a Judge John Hodgman episode with Emily in which I did a bad home renovation. And this dude stuff you should know. Listener from Kansas, carpenter, master carpenter, said, hey, man, I'll come and stay with you and help you do your project there, right? And I said, this sounds crazy, and he actually came and did it, and it looks awesome, and he's a super cool guy. And if you're in Kansas, near El Dorado, Kansas, there's no better guy to hire the city of Eldorado, Kansas. It's El Dorado, actually. Okay, he has to point out but not only is he a great carpenter and a cool guy, but he works with a non profit called Outreach Program, and you can find it@outreachprogram.org where they're basically feeding the world. They package food, and they get people together in a room and package these mass quantities of food to send to other countries and feed the hungry. Got you. And he's just a really good dude, so thanks, Isaac, for that. And my kitchen is looking good. So again, for his nonprofit, that is outreachprogram.org. And if you need a great carpenter and you're in Kansas, check out Retrofit remodeling. Nice. All right, listener mail. I'm going to call this pronunciation help. Hey, guys, I'm a botanist and just want to throw you a rope to help you out with pronouncing plant family names. All plant family names end in a cease. I thought I got that wrong. It is a mess of vowels, guys, when you read it, you should just imagine you were spelling ace, as in ace. So when you read a plant family name, just break it off a ce and read the first part and then spell a ce. So the plant family for poison oak is anacardia ce. So it's just Annacardi ce. I remember it by imagining the aneurysm and cardiac arrest I would have if I fell into it. A-N-A-C-A-R-D-I. What? Well, she spelled out Anna cardi. I got you the first two first letters from each of those words. Anyway, guys, I love your podcast. Find it endearing when you two puzzle out on pronunciations. I see that's. Good to know. Yeah. So I love you Bunches. And that is from Jane. And she said, PS. In Europe, they pronounce plant families completely differently. Other parts of the US other parts of the US might have other conventions, but the above pronunciation is standard in California. Oh, well, okay. What AC? If you want to let us know something that we should have known before we even recorded, but you're generous enough of your time and effort to correct us, I guess, as a way to put it. Sure. That was very helpful. Thanks a lot, Jane. If you want to be like Jane, in other words, you can tweet to us at Syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com STUFFYou know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athouseoffworks.com. And as always, you can join us at our home on the web stuffyoushow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the 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 Kilo Gareth 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." | ||
435d930e-53a3-11e8-bdec-c725fd62ef43 | How the Voyager Golden Records Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-voyager-golden-records-work | As part of a super 70s push to get Earth to a seat at the table of the Galactic Federation (in case there is, in fact, such a thing), astronomer Carl Sagan oversaw an ambitious project to launch a compilation of Earth’s greatest hits into deep space. | As part of a super 70s push to get Earth to a seat at the table of the Galactic Federation (in case there is, in fact, such a thing), astronomer Carl Sagan oversaw an ambitious project to launch a compilation of Earth’s greatest hits into deep space. | Thu, 23 Apr 2020 13:16:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=13, tm_min=16, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=114, tm_isdst=0) | 61139992 | 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. 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Now, with extremely limited availability, contact your local retailer for inventory information. 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. We're just patching it. Going stag today. First up, you should know yes, our date is not here. No, we're one another's date. Whether you like it or not, I'm your date. Were you a big school dance guy? I was big at staying away from them. He didn't go to those things. I went to one or two in 8th grade maybe, but I learned my lesson early on. I got you, no problem. Yeah, I mean, I went to prom and all that, but like the normal school dances and things like that. Like the under the Sea dance in 1955. I didn't go to this. We only had two. We had homecoming and prom and that's it. Well, I think in Ohio there was so little to do that there were tons of dances all the time. Oh, really? Sure, man. Just like in the movies. It is just like in the movies. When it's super cold outside and you're just stuck inside. Everybody has just got to dance, I guess. We were just outdoors. And the heat and humidity, right. You had hiking, we had dances. So what's this got to do with Golden Records? I don't know. This is kind of cool. Very 70s. Yeah, that's the thing, man. It doesn't get much more 70s than this. Actually, this one and the other one that we're doing today are about as 70s as it gets. We're talking about Chuck? Two golden records. Two very special golden records. Identical in every way. They were pressed in a series of I'm not sure how many because I once saw Carl Sagan messing with one. So there may be three, there may be four. I don't know, but there are at least two. And right now, these very, very special gold records are somewhere outside of our solar system. They are aboard two space probes, voyager One and Two, that were launched in 1977. And the Voyager probes are the first two human made objects to travel beyond our solar system. Which is pretty cool in and of itself. Yeah. There are billions of miles, about 13 billion mile from Earth right now, going very fast. Yeah. And you mentioned Carl Sagan. This was his sort of baby. And the idea is, hey, let's launch something into outer space. Well, the sort of reason was in case another civilization and extraterrestrial being or life force could come across it, this will be our greeting to them. But when you read into it, it's probably really unlikely that might happen. And it was sort of a PR thing for NASA and also just, like, made us feel better, I think. Yeah. And like you're saying, it's very seventies and that it was part of this kind of larger trend in the 70s, mostly held by Carl Sagan, from what I could tell, where there was this kind of push to get the world to agree, like, becoming part of some galactic community would be a good thing for humanity and start thinking beyond the realms of Earth. But at the same time, thinking about Earth and how we can take care of it was all kind of intertwined and connected, and it all kind of took shape in this kind of collective human project of creating messages in bottles and shooting them out into space. And the wisdom of that today is questioned by some people, including me. There are some people who say, like, it's not necessarily the best thing to do to start sending messages into space before we have much of a clue of what, if anything, is out there. Just isn't the safest play you can make. But at the time and I saw a quote from Frank Drake who was heavily involved in these projects. He said back then, everybody was an optimist. There was nobody who wondered whether this was a smart or foolish thing to do. Of course it was a good idea. Of course whoever we contacted would be friendly, so why would we not want to get in touch with them? And that was kind of like this driving thing, like this optimism and enthusiasm for reaching out beyond Earth and kind of saying, hey, we're here, and we want everybody to take us seriously now. That was a big 70s thing and kind of the drive behind this golden record thing. Yeah. And one thing is for sure if you don't feel great about it and other people don't feel great about it TS. It is far too late to have that concern. That is a real argument about this because yeah, like, you were saying there are billions of miles or a second would put it billions and billions of miles from Earth, I think something like 13 billion mile by now, traveling 38,000 mph constantly. So, yeah, the cat is out of the bag, as it were. The probe is out of the solar system, so it is too late. But we can still poopoo it in question, whether it was foolish or not. In retrospect. That's fun. Yeah, it's fun to poop on Carl Sagan's dream. Hey, you know me, man. Sagan is one of my heroes. He was a pretty interesting cat. But these golden records, like you said, they were kind of his baby. And we were talking about the Voyager probe and the golden records almost interchangeably. The golden records are aboard Voyager One and Voyager Two which have shot out into the solar system and will be drifting in space unless somebody grabs them and says, what's on here shakes it and the records fall out. They'll just keep going forever. And they actually built these golden records so that they'll last at least a billion years by most estimates. Vacuum sealed in the further vacuum of space, covered by an aluminum cover that will protect it from cosmic rays basically indefinitely, for all those of us alive are concerned. Yeah, and we keep saying golden records, they are gold plated. They're not solid gold like the dancers. They are copper and they are covered in gold. And they went with that because that was just well, a few reasons. One is obviously we had tape, but tape would disintegrate eventually. We did not have digital storage like we do today. Today, if we wanted to do this, we can include whatever we wanted. Basically, we could include all of humanity, every recipe, every song, every movie, every painting, anything we wanted, every speech ever made. But back then, they figured a record was the way to go and this copper gold plated record was the thing that would hold up the best. Yeah, that's actually funny you bring that up because I was thinking of doing an episode on DNA data storage where you can put literally all of the world's information into like, encoded in DNA. This is like the opposite of that, I think. The onboard computers for Voyager rufus helps us with this one. He said that they had something like 67 Ram of memory aboard. Yeah. And you're like, wow, we've really come a long way. But think about how elegant that code had to be to drive these two space probes that were not only like these weren't just like, hey, let's see how far we can shoot this thing. Like skipping a rock on a pond. Like, these rocks had cameras and equipment and engines and all sorts of things aboard that were run and operated by these onboard computers that had 67 Ram. That is spectacularly impressive. Yeah, it doesn't seem possible, actually. Well, actually, I was going to say they're out there, but we're just kind of taking it on faith that they are. The whole thing could be one big lie. All right, so if we're going to talk about Golden Records, we need to talk about what preceded the Golden Records. Dave calls it a rough draft, and that's kind of a good way to put it. But in the early 70s, there were the Pioneer ten and Eleven missions. These were two space probes launched past the asteroid Belt, and their goal was to take the first pictures up close to Jupiter and Saturn. And we can't communicate with these guys anymore. They are way, way out there. But Sagan went to NASA and said, hey, what do you think of sending a message in a bottle? Basically, like you mentioned, a cosmic message in NASA. Everyone was smoking weed back then. Right. Including Carl Sagan. Oh, I'm sure. I bet that Sagan weed was good, too. Yeah, we talked about it. Remember, in the nuclear winter episode that he discovered weed? Actually, he might not have been smoking weed at the time of the Pioneer plaques, though. Oh, you think? Was that pre? I think that came later when he met Andrew. She was the influence, huh? I think so. All right. Well, at any rate, NASA said, that's a cool idea. Let's do this. At the time, he was married to his second wife, Linda Salzman Sagan, and the aforementioned Frank Drake, who was one of his old Cornell buddies. And they came up with a plaque, an inscripted plaque for this launch. Right. So one of the very famous things on this Pioneer plaque was an etching of a naked man and a naked woman. And they're anatomically correct and very impressive. Yeah. Super. Almost shamingly. They really went to town on the guy, didn't they? Yeah, I don't know a lot of people I actually couldn't find any contemporary articles on it, but there was this at least enough of a public outcry that it's worth noting against spending taxpayer money on creating what some people called space porn. Because I guess people had a real aversion to the human line drawings of naked men and naked women put onto a plaque and sent out into space, even though what they were trying to say is, hey, these are what humans look like. How about it? What do you think? Do you like what you see? Yeah, they said there was an uproar. I'm not sure if it was quite that bad, but it was the thing enough that NASA well, we'll talk about what happened later on on their second attempt at naked bodies. Right. Well, even today, I want to say one more thing, even today about those. Some people are like, well, notably, they're both white people, or if you look, the woman standing a little more demurely than the man is. But these were not things that Sagan and his friends were thinking of at the time. They were like, just trying to say this is what humans look like with the amount of space that we have. And it's worth pointing out, too. If you look at the picture of the man, he's holding his hands up like, hey, how's it going? He's kind of waving in like a friendly gesture. Sure. Just like, hey, I'm just standing here naked. How are you doing? Here's my penis. How are you? Did you bring your keys? This is the this whole thing, by the way, you should just look it up. If you've never seen this, it's kind of cool looking. It's very seventy s, and you can get it on a T shirt, which, if I ever saw one of these out, that's a very super nerdy sort of in the note T shirt to have, I would think. Yeah, for sure. But the other three things so you got the naked bodies and you've got friendly man waving. The lady's just standing there like I guess he's speaking for me. Because it is the there are three other inscriptions that are all attempts to basically map where the Earth is in the universe and in our solar system. Something that they would do later on the golden records. That was an important part of both of these things, is to say, like, not only who we are, but where are we? And this is where we are on the map. Yeah, which is really hard to do. Not just the idea that this might not be found for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of years. So you're trying to communicate in the future, like that nuclear semiotics episode totally did. Yeah. But you're also trying to communicate to somebody who is not even human. It's never been to Earth, has no idea what we're talking about. And then you add the third layer of that. That when they approached NASA with this plaque idea. NASA said, that's a really great idea. Let's give it to us yesterday. Right. So they come up with it really quickly. And Frank Drake is kind of the unsung hero in a lot of this because he was a very intelligent astronomer, one of the founders of SETI, the guy who originated the Drake Equation, which is a probabilistic formula for figuring out how the probability of whether there's alien life or not in the universe. Just an all round cool guy, but he was not the science communicator like Sagan was. So Sagan gets a lot of credit, not necessarily because he was hogging it, but just because he was the face or the mouthpiece of all these projects. But Frank Drake came up with a lot of these ideas, and he was the one who came up with this universal key for figuring things like distance and time and getting that across to an alien civilization. And it was just straight up genius in its simplicity, but also in its universality, too. Yeah. So it is interesting. It is like the semiotics episode in that thought experiment of like, how would I communicate with something that clearly you just can't write out something in English. Like you said, very smartly with hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. And they were like, if there's something that's going to find this, they're going to know what hydrogen is. There are a lot of assumptions made, but the assumption that they would know what hydrogen is was a pretty good starting point, I think. I agree. That is a very good assumption. Most abundant element in the universe. Like you said, if you are traveling out in the universe, you have any kind of grasp on chemistry, you know about hydrogen, and you probably have studied it pretty well. And the idea is, if you're a spacefaring civilization and you've come across the space probe, you kind of would have to be you probably at least have that most basic understanding of chemistry, which is presumed to be universal. Right? Yeah. So the deal with hydrogen atoms is very rarely this happens, but it does happen. The electron will start spinning in a different direction and it will change energy states. Pretty good band name. This is known as hyper fine transition. Sure. Math rock, I guess. Got to be maybe frog. Yeah, math rock, for sure. And when this happens, they release a pulse of electromagnetic magnetic radiation. And the key here is that it has a fixed wavelength and period. Right. So no matter where you are in the universe, if you know about hydrogen, you know that it takes zero, seven nanoseconds for this transition to take place, and that it releases an energy, a little bolt of lightning, basically, with the wavelength of, what is it, 21 wavelength. Right. So this is just, no matter where you're in the universe, we assume hydrogen has these properties. And so Frank Drake came along and thought, well, you know, what, if that's true everywhere in the universe? And we basically put a little symbol there of a hydrogen atom going into another hydrogen atom, showing the two different energy states. They'll say, oh, hydrogen, we know about that. Or they're talking about the transfer of the translation between energy states, the hyper fine transition, we know all about that. So now we can use those numbers that are going to be the same everywhere in the universe as a key to multiply and divide with, and basically use that as a measure of time and distance that's going to be used in the rest of the schematic that they put on the Pioneer plaque. Yeah, the only other constant that they had in mind was the fact that Sammy Hagar can't drive 55. Oh, wait, this would have been before that. I guess they should have just had him deliver the plaque all over the place. Yeah. And that sweet Ferrari or whatever that was, he would drive at least 38,000 mph if he got the chance, I'll tell you that much. Absolutely. So they didn't have Sammy Hagar available, I think, in 1972. He wasn't as well known as he is today, obviously. No. So instead they put these things aboard the Pioneer, and then in addition to that hydrogen super fine hyperfine transition, that's super fine super fly. Right. They created a diagram of our place in the universe. And here is another way that Frank Drake shined. He said, okay, if you were an alien civilization, what would you use to basically as signposts around the universe? And he figured out that pulsars would probably be used. And pulsars are these incredibly dense, incredibly energetic collapse stars, and they're usually about twelve or 13 miles in diameter. So roughly the size of a city. Like a city. But they have the mass many times our own sun. Very dense, and they spin really fast. And as they spin, they release these bursts of energy. And when you're looking at them, that burst of energy gets directed at you at a certain rate, a certain repeating rate, basically like a lighthouse. These are celestial lighthouses. And because they spin differently, each one has a different frequency or a different rate of strobe, basically. And so you can say, well, this pulsar has this rate. That's this pulsar. I know that's over here. Let's see where this other pulsar is. And Frank Drake chose 14 pulsars and basically said, here's their distance from our sun. Now, if you can find these pulsars, you can use that as basically a map back to our solar system. Yeah. And it's cool looking. If you look at the picture, it looks sort of like a bicycle wheel with spokes, except there's no tube or tire. And the spokes are at varying lengths. Yeah. Something is missing. The tire is missing. Yes. The tires missing. I said that for sure. It would be a very awkward bike to ride. It would, because like you said, there are varying lengths to be up and down. It would not be comfortable. Chuck yeah. The idea is that they could see this, they would understand what it means, these assumptions, again, and they would compare their current map of the pulsars. So this enables the timestamp, basically, as a secondary function, because all this stuff is changing. So if they compared where they are whenever this thing gets found, presumably to where it was spoken out in 1972 or whatever, then they could determine how many millions of years had passed since this thing was launched. Yeah, it's pretty amazing stuff. I mean, like the distance from the pulsars to the sun are spelled out in like, binary code, that if you multiply that by the wavelength of the hyperfine transition, you get the actual distance, the frequency of those pulsars. You can figure out which pulsar they're talking about because you multiply that binary code by the time period of the hyperfine transition. Frank Drake came up with a universal way to create a roadmap around the universe no matter where you are. It's just mind blowing that they come up with, especially on the fly, too. Yeah, a time stamped roadmap, even. It's pretty amazing. It really is pretty amazing. So this is what they put aboard the Pioneer plaque. Naked man and woman line drawing. Very impressive. And then one of the most ingenious two dimensional maps anyone's ever devised that could be used anywhere in the universe. Yeah. And this was a little dry run for what would come next, which are the golden records. And maybe we take a break now and then talk about those. We take a break now. You know you're a pet mom when you growl back during playtime and you insist on feeding them the highest quality food you can find. Enter Halo Holistic, made with only whole meat, no meat meals, and probiotics for digestive health. Our first ingredient is always responsibly sourced protein raised with no antibiotics. And bonus, our fruits and veggies contain no GMOs. It's a lifestyle and a pet bomb thing. Find halo. Holistic at Chewy. Amazonandhalopets.com what if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? 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And he very ingeniously indicates this by having that hand remember the man with his hand up and friendly gesture, he places that next to the current arrangement and then what the continents will look like 8.4 million years from now when Legisl is going to come back down to Earth. This is kind of like just another cool little side diversion that I think he did for fun. Yeah. So he's got these little dry runs going on. By the time the Voyager comes along, he's like, you know what? This is the mid to late 70s. We need to really get a better message out there and let everyone know who we are as humans. So one thing we really want to do is put pieces of culture music he got together with Timothy Ferris, who worked for Rolling Stone magazine, wrote about music and space stuff for Rolling Stone. He was part of the project. And they said, yeah, music has definitely got to be in there. We need to put some classical music because anyone should be able to hear classical music and understand the mathematical beauty that's going on there. They chose that because even if aliens don't have ears or any way to hear it, if they understand math, they can kind of translate it and be like, wow, this is pretty neat, what these people did with this math. Hopefully, yeah. So Frank Drake is on board again, the unsung genius of this stuff, and he's the one that came up with the idea for the actual record, like I said, which would last much longer, I think. Would you say it was like a million years or something? Billion, billion years is how long it lasts. Yeah, that's what they shot for. And here's the other benefit of using a record, is we play standard LPs at 33 and a third revolutions per minute. You don't have to play them like that. You can slow them down and you can pack a lot more stuff on there that accounts for about 23 minutes aside, they slowed them down to half. That 16 and two thirds revolutions per minute. And they did a lot of crunching, basically, and tightening. And they ended up getting about an hour's worth per side on these golden records of information. Yes. Which is pretty impressive in and of itself. They said, okay, great, we can fit a lot more sounds on there than just a normal LP. Right. But they also figured out I'm not sure if Frank Drake came up with this. I think it was reported to him that this was possible. But somebody found out that there was a company called Colorado Video that had pioneered away to take television images and convert them into audio. And then you could take that audio, and if you use the right algorithm, you could convert that audio back into a visual signal, television signal again. Amazing. Yeah. So they're like, this is great. We can actually not only put sounds and music and words on these records, we can embed images, too. And so they got with Colorado Videos, and Colorado Video carried that out for them, which is something we'll talk about. But one of the things they were able to add was actual images. So if you were an alien that came across this golden record out there on Voyager One and Voyager Two, and you followed the instructions, which we'll talk about, you could create or recreate the pictures that are embedded as sound in these records. Mind blowing. 70 stuff here. Oh, totally. So you've got these records, which, if you records don't have to be vinyl. Like I said, these are copper covered in gold. And if you look at them, they just look like regular LPs that are gold in color. Super shiny, very shiny. But then they have on top, they have this cover that you said it was made of aluminum, and it's basically round in the exact same size of the LP. It's not like a square record LP sleeve or whatever that we're used to. But on this cover are all the instructions for what these people are going to be looking at and holding on. These people, listen to me. These persons in my human centric mindset here what's it called? Anthropocentric, I guess. So whatever these beings are when they get these records on the cover is everything you need to know about what it is and how to play it. Yeah. So again, they ran into the same problem of how do you first of all, we didn't even know that we could embed video into audio signals on a record. How are you going to teach an alien to recreate this and see the pictures? They have to figure out how to do this using binary code picture graphs. The easiest first step was to include a cartridge and stylist. So there's actually, like, a needle to play the record with. But that's not intuitive, necessarily, if you're an alien. So they included a little drawing of the record and where you should place the needle and how to place the needle. Well, the needle is already in place, though. Oh, is it already in place? Okay. Yeah, it's ready to go. All right. So why not make it as easy as possible on the aliens? Okay. So they were saying, don't touch anything. Use it like this. That was one. They also had kind of like a four step, step by step instructions on the algorithm that they would need to use to turn the audio into video. And it shows that it's supposed to create 512 interlaced lines. Kind of like an old time TV. You know how it's like all lines, just horizontal lines? Well, it's actually interweave of horizontal vertical. And then they used a test picture on the cover of the album. There's a square with a circle in it, and that's actually the first picture that will come up if you're doing this right. So it was kind of like saying, if you can recreate this, you're on the right track. Again, it's ingenious. I can't make heads or tails of it, but I'm guessing if you and I were pilots for an alien civilization skirting around, talking smack, we came across Voyager One or two, and we found this thing. We would probably take it back to our top minds. We wouldn't try to figure it out ourselves, or we would, but we wouldn't get anywhere. But you would bet that if we put our best scientists on this problem, they could probably decipher this and figure it out. Yeah, I think so. I hope so, because if not, it's all for naught. Well, I mean, You just got to take your best stab at it. And this is a pretty good stab. I did see a guy on Bonbon back in, I think, 2000. I'm not sure, not too long ago, he tried it and was able to successfully do it following the instructions on the so at least one person figured it out. Well, that's good. Unless he was just a super intelligent alien and a human skin sack, then that's a good try. So the other thing it included on the cover was that same thing from the Pioneer plaque, that Pulsar map, because he was like, we already figured this out, so this is great. There's no need to change this thing. Just throw that on there as well. And then there are these four inscriptions basically teaching them how to decipher all these images and using binary symbols again. Right. Algorithm. Yeah. And if they get to that circle, which they pointed out, like, how do they know if it's not backwards or something? I thought of that, too, but I also saw pointed out that they chose a circle specifically because it shows that you have the correct horizontal and vertical aspect, I guess. I guess so, yeah. It's like the old days when you would adjust your horizontal and vertical hold. Yes, exactly. So the circle, if it looks like that circle isn't flatter or thinner or whatever, you've got the right vertical and horizontal aspects. I think that's why they chose that circle. And I have to say, Chuck, I feel really uncomfortable here because it's pretty tough to stump both of us right. At the same time. Sure. And so it's kind of bugged me researching this whole episode. And I think part of it is that Frank Drake and Andrewen and Tim Ferriss and Carl Sagan made this stuff up. Is it Tim Ferriss? Yeah, it is. Timothy Ferriss. Not Tim Ferriss, the four hour workweek guy. Right. But Timothy Ferris. But that they made this stuff up in the hopes that an alien civilization will understand it. And a lot of it does make sense, but it's not necessarily intuitive. But it's also not necessarily something that I think you could go to school and learn. You just kind of have to be vibrant on what this small group of people came up in this ad hoc way as a message on behalf of humanity out to any alien civilization that found it. Which makes me feel a lot better about failing to fully understand every aspect of it. Yeah, I totally agree. There is one final piece before we everyone's like, yeah, but what's on there? We're not going to tell you. The last little sort of nerdy pieces. They wanted to timestamp this one, too, on the cover. So they included on the surface of the thing a little tiny piece of uranium 238. Yeah. This is cool. Yeah. It's a radioactive isotope that has a half life of four and a half billion years, and it decays at a steady rate, which is perfect because if you found this thing millions or billions of years later, they would be able to analyze that little patch of uranium and pinpoint exactly when this thing was launched. And if that all that makes sense and you weren't confused by it, go listen to our carbon 14 episode so you can become confused by it. That's right. Okay, so can we talk about what was on this thing? No, we have to, and of course we shouldn't. We want to, but we had to build it up and get it to the point where everyone understood the technical difficulty that was involved in getting these things. Because today it's like, I want a CD. Actually, it's hard to make a CD today. Let's say it was ten years ago, 15 years ago. You want to make a CD. Easy as pie. Right. This was all just making stuff up at the time to put on records. And then in addition to that, they had to choose this stuff from all of the things you could possibly choose from humanity to kind of give as clear and round and deep and wide a picture of what makes humans human and what makes Earth Earth, and what demonstrates our understanding of all this to somebody who's never met us before, that is a really big task. And that's what they were facing when they curated this collection. Yeah, because like we said, it's not like you have an infinite amount of images to stuff on there. They basically said, all right, you got space for I saw 116 images, so go at it. What 116 things will best crystallize what planet Earth and humanity is all about. Right. So the first thing they did was some, like, astronomical images, scientific diagrams and stuff like that, that charge where we are in the solar system to basically say, here's where we are. Here's what our mass is, here's how far the planets are from the sun, and just kind of a broad overview of what our solar system is. Right. Pretty good place to start. It is. And then it kind of drills down a little more into biology and our understanding of nature and cells and cell division. And then that kind of nicely transitions to human biology. So cell division into a fetus. And then they apparently had a picture of a naked man and woman. Again, couldn't get enough of that stuff. And Nessa said no sickos. We'll take this man and woman picture, but we're going to black them out so that it's just a filled in silhouette. What were those called, the shadow portrait when you were in elementary school? I don't know. You know what I'm talking about. So they would shine a light on you and then they would basically cut your shadow out in construction paper. And then you would have a filled in black silhouette of yourself from a profile. I think I remember that basically like that. But this is a full frontal, blacked out silhouette of a man and a woman, but defeats NASA. It does, but Nessa said, we're not going to totally defeat the purpose that feed us from the last slide. We're going to put that in the center of the woman's abdomen and then that will justify our prudent, I guess so I sort of get it, but it's just dumb. They weren't like, hey, put Khakis and a blazer on the guy. Like, you got to show the parts, man. You got to show the naked parts and what we look like. Get some Dockers on there. Yeah, I almost said dockers. That's funny. So they also showed a woman breastfeeding, which I thought was really great considering that they blacked out the nudity otherwise. And then they show like human development. Kids in school, people eating there's one slide of a person licking an ice cream cone, somebody eating a sandwich, and then somebody drinking a glass of water all in one image. They really crammed a lot of info into that. That was a good things like our agriculture and growing food and then nature also, because it wasn't all just about humans, but Earth itself as well. You got to have the birds and the flowers and the fishes. You got to have insects. You got to have the Great Barrier Reef and mountain ranges. It showed humans doing things like gymnastics, I imagine, which was might be a very confusing thing to see. Yeah, well, the first picture they submitted was naked gymnastics. And NASA said, Go get us another one. Is there any other kind? As a matter of fact, there is. And then they go to art, of course. Pictures of musical instruments, paintings, the Great Wall of China, skyscrapers, trains, cars, airplanes, rockets. They did not put stuff like religion or disease or crime or war or poverty. They don't want it to be a bummer. They kind of just wanted to show like the achievements of humanity, I think. Did you look at all these images? I didn't look at all of them. I looked at a lot of them and I listened to a lot of this stuff. So Yummy got me this set of anniversary Said. I think there was a Kickstarter a couple of years back where people wanted to reissue it on records. You got me a set and it comes with like the liner notes are just amazing and everything. And you go through and you look at the pictures and they're like I find the entire set combined to be rather unsettling. It is in a very 70s educational film way. They don't have a coherent look to them, which I understand. There's not a coherent look to the world or to Earth. But there was no unifying design or anything like that. It was just this random assembly of pictures and diagrams. Some are black and white some are blacked out, some are just silhouette. Summer full color. It's almost like Jarring in the way of that book. Wisconsin Death Trip that I'm always talking about is like, what that is in text. This almost isn't pictures, and that's what we sent out there. For some reason, it just stirs something in me that I can't quite put my finger on, but it's not fully pleasant. Yes, I had the same reaction. You know what it would look like? It looked like a set of images curated by a bunch of scientists. It did, as a matter of fact. Scientists on grass? Yeah. Would it have killed them to get any libabitz in there? Or some sort of designer? That's what I'm saying. Andurian was like an artist. Yeah, that's true. But she was, I think, a writer. I think Sagan's previous wife, who I think they became separated during this process. I believe she was a visual artist. So maybe her not being part of that project is that kind of unsettling aspect. You know what I'm saying? Like, she would have brought that there and didn't who knows? Yeah, who knows? Chuck, actually, hold on. I've identified it. Have you ever heard of, you know, Scarfolk Council? Nope. You do. It's like the seventies British PSAs and educational films, but they're all really dark and evil. You've seen it before. I've shown it to you. Okay. It's almost like Scarfolk Council chose the pictures that are in this. All right, I'll have to look that up. Back up again. You should. You'll be like as a matter of fact, Josh, I think you've just put your finger on it. All right. So that's side one, side A, as it were, has all these images cut into the grooves of this thing, ingenious, and they have their own sound. So, like, if you're just sitting there listening to the record, these pictures have their own sound that lasts a few seconds each. But if you run it through the algorithm, those sounds are translated into images. It's cool. It's neat that they have their own sound. Totally. Well, it's going to make some kind of sound. Exactly. So Side B, if you flip it over, it's the audio portion. And so this is where we get more interesting. But it's definitely seventy s and sort of spacey. When you listen to some of this stuff, I would say the entirety of the sound side is super 70 spacey. Like real trippy and cosmic and mellow. Even the stuff that's like a traditional folk music that they included. It all comes from a real, like, super marijuana e place. Marijuana e? Yeah. Stoney, sure. Stony. That's what the kids call it, but more like they just took marijuana and pressed it into music. Well, the first thing is an audio recording of just sort of a hey, how are you doing? This is what you're about to listen to, recorded by Kurt Voldheim, the Austrian Secretary General. Of the UN at the time he starts out with, and he said this, we step out of our solar system into the universe, seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate. I think those are beautiful words. It's very cool. Jimmy Carter included a printed copy. For some reason, he didn't speak it. I'm not sure why. Maybe he didn't have a room. He famously hated his voice. Did he really? Okay, do you want to read that? That's kind of long. We should just say it's pretty great as well. It is great. And he basically says, we are working on our own problems here on Earth, but we want to join this cosmic community one day, and this is our first entree into that. This is a saying hello, right? And then speaking of saying hello, the next thing that you're going to hear are 55 greetings and 55 languages. And the kind of bummer of this here is it's not like they were able because they had to do this pretty fast. Like you said, NASA didn't give them a lot of time, so they couldn't necessarily go to all these countries and record people in person. So they got a lot of people who spoke these languages, but they weren't necessarily natives of that language, and they couldn't find all the languages. So I think one that a lot of people point to that was unfortunately left out with Swahili, so there's no message from someone in Swahili on it. But they did do a lot of languages, considering what they were dealing with. And I think originally, too, they presumed they would just go to the UN and get each ambassador from each country there to record a message in their native language. But somebody pointed out that almost all the ambassadors there at the time were Men. And Sagan and his crew definitely wanted a pretty even mix of men and women, so they had to kind of on the fly figure out, we need to get some Cornell faculty to get in on this. And they managed to pull out, what was it, 55 languages? Yeah, 55. And some of these, they didn't tell people what to say, just some sort of greeting and however you would want to greet people in your language. And some of these are pretty fun. The Amoy one, which is part of the Men dialect, says this friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time. If you have time. We don't want to put you out by making you feel obligated. The Zulu said, we greet you great ones. We wish you longevity. Yeah, they're kind of saying, we're going to assume that you can wipe us all out, so I'm just going to throw some compliments out at you. That's like one step away from Eldritch gods. All right. The Persian one was pretty good hello to the residents of the far skies. And the Polish one says, welcome creatures beyond our world. That's scary, but I like it. And like you said, the Englishman was what? No, the Englishman was actually Carl Sagan and Linda Salzman Sagan's son Nick. It's very cute. He is six years old and improvised this hello from the children of planet Earth. Booyah. Very nice. It was very nice. So that was just kind of like a bunch of different greetings saying hello. It comes and goes pretty quick. Even though there are 55 entries, none of them take particularly long. Yeah. But then after that, they started to get a little more far out, and I say we take a break and then come back. You want to? Let's do it. 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. 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 demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule of their own slaves. IBM. Let's create. Learn more@ibm.com it automation. All right, Chuck. So the big cliffhanger was whether this was actually going to be far out or not. If I was right and it turns out I was right, this stuff gets far out pretty quick. And I think there's no way we can't play one of the things you got to know what I'm talking about. I think so. Music of the spheres. No. Okay. The whale song. No. The sound essay. Which part? All right, well, let's just tell everyone quickly. He did include a whale song. This was Sagan's idea. He thought that people of the future might not even or not people of the future. Here I go again. Whatever these things are might not communicate in a language. It may be more like a whale song. So they're one of those on there. Plus, whale songs are nice. Sure. Then they did this sound essay that it was an audio journey from evolution on. Well, first thing, is that a good way to say it? It is, yeah, for sure. Yeah. It was kind of like a trip through time. And even before human or the evolution of life, it's supposed to kind of capture the early Earth. There's, like lightning and thunder and rain. There's mud pots, bubbling volcanoes, earthquakes, all that stuff. They just basically say, like, this is how Earth kind of came together. Yeah. And then animals, of course. Yeah. It's pretty cool, if you think about it, to try to do an auditory progression of the evolution of Earth. So yeah, then life comes along. Crickets and birds and elephants and then humans. And this is what I wanted to post. Totally. I guess Timothy Ferris was kind of in charge of picking out the music, or was a big part of it, or the sound essay. And Andrewan did, too. I think they worked together. And notably, they were actually engaged at the time, at least at the beginning of this project. Timothy Ferriss, Andrewan were what's her last name? I think it's just Julian. I like to add a little mustard, too. All right. So Timothy and Anne were working together on this and for humanity, when humanity finally makes an appearance in the sound essay. Right. It's one of the most bizarre presentations of humanity. It really is. That they could have come up with what they were thinking. I don't either. It doesn't make any sense. So there's a windswept plane, footsteps and then laughter. Dave calls it sinister laughter. And you could definitely take it that way. But I think it can also be weird, hearty laughter, but it's odd either way. And especially when you put these elements together, it's particularly odd. So I feel like we really need to play it's fairly short. Right. Yeah. You fail to mention the heartbeat, too, which is kind of what makes it all super creepy as well. Okay, so here it is. This is where humans come along in the Sound essay. Wow. Yeah. That is what they decided to this is what humans do. They walk around with their hearts beating as loud as they can laugh on wind sweat planes, where their footsteps echo behind them. That's the human experience, for sure. Yeah. So this Sound essay continues, of course, once humans come along, they go through human evolution and fire and tools and jobs, like the sounds of blacksmithing and sheep hurting and solving things and then tractors and chips and cars and planes again. It just seems like a very 70s bong water sort of experiment. Right. I don't think we mentioned the music of the spheres. I teased it. Oh, yeah. There's also that this is a twelve minute recording. Technically, it's a song, but it's based on the theories of the great mathematician Kepler, Johannes Kepler, where they ascribed a musical tone to each one of the planets. Right. And he worked with Bell Labs, the computer lab, and reproduced the sound of the planets in 100 year orbit around the sun. Yeah. And so Kepler it is crazy. I think that's like part one of the whole sound essay, the music of the spheres. And Kepler was working off of Pythagoras theories, actually. And the whole thing is based on this idea that an object moving through space tends to make a sound, whether it's like the wishing of wind or a humming or whatever, an object moving will make some sort of sound. And the planets are objects, and they're really big objects, so they make huge sounds. And the theory was that the reason we can't hear these sounds is because we have no frame of reference for what things sound like without them. So our concept of silence is actually filled with the sounds of the planets, including Earth moving through space. We just don't hear it because we are so attuned to it. And that each of these plants, because they move at a different rate, they're different sizes of different mass and velocities, and everything that they'll make their own unique sound. And that when you put all these sounds together of the bodies in the solar System, they actually harmonize. And so Kepler took it a step further and actually figured out what note each celestial body would make. And then Sagan and his crew got together with Bell Labs, like you were saying, and produced that as the Music of the Spheres. This is the kind of stuff they were doing with just a few months to create the Voyager Plaque Project in their entirety or the Voyager Golden Records in their entirety. Yeah. And if you go to look up Music of the Spheres on YouTube or something, there's a lot of stuff out there called Music of the Spheres, so it's kind of tough to find the real one. Even if you put in like Kepler, there are some wrong stuff out there that is not the real music of the Spheres. But you can find it if you spend enough time. Yeah, there's an actual NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab has a site for dedicated to Voyager. Voyager, JPL, NASA gov. Yeah. And they have all sorts of stuff about not just the Golden Record, but the entire Voyager One and Two project, which is pretty cool in and of itself. But they have everything that's on the Golden Record, including the sound essay and the different components of the sound essay. And the Music of the Spheres is on there. It's pretty cool stuff. Even though it's completely unfounded and whacked out. It's neat that they kind of nodded to this tradition by including it on there. Oh, totally. And that's exactly where you should go. So just be warned, if you go to YouTube, you're going to get a lot of ina and stuff like that, because Music of the Spears is just a very trippy title for a song. Hey, worse things could happen to you today than stumbling across a nice and you track that you weren't expecting to listen to. Oh, boy. I actually had one of her CDs back in the day. Oh, dude, that thing was on repeat. The one with oreo? That's the one. So the last part of the sound essay is called Life Signs, and this is where it really gets out there. As if it's not out there enough already. But Anne Druyan said, here's what I want to do. I want to record my brain activity using an EEG and then they may be able to reverse engineer this thing and actually read my brain thoughts in the future. And not only that, but I'm falling in love with Carl Sagan and he's throwing that love right back my way. So my EEG, my brain waves that I'm sending out there are going to be soaked with love. And that's just like the most groovy thing that we can do. It is pretty groovy if you think about it. And they got married. Yeah, they got married. They had some kids and they were together until he died in his sixty s, I think, in 1992 or three, I believe. That's right. I haven't heard it yet, but I heard Radio Lab did a pretty good episode about that. About the life signs. Yeah, I'm sure it's great. Those guys are awesome. Yeah, of course. So the hardest thing, though, Chuck, was coming up with music itself that was representative of the whole world. They didn't want it to just be Western music. For Western music, they chose mostly Beethoven and Bach again, because, like you said and even an event civilization that didn't have ears or didn't hear, didn't sense things like that, they would still be able to analyze it and be impressed by it and see the beauty and magic in it. But they also chose some rhythm and blues as part of the Western music that they included, too. Yes, you have to besides Bach and Beethoven, there's other classical pieces on there. But you got to represent humanity. You cannot represent humanity without the contribution of African American music, which was basically the birth of all popular music with blues, jazz, and then rock and roll. Right. So they thought Chuck Berry, Johnny Be good to kind of throw that up there. Yeah. Dark was the night by Blind Willie Johnson. Very kind of one of those early kind of creepy sounding blues jams, melancholy Blues by Louie Armstrong and his Hot Seven. And I thought it was funny. Dave included this, too. I actually remember this saturday Night Live had a joke way back when because this was all over the news where they said the space aliens message back would be sin more Chuck Berry. Right. It was Steve Martin doing a psychic character cocoa. Yes, that's great. Who was receiving telepathic messages from the aliens who had intercepted the Voyager probe. You think the Beatles would be natch. And they were, except that it didn't work out. All four of the Beatles said, yeah, we'd love to be on. There were copyright issues, so they did not make the cut. So I read an article by Timothy Ferriss saying that that was an urban legend that they had never thought to or that they had never tried it. Yeah, that they hadn't included The Beatles, and apparently part of the urban legend is that the Beatles song they were trying to get was Here Comes The Sun. And he's like, that would have been funny for a very short while, but he said that that was a rumor. Interesting. That's disappointing, because I would think that would be worthy of consideration. Chuck, Barry and Bock. Those are your choices, Chuck. Bob Dylan, they thought about, apparently, but they were like, I don't know, Dylan. They just might be wondering what the heck he's talking about. That smells like an urban legend, too. You think? Yeah, and Timothy first didn't address it one way or the other, but you just are cynical about that. It just smells like one, you know what I mean? No, I think it smell it it smells real to me. I'm a big Dylan fan, though. No, it's, um and Legend, they also had music of the world. They had a Didjourido, of course, some pan flute action, a little Indian Raphael, a little Indian raga, navajo chant, little Mariyachi Jams. Yeah. Ozzar baijani Bagpipes. Amazing. Yeah. What else? Music from all over the world, basically, which is what you got to do. It is strange, though, that Johnny B Good was the only pop music they put on there. Yeah. And again, this Timothy Ferris recollection of it was that there was some dissent about including Chuck Berry. I think that it was two adolescent, is what one of the people said, and Carl Sagan was like, well, there's a lot of adolescents that live on planet Earth, so it actually is pretty representative. So it ended up on there. But, yeah, it is surprising that The Beatles or something, especially from this handful of potheads working on the project, you'd think for sure that they would have chosen something like that, but they didn't. They put a yes tune on there, something like that. Right. They put 20 112 in its entirety, early Genesis, which is good, but it got way better when Phil Collins took over. We've talked about this. I know. So one of the things that Carl Sagan did after this project and by the way, that laughter there's apparently a big mystery about whose laughter it was on that Sound essay, when humanity comes in and is walking with the heartbeat going. And the Atlantic writer tried very hard to get to the bottom of it, and she believed that she had that she finally got in touch with Sasha Sagan, Carl Sagan's daughter, carl and Anne's daughter, who said, I talked to my mom and she said, that was my father's laughter and it was confirmed with Anne. But then Timothy Ferris, through renting the Work, because he was there, too, and he's like, Look, I knew Carl Sagan very well and I heard his laugh plenty of times and it didn't sound anything like that. So they're kind of like where it's going to go with it being. Carl Sagan's, because I think she'd spent years trying to figure this out and was really happy when she did and then was really crestfallen when it turns out that that wasn't the case. And that was Adrian LaFrance, who spent years trying to figure that mystery out. Well, Higgin was a scientist. He wasn't a mad scientist. And that's what it sounds like a little bit. It does. It sounds like somebody on some bad grass. Yeah. So in the end, I think you could consider the project a success in a way in that it launched and they got what they felt like work. But I think Sagan had a pretty good take on it, which was, this isn't perfect, but we are not perfect. So pass the duchy and let's just launch this thing, right? So he calculated and he wrote a book about this whole thing called Murmurs of Earth, and it kind of recounts the entire project. If you really step back and look at it, it's a handful of people who came up with a pretty cool idea, got a bunch of people together to kind of contribute to it, and tried to be ambassadors of Earth at its barest. That's what it is. At its fullest. It's one of the grandest gestures humanity has ever been involved in, really. This really hopeful throwing a message in the bottle into the cosmic ocean, basically, as Sagan put it. However you feel you're going to kind of fall somewhere in between that spectrum. But either way, it was a remarkable project. And just seeing it was so Carl Sagan. There aren't that many people out there. Especially alive at the time that he was alive. Who would have done that and not only just thought to do it. Have the connections at NASA to do it. To talk people into doing this. And then to actually do it and get it done and get some records out there in space. Floating around in the hopes that maybe one day some aliens will find it and know that we were here and maybe come looking for us and wipe us out. Totally. So that's Golden Records, huh? That's Golden Records. If you want to know more about Golden Records, go search them on the Internet. There's a bunch of really cool stuff out there about it, and I think we think you're going to like it. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. We call this short and sweet. Hey, guys. Greetings from surprisingly Sunny London. I just finished listening to your newest episode on Nazi gold. And while it kills me that I can't even tell you which one, I am working on a legal case about one of the gold hordes and legends that you mentioned. And if it gets made public, I will, of course, dish out the details. But until then, just know that it's every bit as wild, thrilling, and Indiana Jones meets The Goonies as you could possibly imagine. Wait, she wouldn't even give us anything like don't tell anybody this or don't read this as listener mail, but here's the real dirt. Nothing just straight up like, hey, I've got all this information that I'm not going to share with you now. And now, Chuck, you've turned around and done this to everybody else I know that's anonymous even to add information that thanks is dripping in sarcasm, too. Yes. Well, if you want to be like, anonymous and just straight up tease us with information that you may or may not be able to share in the future, okay, that's fine. You can send us an email. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts my HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. There's a perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands? 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How Soccer Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-soccer-works | Maybe you hail from a soccer crazed country - or from the U.S. Either way, there's lots to discuss about "the beautiful game", from its prehistory, rules and strategy to, of course, the World Cup. Join Josh and Chuck as they wade into football, aka soccer | Maybe you hail from a soccer crazed country - or from the U.S. Either way, there's lots to discuss about "the beautiful game", from its prehistory, rules and strategy to, of course, the World Cup. Join Josh and Chuck as they wade into football, aka soccer | Thu, 19 Jun 2014 13:46:19 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=13, tm_min=46, tm_sec=19, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=170, tm_isdst=0) | 57266745 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. That's weird. Heard. I know. I was thinking like, I'm going to come up with something. Halfway through, somebody said I found it burned out on the sugar episode. That's sad because I was kind of burned out. It was right before vacation. Oh, yeah, sure. We've been going and going, going and and going and going and going. But now you're recharged. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Good. I somehow transferred from a type A person to a type B person on vacation. It was like that hardcore vacation. Oh, wow. And that lasted a couple of days. Yes. I still got a little bit going on. Hang on to that B. I still have the cornrows in my hair that I had put on the beach. Thank you. You like us shaking them around? Yeah. So, Chuck yes. Do you ever play soccer when you were a kid? I did not as a kid. Oh, yeah, no, I didn't start until high school. So you played for your high school team? I played for B team and for a couple of years. And then at Readan High School, the class in front of me was loaded with star talent. Oh, got you. I thought you meant like they wasn't drunk and on drugs. No. Well, that too, but yes, they were really good. And I wasn't a very good soccer player. I mean, I was okay just because I'm fairly athletic, but I wasn't like these guys had played since they were kids and they all got scholarships to college and they went state. Wow. So I was the type that was like, why bother? I'll never be that kid. Yeah. I'll sit on the bench and that was my role. Did you score any goals or anything? No, I had an assist one game, which was pretty exciting my 8th grade year. That's good, man. And that's just the fact that I remember an assist in my 8th grade year shows how bad I was at soccer. No, I know what you mean. I got a football story like that. Yeah. I played for a little bit like 45 minutes, I think, at the Why, I was all ready to go like, okay, new sport, let's play this. Or outdoor. Outdoor. Okay. And we were playing first day I got my T shirt on and was learning how to dribble the ball. And some kid asked when we're going to have our first game? And the coach was like, oh, they're stuck in the game, so we're just going to scrimmage one another in our team. Right. And it's just practice. That's all you're ever going to do is practice. There's not going to be a game ever. That's weird. I was like, See you later. Right? How long until my mom comes and gets you're? Like, I'm only in this to beat down someone else exactly. I'm so competitive. Yeah. But that was my experience with soccer and I never had a thing against it. It just always seems so, like, European to me. It is. It definitely is where his origins came from. So I was sensing something. It's the world, though. It is now, for sure. Well, I mean, it always has been. Man, this is a good set up to but to call it European, though america is kind of one of the only nations that hasn't fully embraced soccer. Yeah, for sure. It's the soccer and the imperial system of measurement. That's right. Yeah. And I have theories on that, which we'll get to oh, I want to hear that the USA hasn't embraced it like other folks. Well, we have three perfectly good other sports. Yeah. Well, four if you count hockey, which is like soccer and ice. It is a lot like soccer on ice. When I was researching this, I realized, wow, there's basically one game and then everything is a variation on that basic game. Yeah. It's to take an object and to try and drive it into an opponent's area. Yes. Same with American football. Really? Right. Same with basketball. Yeah. Baseball is the one that's different. It is different. But technically, if you look at the field as switching sides depending on who's on offense and who's on defense and the outside of the stadium is like their goal. It's close. No, but like field hockey. Lacrosse. You're right. Highlie. Yeah. And I think they stem from the same prehistoric games, which were Tuktuk and the gang running around with a rock trying to throw it at whatever they use as a goal. Not Tuktuk in this case, but Chickmol playing what is it? Pocket to poke. Well, go ahead. And I don't know what that is. That's a Mayan game. It's possibly the hardest game anyone's ever created. And they were playing it for 2000 years. Basically, it was a nine inch diameter heavy ball that couldn't touch the ground or else the game was over. But you couldn't use your hands. I don't believe you. Hit it with your hip. Oh, wow. I think I have heard of that. To win the game, you had to hit it through a ring that was like high overhead. And once somebody got it through the ring, the game was over. But that sounds impossible. Hit ball. Hit ball. Great game. Exactly. Get a medicine ball and a hoop and hip surgery afterward. Yeah. I mean, it sounds awful, but the Maya weren't the only ones who were playing a game like that. Kind of all over the world there were instances of soccer being played. Yeah. In China, third century BC is where they have the oldest scientific evidence and it was exercise in a military manual. And then the Han Dynasty had something called Su Chew, which was a leather ball filled with feathers and hair, which is lighter, I guess, than the Mayans they probably learned a thing or two. This ball is way too heavy. Well, apparently the Chinese started out using human heads. Supposedly. Really? Yeah, supposedly that predated sushi. Is that real, though? I don't know, but I saw it in several places. I know, but it was definitely worth repeating. Yeah. I can't say if it's real or not. Well, it suits you. That was a small net onto a bamboo cane. So the net wasn't on the ground. No, but still pretty close to soccer. But you couldn't use your hands. And then in Japan, they had kimari, which they still play today, actually. Is it apparently a little more ceremonious than Suchu? Like Suchu is a little more raucous, is the impression I have. Yeah. And I'm meant to actually see what Kamari looks like, but the description here is they stand in a circle and you pass the ball around to each other without letting it touch the ground. So it sounds like a hacky circle. It sounds a little bit like puck to poke. Yes, exactly. But I think all this lens to the fact that it's sort of variations of similar games in different cultures at similar times. The Greeks and the Romans had games like that. They did. And then in England england's considered the birth of modern SoccerFootball. Yeah. But can't be traced to a single person, which is kind of neat. No, it can't. And for centuries, they played a game that was, I guess, the predecessor of soccer, and it was like inter village play. So, like, in a holiday, one village would be like, hey, let's play this game that's going to be sucker one day. Right. Yeah. And so the whole town was involved, and literally, geographically and population wise, the whole town was involved. And there was a lot of damage to property. And apparently it was outlawed from the 13th century to the 17th century. The Hooligans were playing the sport at that point. Exactly. They were just the fan. Right. And even though it was banned, it didn't go anywhere. And finally the band was lifted and school kids kind of took over from there and started making more formal rules. Yes. Which I think is really neat, like other sports. Like I said, you can trace it back to a single inventor, but soccer still is a game of the people invented by kids who just like you said, started narrowing down rules. Being kids. Yeah, being kids. In fact, the origin of the word soccer yes. I like this. Most people think like, Americans invented that. No, not true. Soccer was the word for it 18 years before the word football was used for it. Yeah. By the English. Yeah. They invented the word soccer, supposedly. Although this one is a matter of debate. Charles Redford Brown was an Oxford student. Well, I guess let's tell the story. At one point, they had a meeting, I think, at Cambridge. Well, in Cambridge, but at a I believe it was a free mason lodge, I think. So they had this meeting, and they basically said, all right, we got to get real with these rules and really determine what the sport is. Yeah. Because each team, each school, they were all playing something very similar, but they would have their own rules. And before, when one team wanted to play another team, they would say they'd have to spend however long it took to decide what rule would overrule what rule. Right. It was just a big pain. So they finally came together at Cambridge and said, let's establish this. Let's codify this. We like to pick up the ball and hit each other pretty hard. Well, we don't we like to kick it around. That's where the split between rugby and soccer came. Well, they called it association football and association rugby. And at the time and of course, now, kids still like to shorten things, and they would add an er. So they called rugby rugger, and they called Association Football soccer, and then soccer. And that was it. That's where the words came from. But it was among like soccer was played among the wealthier elite, and then once it started spreading to the lower classes, they called it football, and it spread through the world among the lower classes. And that's why it just became football. Yeah. And we have American football. Yeah. Which is kind of a silly name. It really is for that one, because, really, the only person who puts it is the punter and the kicker, and everyone knows that they're a bunch of jumps. If there's a name mix up that we should have for football, it should be called rugby. Really? It much more resembles rugby than soccer. Yeah. This just got confusing for a second. Yeah, I like it. But I had just learned in this show that rugby and soccer were sort of the same game until they split. I didn't realize that. Yes, I hadn't realized it either. And I think rugby stayed among the upper classes. The upper classes? You said soccer was upper classes. No, soccer eventually spread to the lower classes, and that's when it became a game of the people. But rugby never spread to the lower classes. I see. I mean, it may have now, but you would think rugby would be the rough and tumble. Yeah. I don't know. Makes sense to me. Yeah. Who knows? So that was 1848, and that whole process really just kind of occurred over a few decades in the 19th century. And apparently, in 19, four FIFA came along. The Federation International, the Football Association. I'm not quite sure what continental accent that was supposed to be, but it was a European accent one way or another. Okay. And by this point, the rules were pretty well defined, but they still had rule changes over the years. But in 1869 is when they introduced goal kicks and then 1872 corner kicks. And then 1891 is when they had a single referee that would run the show and throw people out of games or matches. I guess we shouldn't say games even though we're Americans, right? They're matches played on a pitch. A pitch. Not a field. Not a field. But that's when they started giving penalties and assigning free kicks, and the umpires who were previously overseeing the game became linesmen. And that's where the field itself took shape, too, because they were like, well, if we're going to start in the middle of the field, we should draw a circle around it. Yeah, they'll let everybody know where to be. Yeah. Not let guys in there. And the goal penalty box, if we're going to have penalties and if the goalkeeper can touch it, maybe he shouldn't be able to touch it out in midfield. It grew very organically, it seemed like, from the shape of the lines of the field to the rules. Right. Pretty neat. Yeah. Well, apparently it's even still taking shape, like they recently changed the rule where it used to be if you were a forward, there had to be a defender between you and the goal. And now they've changed it to make it more exciting. So you have to at least be in line with the defender. It gives more chances to take shots on goal, apparently. Well, yeah, that's the convoluted and ever evolving offsides rule, which we'll get to later, because we'll explain I know everyone in the world knows about soccer, but a lot of this is going to be explaining for Americans watching the World Cup right now. Yeah. World cup fever. America just won Picana. Did you watch are you into it at all? I'm trying to help, and it's not working. Well, you don't have to be. Well, you mean I just watched the NBA Finals and that was a little heartbreaking. That's right, because you're weirdly in Miami Heat fan. Yeah, we're big Heat fans and the Heat didn't win. Are you going to be a Heat fan when LeBron leaves? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we like the whole team. Okay. I'm kind of worried, though, because they're talking about how the bench didn't really show up for the Finals. What bench? The bench, like the non starters. Well, I know, but Miami doesn't have much of the bench. Miami should have a great bench. They're all great players, but they didn't show up. They did last year. Yeah, well, they had different players, too. At any rate, I'm worried about my team. Yeah, that's because they're done. They're not done. They are. Look, don't bait me on the podcast. We've had conversations about this before. Have we? No. Okay. So, anyway, we were depressed because you're beloved Miami Heat loss. So I'm wondering if there's some sort of weird sports hangover that's going on right now that's keeping me from being on the workshop, but at the same time it's like, no, I think I'm just not into soccer that much. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll keep watching here or there, but I don't have World Cup fever, I guess, is what I'm saying. I do, because I'm one of the soccer fans that I don't follow the Premier League and we'll get to all that stuff, but that's the number one league in the world, pretty much English Premier League. I don't follow MLS. No one does. No, they got their fans. Yes. And we're getting a team here in Atlanta, so I'll probably go to some of those. Yeah, I might go to those. Live sports is often better than TV sports, I think. Always. Sometimes jerseys laughing. Yeah. It depends on where you're sitting, especially. Yeah, well, that's true for any live event. If you're in those bleeds, you're going to suffer. But I really get into the World Cup. I watched the FA Cup and I watched the Olympics, the FA Cup also every four years, but it's in the two years. Is that European? Yes. Okay. Yeah. The Football Association cup. Is that what that is? I just always call the FA Cup the FA Cup? Yes, the FA Cup. I guess you call it the Euro to. Isn't that right, Jerry? I think there's something else that's the Euro Cup. Well, let's talk about this. We mentioned that FIFA came about in 19 four and that it took over, codifying the rules, setting up regions. Yeah. This is for international play. These aren't professional leagues. Right. And they put together something called the World Cup eventually in 1930. And technically, I'm sure FIFA was involved, but really it sounds like Uruguay took the reins and said, hey, we got a really good team. We just beat all of you in the 1928 Olympics and we want to do it again. So what if we pay for all of you to travel to Uruguay, right, and we'll all play, we'll have a nice little tournament and see what happens. So Uruguay pretty much paid for everybody's passage to Uruguay and then soundly beat everyone and became the first World Cup champions in 1930. Yeah. A common thing that would happen later for the host team to win. Yeah. Big advantage. Yes. Because you're at home. Yeah. And actually, if you host the World Cup, you're guaranteed entry into the World Cup. That's right. What should we talk about the World Cup a little bit then? Why not? Everyone else has to qualify. Host team gets in. Like you said, there are 32 teams and they come from six regions and you have to play your way in, basically. Yeah. So those six regions, you said, like, it's divided differently for each World Cup because they just want to have a good balance. Right. So the North American had three slots, south America had five, europe had 13, asia had four, africa had five. Then there's Oceania, which doesn't get a direct spot, but those are kind of up for grabs. Like you got to play your way in Mexico. And Uruguay got those last two spots. Right. Because Mexico hammered New Zealand. Yes. Which is part of Oceania. Right. And they had to play for their spot. That's right. So those teams that ended up playing for their spot are going on to the World Cup, had the opportunity to because over the last four years, they've started accumulating points. Correct. Yeah. And you play qualifying matches. Right. And FIFA is keeping track of all this stuff and figuring out who's who and who's doing well enough. And then ultimately, 31 teams plus the host country, are elevated into World Cup play. That's right. And World Cup play divides those 32 teams into eight groups of four. And those eight groups are populated by the top seeds. So they want to make sure that one group isn't like the first four seated teams in the world. Yeah. They want it to be a good tournament, spread over as much as you can, at least. Right. So there's a top seed in each of the groups, and then the other ones are randomly picked. The other three in each group. Yeah. And then you have group play, which is a round robin, where every team plays every other team. And they're accumulating points during this group play. Yeah. Get three points for a win, one for a tie, nothing for a loss. Right. And with the groups, there's always one group that's super tough if you got three or more good teams in a group. It's called the group of death. And the US is in that group right now. Germany, Ghana, US and Portugal. Although Portugal, apparently, they're not showing up. Well, they got spanked by Germany, but I did see that game, and it was Pepe's fault in part that they got spanked so bad. Well, Germany is really good. Yeah. But Portugal wasn't supposed to be like four to nothing bad. No, not at all. I mean, it was a huge margin of victory. Yes. I wouldn't say upset, but because I expected Germany to win, and that huge margin of victory can really bite Portugal in the end. On the hind end. Right. When you have teams playing one another, they're accumulating points. If for some reason, at the end of group play and all teams have played one another, all four teams have the same amount of points, you then go to point differential. Yeah. So Germany really helped themselves out. They did. In Portugal, really, again, got bit in the rear end by losing forward and nothing. That's a huge point differential. Yeah. And then beyond that, if everybody still somehow had the same number of points accumulated, the same point differential, then they'll go to total number of goals scored. I thought it was a fashion show. Yes. It's a walk off. So that's how they do the group play. Yeah. And then after group play comes the knockout round. Yes. Then you're down to 16. And it's basically just single elimination. And that's where there are no ties. You can have ties in the group round, but you can't in the knock out round because you got to knock somebody out. You do. So if you're tied at the end of the game, you're going to have a shootout, which is when you alternate the free kicks or I guess penalty kicks until I think there's five and then whoever has the most wins. And it's kind of exciting, but I think Purists don't like to see it come down to the PK's. Oh, really? Yeah, they want to decide because I don't know what the percentages are, but it's pretty rare to stop. I'm not rare, but it's pretty easy to score a PK. Well, yeah. So a penalty kick, your goalie is in front of the eight yard by eight foot goal. Yeah. It's a lot of ground to cover. Yeah, it is. And he's not allowed to come out from the goal line. Yeah, he or she. You're right. I'm sorry. Which sucker is huge? Yes. Me a ham. Oh, you're not a fan. And the Hale, right? Exactly. I've heard of both of them. And then the soccer ball is placed ten yards no, twelve yards away from the goal line and that's where you take your kick. So yeah, it's easy, but that's the whole point to shoot out. It's high scoring. Well, I mean, it is exciting, but it'd be like at the end of a baseball game, if it's tied to have like a home run derby, that would be awesome. I would love to see that. Interestingly. Before the penalty could be taken, and this is for any penalty, you could take it from anywhere along this twelve. Now they center it right in the middle, but used to be able to take it as long as you're twelve yards out, like way over to the right or left if you wanted to. Oh, yeah, but that was in the center for quite a while. So you've got the knockout round that begins with 16 teams. Yes. Then you have eight teams, four, and then the final two. And when the final two play, hundreds and hundreds approaching. A billion people watch that game. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the biggest events on the planet. I think they said the last one 3.2 billion people. Oh no, that was just watched part of the World Cup, right? At some point in time. Yeah, exactly. I think 715,000,000 people watched the World Cup final. The last one in 2010, which was Spain and Netherlands. Yeah. And that's my other team. Netherlands. Yeah. If you're American, you've always got your backup team because it's just no fun to be like, I won't root for anyone else. And I've always rooted for Netherlands and Germany. Like England, of course. But those sad dudes. Why are they sad? Well, it's just a common thing that England has not won a World Cup for so long. They're sort of like the Chicago Cubs of international soccer, and English fans are notorious for just being depressed already, like at the start of the World Cup. Right. Well, I probably can't say that joke. There's some good jokes about it. I got you. Yeah. But I mean, it's a big deal to win the World Cup, so much so that, like huge deal. It happens every four years. Twice during World War II. There wasn't a World Cup. So we're in the 20th World Cup ever, and only, I think, eight teams, eight nations have ever won. Italy is like four I can't remember who is three? Maybe Brazil, I don't know. And then England and France each have one, and they had it when they were hosting, so apparently it was a huge home field advantage. Yeah, there is. But I mean, it's just an enormous deal to win the World Cup. Not only are you saying or have you shown that you're the best team in the world, not just spaces involved, but time as well. You're one of the greatest soccer teams ever to play. Yeah. And it's neat because all these players play professionally as well, so they're pitted against each other. Like, if you've got a guy from Germany on your team and you're playing Germany, like, all of a sudden your opponent or your teammate is now your opponent. Yeah. Because you're playing for your national team. So it's more emotionally charged, I think, for that reason. Let's take a giant step back and talk about the basics of playing soccer after a message break. Okay. Americans and Canadians and me and Josh. Yeah, that's me. You've got two teams. You've got eleven players, which includes your goalkeeper on each side, and the goal is obviously to kick the soccer ball into the goal. The goal is to make a goal. Yeah. And the ball has to be completely over the line if the goalkeeper manages to get a hand on it while it's on the line. And again, he or she. Or she is he allowed to use his hands in what's called the goal box? Yes. And that's the only player allowed to use his or her hands. Right. And it's a sport of gentlemen, or at least started out that way. So you're supposed to kind of admit when you've had a handball, although that doesn't go down quite as much anymore. No. Now it's usually the other players raising their hand and saying, he touched it with his hand. Right. And then the guy being well, that's so true. It just goes on from there. Apparently, a player named Diego Maridona oh, the hand of God. Yeah. In the 86 World Cup won it, and then he later said, like, yeah, I hit it with my fist a little bit. What are you going to do? Well, now it's soccer legend. It's like the immaculate reception in football. It's the hand of God goal and soccer. Yeah, but Mayor Donna, he's one of the greatest ever. Because he used his hands. No, you've got 245 minutes periods. The thing that Emily likes about soccer is it lasts for a finite amount of time. You'd think? Well, no, it does. You got something called extra time. Well, it is, and the clock never stops like it does in other sports, but while players are down or injured or there's a stoppage of play for injury, they will keep track of that time and they add it on. But it's never that much. It's like a few minutes, usually. Yeah. So at the end of the 45 minutes, you'll see a little guy on the sideline hold up a digital clock that says, like, four minutes. Right. And then so you pay for an extra four minutes. And that gets really exciting because if it's coming down to the wire, if you score a goal to win in penalty time, that's like, huge. That's like triple OT and NHL hockey, right? Yes. But some guys have been accused of faking injury to add injury time. Yeah. Well or extra time. Yeah. Should we talk about diving and faking dramatic? Okay. Yes. Because it's a big deal. Diving is when a player either completely fakes, will say exaggerates contact or injury, or completely fakes. It like, not even gets touched. Dives on the field, rolls around on the ground holding their shin, usually like they've got a compound fracture. It's a big controversy in the sport. And it's, I think, the biggest reason why Americans don't fully embrace the sport. Supposedly. That's a huge reason. Yeah. Because Americans are used to American football, where you spit out teeth or tape up a broken bone to play the game. You're not going to see an NFL player rolling around on the ground screaming unless they have a bone sticking up through their skin. Yes. They're tough, and Americans are used to that. And I think when Americans see a soccer player get tapped on the shin and they roll around on the ground screaming, I think they don't admire that quality. There's nicest way I can say it. It's becoming more prevalent in basketball. They call it flopping. Yeah. International players is one of the theories. Oh, is that right? Yeah. The influx of European players, guys like Manu DeNobile, he's one of the greatest floppers ever, man. Yeah, it's true. But the NBA is now finding floppers, which is probably not going to change much. No, it's not. Because they find them, like, five grand. Yes. Which is no big deal when you're super rich. That's right. But diving is very controversial. I'm trying to not insult people, but speaking very generally. Northern European countries, England, America, aren't into it, except Germany is supposedly big into floppy. Germany will dive, for sure. Southern European and South American countries do it more. And while Americans hate it, every language has a term for, like, A complimentary term for what they call gamesmanship. So it's just a different philosophy in other parts of the world. And I don't understand it. As an American, it's cheating to me. But I read a good blog post from this one guy who has a few theories ranging from the broken window theory to where, like, if you are exposed to it all the time, you get used to it. Yeah. And then if you're not exposed to it, like, you're an American. Yeah. When you see somebody do it like you're exposed to in the World Cup, all of a sudden, boom. Just seems horrendous. Yeah, right. And from that all the way to he thinks that just how some countries view the law, even in ethics. Like, he traveled to Argentina and he said, in Argentina, I had a lot of conversations with soccer players, and they were like, in America, you follow rules because of rules. In Argentina, you break rules until you get caught. So you should try and get away with it unless you get caught. It's part of the game. He had a conversation, apparently, with one guy about the newspapers in the US. How you can go to a newspaper box and it's just full of newspapers. And they were like, Why don't you take all the newspapers? You know, I've thought that before. And it's like because you really only need one unless you want to go sell them, I guess. So if you have some free time, sure, go sell some newspapers that you still anyway, diving to put a bow on. It very controversial still. And some in England are calling for it now, like, hey, we're falling behind here because we're not embracing this tactic. So we should be diving more. We should be diving more. If you can't beat them, join them, kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if that's the prevalent attitude, because, like I said, it started out as the gentleman's sport. You admit when you foul, you certainly don't fake a foul or an injury. Well, that's what happened to Pepe. He didn't like that Thomas Mueller was diving and pretended like his eyes were gouged out in the match. It's a lot of pro wrestling theatric that happened. Yeah. Just look up on YouTube, like, best top ten dive. It's kind of fun to watch some of these grown men roll around like that. There's this one when they're clearly not injured. There's one that was probably the most fantastical dive of all time, and it took place in a qualifying match between Chile and Brazil to get into the 1990 World Cup. It was like the match that you have to win. And the goalkeeper for Chile, Roberto Rojas, suddenly screams and is grabbing his eye. And a couple of feet away from him is like a lit flair just going off on the field. Right. And he's bleeding from his eye and everything. And everyone's like, what? Just happened? Apparently, he lit the flare himself, threw it on the ground, fell down screaming, had a blade in his glove, cut his eye open. That's WWF. Yes. And he was just riding on the ground. And they took the game. They technically gave it to Chile and disqualified Brazil automatically. Wow. And somebody, one camera man, happened to have gotten photos of Rojas is it a Pruder film, basically, of Rojas, like, cutting himself. And Chile got disqualified. Brazil got into the world cup. Never happened. And Rojas was banned from international play forever. But he started wrestling. Well, apparently Brazil later offered him a job as a goalie trainer. He was so good. Oh, really? So, like the country he almost drove into disqualification, offered him a job. Wow. Yeah. So it's a part of the game now. I think what most soccer fans agree on is that because it's a part of the game, then the onus is on the rest. To spot that stuff and not allow it and not be fooled by flailing arms and my eyes. Yes. That's just crazy. That's a rough job, is to keep an eye out for deception. Yes. And it's a big pitch. I've always lobbied for more reps. I don't see why they don't have they have linesmen and stuff, but I don't know. There's a lot of room out there. I'd have two or three dudes. There's a lot of room. Do we see how big the field is? Yeah, it varies, which is odd. Yeah. There's not a regulation field. Yeah. But it's typically 100 yards by 50 yards. Like an NFL football field. I also saw another typical one is 120 yards by 75 yards. That's big. That's like two football fields almost into a square. Yeah. I should have looked up for World Cup, but I did not. I think that might be the regulation size. So it's a lot of ground to cover. And each side has ten men or women or eleven, 1011. Including the goalie. Right. Yeah. Okay. And the personnel is divided into you got a goalie on each end. And then you also have three different other types of players. You have full backs, also known as defenders. You have halfbacks, which are known as midfielders. Right. And then you have forwards. And they do different jobs depending on their name. And you can have different numbers of them. It's up to the coach. There's not a regulation that you have to have this many full backs. This many forwards play to your strengths. Right. And then the formation that you're using can be described in numbers. So the example the Grabster gives in this one is formation would be four fullbacks, four midfielders, and two forwards. Right? That's right. So, what are the full backs through, Chuckers? The full backs are generally the defense, the defenders, they hang closer to the goal. On a full attack, they will cross the center line and try and score. But generally the full backs are defenders. If you hear someone say you're marking your opponent, that just means you're getting up on him and defending him or her. Right. Rather than like a zone, you're defending a person. Yeah. Well, not really. It's not like man to man or zone. It's just if a player with the ball comes near you, you go to either mark them or tackle them. Or actually, you mark a player without the ball. You tackle a player with the ball. Right. But if you're an American and you don't know much about soccer, and you hear tackle and you think, Why are they still standing? Tackle doesn't mean like NFL football, where you take them down to the ground physically. What does it mean? It means you are making a defensive play. Like when you see a guy slide, like a slide tackle. That's a tackle. You're making a play on the ball to a defender, but that doesn't mean that anyone is hitting the ground. Okay? You can both be on your feet, and it could be considered a tackle. I didn't know that. Yeah. Did you know they also called bait that you use for fishing tackle? Silly. Josh all right, so you've got your goal area. We discussed penalty kicks. That is, if you file someone within the penalty box, then you get that free penalty kick. And that's not a guaranteed goal, but chances are you're going to get a goal out of that. Yes, I would imagine the percentage is a lot higher. The only time you're allowed to touch it with your hands is if it goes out on the side and then you throw the ball in with two hands over your head. It's called throw in. Yeah. If it goes out on the inline, you're either going to have a goal kick by your goalkeeper or if the people who are coming to score on you, the attackers, kick it out, then the opposing team's goalie kicks it back in. Right. The defender goalie kicks. Yeah. If the defender kicks it out, then you get what's called a corner kick. Right. And a corner kick is what you call a set piece. And that's when you put the ball in the corner and you kick it in front of the goal. And the set of it is there are many different formations you'll use for a corner kick. And the object is to get it up in the air and try and head it in or get it in however you can. Right. But there's just different formations in front of the goal. You're marking your opponent. If you're a defender, you're trying to get free from being marked. If you're an attacker. And when the ball is in the air, it's kind of every man for himself. That's where it gets a little rough. And that's the basic strategy. So you've got the full backs back, protecting the goal virtually at all times. The midfielders are doing a little bit of that. They run a lot, but they're also the ones who are, like, driving the ball down the field and then trying to kick it toward the goal so that the forwards, who are closer to the opponent's goal, can head it in or kick it in. That's the basic strategy of moving the ball back and forth through soccer. Right. Yeah. You'll typically see an offensive attacker shoot down the wing on the side of the field with the ball and essentially do what a corner kick is, which is just get it in the air towards the center of the field in front of the goal. Yeah. Because once it's in the air, you can head it. Yeah. You can hit it. You can kick it. You can chest it. Yeah. You probably wouldn't chest the goal then. That's generally to get the ball back down on the ground, right. Yeah. For you to absorb its momentum. Exactly. If the ball is in the air and somebody's going to hit it, and you try to kick the ball, you might get what's called a yellow card, which is a penalty card. So you've got your one referee running around, right? Yeah. And if he sees you do that and he decides to give you a yellow card, he will pull, literally, a yellow card from his pocket, hold it up, I'm showing it to everybody. Right. And then he puts it back and he pulls out a little notebook and he writes down the number, which is so cute that it's just not kept up by someone else. Right. Exactly. Thousands of people and a huge computer network. But he writes it on a little hand. He'll note that. Right. Yeah. And he doesn't like the way that number came out, so he'll erase it sometime and try it again. You've got a yellow card. It doesn't really do anything. Basically, it amounts to a warning. You've been tagged by the ref. Yeah. And you can get a yellow card for any penalty they deem severe enough. Like any hard foul they can give you a yellow card on or mounting off to the roof. Yeah. Or they can just say it was a regular foul, no yellow card needed. And you get a free kick from that spot. And it's either indirect or direct. Meaning if it's indirect, another player has to touch it before you can take a shot on goal. Before you can take a shot on goal. But if it's direct, the person kicking it can try to kick it into the goal. Yeah. And that's another set piece. That's when you see someone goes to take a free kick. And if it's close enough, if it's down the field, you just kind of restart immediately and get the game going again. But if it's close enough to the goal, we can get a shot. That's when you see the players lined up in a row, ten yards, you can't get closer than ten yards to the ball, and they're covering their private part and trying to position themselves. And it looks weird if you're not used to it. Like, why would you line up in a wall in front of the guy kicking it? Well, it's because you want a big wall in front of the guy kicking it. Right. And the goal there is you can block the ball, which would be great, but it's to mask getting the goalkeeper's way. Can they jump at all? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you can jump. But that ball, I mean, I took one to the face one time. It's not fun. Yes. I can't even tolerate like, a dodge ball or anything like that. Yeah, you'll see players jump and kind of turn their body away from contact. Sure. So they don't get mauled. But like I said, one thing you're trying to do is to shield the goalkeeper. A lot of times they don't even see the kick coming because of the wall, and then it's in the net behind them and boom. And then they roll around the ground and say, my eyes. Yeah, I'm flopping. All right, so, Chuck, if you have a yellow card and you do something else, you're probably going to get a red card. And a red card means that you're ejected from the game you've been. So yellow means a red in a single game or in a tournament, even in some tournaments. Yeah. Or you can go straight to red if you do something really bad. That's what happened to Pepe. Yes. You can go. Pepe Miam and Payle and Pale. Yeah. Those are the three soccer players. Can you name one American? Diego Maradona, too. He's Argentinian american men like the guys on the team right now. Can you name one? You know what's sad is I keep wanting to say Cart Cry. And I know he's like volleyball. Yes. I don't know why my brain keeps going there. Well, you're not a fan. I wasn't trying to make you seem dumb for not knowing it. Thanks for definitively proving that. I just wondered how little you followed it. No, I don't know any of the guys'names. The answer is not at all into it. Landon Donovan is probably the most famous American soccer player right now. Yeah, Landon Donovan. But he was not even named to the team due to some controversy. Or not due to some, but causing controversy because he's old. Okay. He's like early thirty s. Yeah, it's crazy that's old, but it is. But America's, the coach came out, Jorgen Klinsman, the former German star, and said, we're not going to win anyway, so we're just trying to get better. Loser attitude. Well, it is, but it's realistic. The Germans, they throw down the realism and anything can happen. But America is not on the same level because chances are the kids out there, their dad didn't play, and their grandfather and their great grandfather. When it's ingrained in your society over generations and generations, you're going to get better. Right. And it's not a national sport. It's like, fifth. Well, let's talk about England, and it's probably the best prime example of having soccer as a national sport, one of, I should say, but it's the one that has kind of set the stage for how you have a national functioning sport of soccer. Yeah. So, England, are you talking about the premier League? Yes, yes. The Barclays Premier League is the top soccer league in the world. Not every nation, but almost every nation has their own professional league. You've got the Premier League, which is numero uno, spanish primera. The Italian League is probably the second best right now. Yeah. Spanish is probably third. You got the Bundesliga in Germany. France has one. Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Japan. We've got our own MLS. Right. But the best players in the world generally play for the Premier League. Yeah. Around the world. Not just you don't have to just be British. You can be from wherever and play for these teams. Yeah. And the MLS in the United States is getting better, but it's generally like, where old players go to play. Well, I have a question for you, and that's an old tradition, apparently. Pale finished out his career with the New York Cosmos. Yeah, there's a great documentary on that team. Beckham played for the Galaxy in Los Angeles. Landon Donovan plays MLS, but that's twice that you've called him old. I'm sorry, Mr. Donovan, if you're listening to this. Well, I mean, it's up and comers who aren't good enough to play in the other world leagues, and it's older guys who used to play for the Premier League and want to come to the US. And live in La. And make a little scratch. So I have a question about that because it was more than a little scratch. Like, they paid Beckham, like, quarter of a billion dollars to come play. Do you know if they recoup that in any way, shape, or form? Like, did it pan out to be a good investment or was it all for him? They obviously signed a David Beckham. He was good, but he wasn't like England's best player or anything. No, his name recognition. Yeah, they were trying to get seats. Absolutely. But I'm wondering, that's a lot of cash. Could they have made that back because he wasn't the only player. I mean, he still had to fill the team around him. Well, Donovan plays for La. Two, I think. Is that right? Yes. Did you see that ad of Beckhams from a couple of years back, the Pepsi ad, where he kicked like three balls into three different trash cans on the beach? Really? And was it real? If it's not, it's the most amazing editing job you've ever seen in your life. It was probably real. They usually don't fake that stuff. It's crazy. What he did, then. Yeah. The men and women of international you're playing for your country. The talent is unbelievable. Yes. There's professional leagues and then each FIFA team, which, by the way, has more member nations than the UN, which is really saying something. I think it's like 2009 to 193. That's pretty cool. But each FIFA member team also has a national team that you play for. So you are saying that for the English Premier League players, the best players from around the world typically go play there, but when it's World Cup time, they go back to their home countries and like you were saying, teammates will play against one another for their nation and go at it too. Yeah. And then when they go back to their club teams, they're just like, hey, good to see again. So the Premier League, the Prem, as they call it, has other subleagues. And if you finish in the bottom three in your division, you are relegated and sent down to another league. So it's sort of like a minor league baseball, right. But not a player. The whole team gets sent down. The whole team gets sent down, which is pretty neat. Makes sense. Yeah. So if you have any friends that follow the Prem there, unless they're like, Manufans or Arsenal fans who are like the big hot teams. It's like the Yankees, although people certainly take issue with that. I hate the Yankees. Yeah. You're fighting to not get relegated. And then if you are in the top three of the lower division, then you get sent up. And if you're the top two, you automatically get sent up for the third place. The next four highest ranked teams play off. Yeah. And that's a big deal because more money, more advertising revenues. You don't want to get sent back and relegated. It's bad. I had no idea about this until researching this article. I didn't really have a sense of, like, just how bad it is. I can imagine, like, the difference in revenue for a team between being in the Premier League and being in the first division, the one below it year over year, is just nuts. It's pretty depressing, I think. Is it true? Yeah, I can imagine. How often does that happen? Well, it depends on your team, but every year, every year they go down and three teams go up. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. And so if you're an American Prim fan, you pick out just a team based on like, anyone picks out a sports team when they're not from that country, based on players you like or whatever, and then you follow them. And all of my American friends that follow have picked out different teams. It's kind of fun, but then I'll watch a few like, I'll watch the finals and stuff, but generally I just follow the international play. Sure. It's just the style of game. I don't have time for all the sports I know you're a busy man. Busy guy. So, Chuck, you want to talk about the dark side of soccer hooliganism? Yeah, it's gotten a lot better. Yeah. Apparently. Really bad, though. Like soccer hooligans are sometimes fighting for their team's honor, and sometimes they're just drunk Englishmen who like to scrap and use that as an excuse. But it got bad for a while. But they've cracked down on, I think when they started cracking down on teams and penalizing the clubs themselves for acts of hooliganism, I think that might have caused some changes. Yeah. That's crazy. I don't know if it was FIFA or who did it. Maybe it was the Premier League itself was saying, like, if your team is associated with hooliganism, we'll sanction your team, and you guys have to play in an empty stadium and will totally miss out on ticket sales. That's huge. The hooligans themselves could be banned from even traveling to where a match was. Yeah. Like, you can't get into this city yet. Not the stadium, the city. Like you said, apparently it worked pretty well, but in the interim, a lot of people died. Like, a lot of people have died because of soccer. Yeah. Well, not only hooliganism, but stampedes and being crushed. And that's gotten a lot better, too. But I remember growing up hearing a couple of times where there was some awful smashing of people, hundreds of people. In 1989 in the FA Cup match there was in Britain, 96 fans were crushed. And remember in the Black Friday episode that we did, we talked about crushing death and what that's like. I think in the article that I cited, there's a picture of somebody being crushed to death, like, up against a fence at that game. It's a pretty famous picture. It's awful. I can't imagine. Yeah. Being crushed to death the worst. Yeah. So I guess we should explain the offsides rule, just because that is a confusing thing for some Americans who don't follow soccer. Is it? Yeah. Okay. Because it's changed some over the years, and we'll just go ahead and explain. It easily stated. You're offside, if an offensive attacking player is in front of all the defenders, they say behind the line of defenders. But if you're watching, if they're an attacker, then I just call it in front of before the ball is kicked to you. So it originated in the early days, basically, to keep the lazy kid from just hanging out in front of the goal and waiting for the ball to come down there. Makes sense. They call it in the 1840s, they called it sneaking. Sneaker? Yeah. Like your big, fat sneaker, because you're just waiting there like a lazy get. So in greater detail, the attacking player, you have to be on the opponent's half of the field. Okay. So the field split down the middle. You got to be on the offensive half of the field for it to be called offsides. The attacking player is closer to the goal line than the last defensive player. Goalie doesn't count. And the ball so that's important. The ball, you can be offside, you can be in front as long as the ball isn't coming your way. Okay. Basically, if you play the ball or interfere with the defender, that's when it's all sides. As soon as that players kick the ball and the ball's in the air, you can run in front of that defender or behind the defender. Okay, I know that sounds so confusing. Yes. I wasn't confused by it before, but I am now. Yeah, well, that's my best way of describing that's what all sides is. If you want to just watch the game, simply just remember you can't just be hanging out in front of the goal. Yes, that was my understanding. Yeah, we cleared that up. That's the real, most basic version of the rule. Yes. Without any of the subtleties. And you can't be outside. If it's a throw in or a corner kick or a goal kick, then it's every man for himself. You can do whatever you want. Okay. It's only when it's in regular play, not a restart. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it does explain it pretty well. I think so. I know that people are going to say I butchered it, but whatever, bring it. Well, I'm sure somebody will explain it very eloquently. We can read it for listener mail. Exactly. Nothing else. Go, USA. And this is one of the rare shows that we turn around really quick because it's newsy. Thanks to Gerry for that. Way to go, Jerry. But the US. Plays Portugal Sunday, and if we win that, we're looking really good. But I don't know Portugal, because even if we played Germany, we'll still have accrued enough points from beating Ghana and Portugal to go to the final two. Yeah. We'll lose to Germany. I think everyone's kind of accepted that. Apparently the coach, especially, who is a German I got it figured out. Okay. I understand soccer now, but our striker, Josie Altidore, went down, which is not good. Strikers are we forgot to mention the defensive full backs. You can be a sweeper as well, where you just like going back and forth in front of the goal. Yeah, kind of sweeping. And then there's some of the offensive. Fords can play the striker position, which is just like pure offense. You're attacking all the time. Attacking all the time. Attack. But we lost our striker, which is a big deal. Sure doesn't bode well. Well, thanks for all this, Chuck. I got nothing else. I understand. Soccer to a T. Yeah. I mean, I wish I was a super expert, because I know it probably wouldn't be nearly as fine. I'm sure we got some stuff wrong, and we'll hear about it. We'll hear about it. Yeah. But yeah. Go World Cup. Go, World Cup. Here's my prediction. We're all winners. Actually have no prediction. Maybe everyone will tie from here on out. Jerry, who do you go for besides the US. Chile. She likes chile. Chile and Germany. Nice going, Jerry. Chile is a dark horse. Well, we'll see what happens. Yes. If you want to know more about soccer, watch the world cup. Now that you've listened to this episode, you'll know what's going on if you didn't before, and possibly it made it more enjoyable for you. You can also type soccer. Soccer, not football. It's going to bring up a totally different article. Yeah, in the search bar at how stefworks.com don't type in footy. No, no one knows what that is. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this props to nurses. In our continuing effort to not slight people, I'm going to read this one. Couldn't help but notice, guys, when I was listening to how placebos work stood out to me when you gave Dr. Beecher credit for first noticing the placebo effect in world War II, but you completely overlooked the obvious fact that it was the nurses who recognized it and were putting the placebo effect to good use. Before Dr. Beecher realized that was what was happening, they were making keen clinical observations at the bedside and applying those principles in the field to the benefit of their patients'research and action. Of course, credit is due to Dr. B for formalizing and publishing the study. Also, I know you guys are stickless for accurate language. Please remember that doctors aren't the only ones who prescribe meds. Nurse practitioners and physicians assistants do as well. It would be more accurate to refer to prescribers in the context of this podcast as healthcare provider or clinician when talking generally about the person who determines the patient's plan of care. But what you guys do and Jerry s YSK is my favorite. Keep it up. And that is from Amy nurse us. Air force. If this makes it to read or mail, she says, please give a shout out to my fellow nurses in uniform. So men and women around the world in uniform and nurses, nurse it up. Hats off, nurse. Hats off. Thanks for that, Amy. And thank you, Chuck. That was a good one. Yes. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffyshono. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com and check us out at our home on the web, luxurious stuffyoushinenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com." | ||
42926454-53a3-11e8-bdec-07a0fee42f0f | Augmented Reality: Coming Soon? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/augmented-reality-coming-soon | Augmented reality adds a digital layer over the real world and soon it will revolutionize how we live. Ultra-tailored information will be everywhere we look, creating a richer, more personalized experience in everything from surgery to walking down the street. | Augmented reality adds a digital layer over the real world and soon it will revolutionize how we live. Ultra-tailored information will be everywhere we look, creating a richer, more personalized experience in everything from surgery to walking down the street. | Tue, 12 Nov 2019 14:47:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=14, tm_min=47, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=316, tm_isdst=0) | 55870776 | audio/mpeg | "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. There's guest producer Andrew over there. And this is stuff you should know. Everybody. The real edition, not the online consignment retailer. Just meaning real twice over. That's right. Very real. Yeah. Not augmented in any way. As a matter of fact, we're about as low tech as it comes as far as podcasts go. Oh, I think all podcasts are pretty low tech, right? No, some people really kind of jazz it up a little. Razzle dazzle. Sure. Like, could you imagine a world where someone listens to Stuff You Should Know and they're wearing a headset right. And in front of their face? It was either us or what we're talking about, or any of a mix of those things. I like the second idea. Or what we're talking about, or if it was an animated version of us. Remember those animated shorts? Yeah. Gosh, those were good. Yeah. And we have a mutual friend who I will tell the name off air to you, who was getting into this quite a few years ago with another company and came to me and was like, hey, what do you think about maybe one day you and Josh doing these shooting videos? And at first I was like, Nope, now hear me out. Shooting videos to where we were, let's say, walking people on a virtual tour of a neighborhood in New York City and telling about the history and the way that we do and stuff like that. Oh, man, that would be awesome. You think? Yes, dude, I think people would love that. I would love that. Well, this person was also a big believer in AR and said, dude, in a few years, you won't be able to buy a pair of glasses or sunglasses that don't have this built in. Yeah, I think your friend is right. Well, no, this was a few years ago. It should be happening right now, according to this person. Right. I remember at the time thinking, not only will that not happen in a few years, but that will never happen. I don't know, man. I don't know. So I see what you're saying. With a lot of tech, there's like, in five years, this is going to be all the rage. In five years comes and goes, and we're not that much further along. But if you step back and look at the progress that augmented reality is making, yes, I think your friend is ultimately going to be proven right. Maybe not over the same time frame, obviously, because they've totally failed with their prediction, but I think in the end, your friend will be vindicated. Is this somebody that I like? Because I hope it's not someone I dislike, and I'm vindicating them because I feel like I'm trapped here. Here's. My prediction is that in the future, there could be, for sure people that are into this and that you can easily buy glasses like this. Right. But I think the notion that this is all of humans at some point walking around like this is silly. We'll see. We'll revisit this in five years, and I think things will be a lot different than I think you'll be singing a different tune walking around with your VR glasses on. All right, mark the date, everyone. Okay. Five years from now. Yeah, I'm not going to say I'll buy everyone a beer if that doesn't come true. Halloween 24. Yeah, that's five years from now if we don't look out of our house and see everybody walking around with living a virtual augmented world. Right. Or I guess it's possible that could also be the title of a rob zombie movie, too. Halloween 2024. There's nothing but Augmented Michael Myers everywhere. That's true. I just wanted to go ahead and I guess, foreshadow my future poopooing. Okay, that's fine. That's easy to do when you're talking about predictions. But I guess we should probably tell everybody what we're talking about. It's augmented reality. It's in the title, so you should have some heads up. But to give kind of a brief definition of augmented reality augmented reality, I'm going to say it a fourth time here. Augmented reality is a type of technology that adds like a digital layer, computer generated layer of augmentation to real life. And it can be really actually any kind of sensory input. Typically it's something visual, but it could also be haptic feedback. So tactile, like touch. Sure. It can be sound. You can be walking through a certain place that will trigger, like, a sound. Eventually. It might be smells, warmth. Who knows what we'll be able to do? But right now, most people are typically talking about visual stuff. Yeah, well, they could combine the I smell with VR or AR. I love that idea, man. I think the ICEme was just ahead of its time. Not that it was a bad idea. They've already got music. They've had that since the walkman. Sure. I guess it's a primitive arch, so I don't know that I would call sound AR, except for the fact that maybe you could look at something and it's triggered. Right, but it's all there. It's all ready to have us leave our material world on a daily basis and go somewhere else entirely. Well, that technically is virtual reality, where you're plunged into an entirely alternative version of reality. Augmented reality. Is it's real? It's our normal reality, but there's an extra little touch to it. That's digitized. Yeah, but the videos that I've seen, there was so much going on. In my opinion, you are leaving the real world. Got you. I'm not saying you're transported to Venus or anything, but when you're sitting in a room and there are screens all in front of your face and the couch is you can change your couch to a different fabric virtually. I don't consider that the real world. Okay. I think that you might be in the minority, but okay. I think we'll see in five years that I'm not. Okay, so if you kind of are, like, well, I still don't quite get it. What we're talking about is Pokemon Go, basically. Yeah. So Pokemon Go in 2016, it was an enormous hit. It's this game where you walk around and you basically play Pokemon in the real world. You go visit with Pokemon creatures and try to capture them, and your score is shown on the screen of your phone, and you're using your camera, and it's adding that digitized Pokemon layer to the real world you're seeing through your camera screen. Right. And it was huge. Apparently, it just passed the $3 billion mark, which is pretty substantial profit made for a game that's actually free. It's a free game, but there's a lot of inapp purchases, and they've made $3 billion off of that so far. So there's a huge appetite for augmented reality that Pokemon Go showed everyone. Oh, for sure. I think there are plenty of applications for augmented reality in the future. Right. And so we kind of got into it a little bit. The difference between virtual reality and augmented reality, I've seen it put really well in that virtual reality takes the user anywhere, and augmented reality brings everything to the user. I think that's a great description, but the idea is, in VR, you're transported to a different world. In augmented reality, your world has that digitized layer added to it. And then there's also something called mixed reality, which, if you read about it, that, to me is that's the future of augmented reality. Yeah. I wasn't quite sure the exact difference here. It seems like very fine lines, definition wise. It is, because augmented reality and mixed reality are virtually the same thing. It's just mixed reality is kind of like the more sophisticated version of augmented reality. But a good example that kind of distinguishes the two that I've seen is let's say that you have your augmented reality phone going, and you hold a soup can up in front of it. Okay, well, your app says, oh, it's the soup. It's Campbell's low sodium tomato soup. Obviously, user friend who's holding the phone up to the soup can wants to know more about this soup, and it triggers some nutrition facts that aren't found on the label or maybe a recipe or something like that. And when you're looking at the soup can through your phone, the additional layer of information that's digitized over it, that makes it augmented reality. It doesn't look like it's on the soup can. No, it's like you're looking at your computer screen, but it's in front of your face. Yeah, kind of, yes, but not nearly sophisticated. That's a different thing that we'll get into later. But it's just kind of like this layer of information that's just floating in space over there. Mixed reality is far more sophisticated, where if you held your hand up in front of in between the soup can and your phone, your hand would what's called occlude, it would cover up that information. That's a big thing, and it's really hard to do, but it makes the stuff that digitized layer of augmented reality interact with reality that much more. So it could wrap around the soup can. It could be covered up by something that comes in between you and it. That's mixed reality, and that's really ultimately what augmented reality will be in the future. That's right. We'll see. I'm starting to suspect you have a real opinion about this. No. Again, I think they're totally people, the same people that loved Google Glass, which we'll get to later. Whereas at the time I was like, this is not going to work. I'm going to argue against your argument later on. I love it. Okay, so we can explain a little bit about how this works. We are not tech experts, and we're not going to go bother Jonathan Strickland right now. No. Or bother ourselves, frankly. But we can give you sort of the briefest layman's overview of how this stuff works. There's a field of there's a lot of disciplines in it called computer vision that's really super complicated. But for our purposes, I guess we can just say that computer vision basically understands what's going on in the world around whoever is using the augmented reality. And they do this by there's got to be an interaction. And we'll talk about the wearables and the headsets and stuff, as opposed to smartphones. But what they use is something called the time of flight sensor, which sort of works like a bats use echo location, except it's not echo location, it's infrared light. So they bounce this light, and if you look at these things, it looks like almost like a little GoPro camera or something like that right on your forehead, which sends out these pulses of light that are reflected by the objects around you. And then it measures the delay of that light reflecting back to you to calculate everything, basically the depth of everything around you. Right. And then every time it makes this measurement, it also says, I'm a dork. That's right, because you're wearing this on your forehead. Right. And we also see with two eyes, we have binocular vision. So in order to simulate that, they have something called stereo cameras that are basically placed like your eyeballs are at a fixed distance and then triangulates everything together to work with your two eyeballs. Right? Exactly. So if you have a new iPhone, if you look at the back, you'll see that there are two cameras on the back. Some cameras, I think. Huawei. Huawei. I can't remember how to pronounce it. They have a phone with three cameras. I think the iPhone does, too, now. Does it. Okay. But the input from these cameras are providing slightly different information to the onboard brain on your phone. And so it uses this different information to triangulate. It basically differentiates between the information and says, oh, okay, this is how far away this thing is, or this wall is, or this walkway goes. And it uses that information to create the digitized layer that is augmented reality within the space that it realizes it's looking at. It's like, okay, this is what I have to work with. Let's get rendering. And that's the next step, is rendering, which can be as simple as adding, like, that layer of text in front of you when you hold up that soup can. Or it can be far, far more sophisticated, like, say, using a Snapchat filter that makes you look like you're wearing a cute little cat mask. But no matter where you move your face up and down, or if you open your mouth or something like that, it follows it perfectly, which would actually technically make the Snapchat filter mixed reality rather than augmented reality. Yeah, I don't do the Snapchat thing, but you can do that on FaceTime, and I made the mistake of doing that. FaceTiming my kid. And now that's all she wants to do whenever she be a monkey or a dinosaur or a lion or a lizard or a robot or whatever, which is kind of fun. And it is pretty amazing that on this little phone, you can stick your tongue out and wrinkle your eyes and you can do that as a kitty cat or a monkey in real time. So it does all this because of all the facial recognition software aboard your phone, the Gyroscope, where you're like, who needs a compass? I'm not going to walk around in the woods with this thing. Well, there's that all the time, actually. Do you really? Yeah, I'm not in the woods, but you know me. I have a terrible sense of direction. So if I'm in New York or wherever and I'm like, I need to go north, then it's a very simple way to find out. Yeah, true. But I always just use maps, and it's really good for maps. That's how it knows which way you're facing, is that Gyroscope and GPS coordinates. So it's using all this stuff, along with facial recognition, to map and track where you're moving. And no matter whether it's rendering the soup can information or the Snapchat filter, it does this it does all these calculations and figures out what's going on in the room and your motion and where your faces or where the suitcan is, all that stuff. It does it every time the camera sends a frame of info to the onboard computer on your phone, which happens 30 times per second. So these calculations are being adjusted, analyzed, and remeasured, and then the output is being put out 30 times per second, which is pretty impressive. You know what? I think you just hit on the key difference in our outlook on this. What? It sounds like you are primed for AR. Because I am someone if I'm in New York, let's say, and I will say, all right, I know I need to go northeast to get to this place, so I'll just chart what northeast is. I'll put the phone in my pocket, and I'll start walking. Start walking. And I think you are more primed to look at your map and go along the streets that it's telling you to go on. I listen to the computer is what you're saying. No, not necessarily. But I think those are two distinct differences of kinds of people and how they interact with technology in the world around them. Whereas I just want to know I'm going northeast, and that's correct. A lot of people wanted to look at that map the whole way and know they're going, like, on the exact right street to get them there, I guess, the quickest. Right. Which one do you think is correct? I don't know. I like to meander. No, I like meandering too. I'm with you, too, for sure. But I also use waze everywhere. I drive, too. I've never used it. It's really helpful. But I don't sit there and follow the ways app or anything. Like I'm looking out the window. So I would say I'm somewhere between you and a Pokemon Go player. Well, I drive Emily crazy because I am quite comfortable unless I'm in a hurry, not getting someplace as quickly as possible. And she's always like, Where are you going? I'm like, we'll get there eventually. I like that, too. I like that, too. So don't mistake me. I'm somewhere in the middle. But, yes, I feel like I'm a little more into tech or exploited by tech than you are saying. Where did we leave off here with the two types of augmented reality? Yeah. Did you say those? No, we haven't talked about that. Okay. Because I was just about to talk about marker and marker less. Yeah. Those are the two broad categories. Yeah. It's very simple, and it makes a lot of sense. Marker based is basically if something is sort of pre programmed and loaded into your program or your app or your phone, and it knows once you look up at that thing, like the New York Public Library, let's say you have an app about New York history. I keep picking up New York here because it's easy. But we were just there, too. Yeah, that's right. So it would have something pre loaded about the New York Public Library that will pop up in front of your face. Right. It recognizes the library, goes, I know that thing. Yeah, exactly. And it spits out the information. It's a marker. Yeah. Or it could be a QR code. Marker. Soup can. Don't forget soup can. Chuck got to know those soup recipes. Right? It's add water. I don't even add water. I think you're a chump if you add water to condense soup because it's condensed to perfection, if you ask me. How do you just do the straight up? Yeah, I'd like it to not run off the spoon when you hold the spoon upside down. Well, all right. It depends on the soup, actually. I'm kidding. But I have eaten soup that I have not added water to. I will use a little less water, like in, let's say, Campbell's chicken noodle. Sometimes it can get a little watery, so I'll use like three quarters of a can, maybe. Hey, I've got one for you. Have you ever had Progresso's? I don't remember it's like, supposedly they're like healthier version or whatever, but they have a creamy chicken noodle. It's good. It's amazing. Yummy, got it. And I just happened to be like, what's in the pantry? I'll open this and I ate it. And I like it so much that I would have felt bad not mentioning it since we're talking about soup. Yeah, I'm a fan of canned soup, having that around. Yeah, it is that time of year, too. It is. It's canned soup time of year, everyone. No one ever eats canned gazpacho in the summer. Canned soup is like a fall winter kind of thing. This episode brought to you by Progresso. It's that time of year, everyone. I wish it were that easy. Where we marker list is a little bit different and a little bit trickier. It basically means there are no markers. So your device has actually recognized things and be smart enough to say that's a soup can, and it's not pre programmed in, but I know what a soup can looks like. So here's what you do. Add water, right? Exactly. So that Pokemon Go apparently did that. For example, when you are walking by a river, it would say, oh, I recognize a river, or I recognize this bit of land, or something like that. And it doesn't have actual markers that are preprogrammed. It's just smart enough to know a river when it sees a river. And it will show you like a water loving Pokemon, like Gyrodos or something like that. Oh, boy. All right, let's take a break. I'm going to forget that ever happened. We'll talk about the history right after this. Stuff you should know. Josh and Shark stuff you should know. So this is brand new, right? Yes, it's all brand new. No one has ever done anything with augmented reality until Pokemon Go in 2016. I thought it was interesting, though, that a very common thing that people might not think about football fans is that first downline and now they have all kinds of stuff like yards to go to make a kick maybe, and stuff like that. But they're overlays. And we talked about that on some other show, some other episode. I can't remember. I couldn't remember which one it was. Either. But we've definitely talked about it. Yeah, but those screen overlays from 1998 is when they debuted Sports Vision, the glowing line that is augmented reality. It is the kind I can get down with. Right. Because you can only see it from one point of view. Right. So it really works on TV because you can only see from one point of view, which is the camera's point of view when you're watching TV. Works really well and you can overlay all sorts of cool stuff. But what differentiates that from the augmented reality that's coming around today is that in the stands or whatever, maybe they could project it so you could see it from one angle in the future. Meaning like six months from now, everybody will be sitting around in a football stadium and they will be able to see the first downline from whatever their vantage point or point of view is. By looking through their phone or their headset. Yeah, their headset. Eventually, I'll bet if there's not an app out that you can do that with your phone yet. It's coming very soon, I'm sure. I'm surprised they haven't overlaid ads on the field and stuff. I'm surprised by that, too, which will probably push things forward as well. Advertising. Sure. So that was 1998 that the first downline came out. But it goes back way further than that. As a matter of fact, 30 years before that, there's a guy named Ivan Sutherland who is a computer scientist and he came up with a headset that you wore that looks a lot like a scary, clunky, old turn of the century version of a VR headset. Yeah, but it drops you into these wireframe rooms. Wireframe, like, line drawn? Computer generated line drawn, like Tronish kind of rooms? I was going to say battle zone, but sure. I don't know what that is. No, it was another arcade game where you put your face into sort of a headset. Yeah. Was it like a battleship? Yeah, they were like tanks and things. But it was green wireframe. It was sort of 3D looking. And you controlled your tank with two controllers, like shifting controllers. I got you. I'm thinking of the one where it was like you're looking through a periscope and you had to like, torpedo ships. So the joystick were two handles coming off of the periscope face plate that you were putting your face up to. Do you remember that one? I do. What was that one? I don't remember. It was probably just called periscope or something stupid like that. Submarine bomb, maybe. I don't think you said what year it was for Ivan Sutherland, though. That was the summer of love, my friends. I thought 69 was the summer of love. I mean, a joke. No, I really wasn't. But now I'm blushing. I didn't mean that at all. This is what I'm saying. Like, these things just kind of happened to me. I'm a victim I think 68 was a summer of love. I might be wrong. Let's just say both were. 69 was post coital or pre. Wow. So there was another researcher in 1974 named Myron Krueger at Yukon. Sounds like a Halloween villain, and he sounds like a 70s computer researcher if I've ever heard Byron Krueger. Yeah, that's true. The Krueger. He invented something called Video Place, which, if you look up, is kind of fun to look at, too. It was interactive. And just think of the most rudimentary VR you could think of, which is like, someone going up to Apple Computer if there was such a thing, and being able to touch the screen to make something happen. Very rudimentary, very rudimentary. But for the 70s in particular, this was really ahead of its time. And Ivan Sutherland and Myron Cougar, they were both working in computer science labs, just generating proof of concept, the fact that this was even possible, and here's a possible path forward to this. And then that's kind of how things like augmented reality get pushed forward, right? People who figure out how to do it in the clunkiest, most primitive way possible. And then over time, other researchers and other students come along and they figure out how to shrink it down. And then the next thing you know, you have a smartphone that's capable of doing this kind of thing, and that's really where we are. Just take an enormous leap forward was when the first smartphone started to come out, because if it weren't for smartphones, we would still be pressing, like, bedsheets at Video Place, you know what I mean? But the fact that smartphones were able to carry the hardware needed, like things like onboard cameras and gyroscopes and GPS coordinates and connections to the Internet, the fact that all this was suddenly in the palm of people's hands. People said, well, we should start doing things with this. Yeah. And I'm not knocking those early pioneers. I think that's the coolest part about anything like this is the people that were brave enough to say, like, hey, put this microwave on your head, right? And this is the future. If you want to talk about an adorable presentation, you could go back to February 2009 and look at the Ted Talk on $0.06. It's really great because things were smaller, but they still didn't know how to bring it all together in one small thing. They had to cobble a bunch of stuff together, right? So they had, like, a camera that you wore around your neck, like chest height. You had a smartphone, you had a mirror. You had initially a projector strapped to a helmet that you were on your head dork, and it was all strung together, and you wore these little colored caps on your fingers to be able to interact with the thing that the projector on your head was emitting. They do. They work for that. They also work really well to keep your fingers clean when you're eating buffalo wings. I used to work with a commercial director named Tom Schiller, who was one of my idols because he was an early writer for Saturday Night Live and did all those old black and white SNL things with Belushi. Sure, yeah. And Schiller was great, and he kind of took me under his wing, and I want to get in touch with the guy again, but he wore just as a gag, he would walk around on set and eat Cheetos with a surgical glove. Oh, nice. And he told me one day, I was like, man, that's so funny. And he went, I don't even like Cheetos. He's like, I just do it for the gag. It's pretty great. Yeah. So they make surgical gloves that are just fingertip protectors and Yummy got me some of those. And one time we went out to eat with a friend, and I was eating buffalo wings like that. Did you really? Yeah, and it didn't say anything, didn't make a big deal out of it. He just looked over and just lost it. It was pretty great. It went about as good as you can hope. I think I've seen those what are those four? I don't know, man. I don't know. But I can tell you they really do work for eating buffalo wings for some reason. I remember my grandmother had those when I was a kid, and I think it may have been like to protect a cut or something if you're washing dishes, or maybe that's what she used them for. Sure. I think it's one of those things where it's like, we're just going to manufacture these and put them out there in the world and whatever you want. Of course, this is the mid 70s. This is pre buffalo wing. Okay. I was about to get crazy. I just wanted to rile up all the people in Buffalo, New York. So, yes, you're wearing these caps on your fingers that is used to act as your go between and manipulate the images that projector on your head is showing everywhere, which is kind of cool because it's on your head. Right. So anything can be turned into a surface. Sure. Ideally, you're looking at a white wall. Right. Or your wrist was one that they use. So you could put like a numeric keypad projected onto your wrist, which is neat, but it doesn't mean anything unless if you press the numbers, it does something. And that's where those finger caps came in. Like it allowed the camera to track what your fingers were doing. And that was a really big proof of concept that put out there, which is tracking how we move, because there's a difference between just adding a layer of recipes on your soup can and being able to swipe through recipes just by making a gesture in the air with your finger. And that was something that $0.06 showed could. Be done. And that is starting to show up on phones as well, where now you squeeze your phone, like the screen of your phone. It's using all sorts of sensors and pressure gauges and vibration measurements to figure out what you're doing with your fingers. Now they're starting to track it using things like the infrared time of flight camera so that you don't actually touch your screen. You just kind of make these gestures above it. And when that becomes further and further developed, that will very clearly be used for AR in the future. Yeah, and it's kind of funny and clunky as something from 2009 appears now, just ten years ago. Just scrub through to the end of that Ted Talk and see the audience go wild. That's the cool thing about this early tech or the people at these Ted Talks, man, they can see it. They can see the future because they know they can see beyond the fact that you've got six different things hanging around your neck and strapped to your head. Sure, it's the proof of concept, because, like you said, they can always package it in the future and a nice little tidy thing that you can sell. Well, everybody knows that Ted Talks were populated by only the best people. Only the best. So there's a lot of this going on now all around you, beyond the NFL, on the football field, NCAA, they use that stuff too, right? Yeah, I think everybody uses that glowing line for first downs. And remember, they had it following the hockey puck for a little while. They didn't last. It didn't. And I specifically remember we talked about that, too, wherever we talked about this before. But Docky fans were like, right, I don't like it. Yeah, I don't want my puck to glow. But it kind of has popped up here. There in all sorts of random places. There was an Esquire cover once where when you waved your smartphone over it using the app, robert Downey Jr. Would start talking to you. There's Starbucks Valentine's you can send where you looked at a cup and it would say, hey, be my Valentine, or something stupid like that. There was a theater production in the 90s called Dancing in Cyberspace. Amazing. People are like, oh, you can do stuff like this, so let me figure out a neat way to use it. But it hadn't really started to accumulate until the last probably five or seven or ten years when people really started throwing money at AR development and app creation. Yeah, I use some of this stuff here and there. I'm not like a total poopoor. I'm just saying I'm never going to walk around the world with a headset on. I don't think that that's correct. Oh, man, I will not do it just to spite you. Now, it's correct, but it wouldn't have been had I not said had. I just been like, sure, of course they'll be doing stories on the last man on Earth to not do this. Right. I wish I could go back and edit out your mind here or there, because this is one time I would do it. But I like stuff like the sky maps, these apps where you can go out at night time or in the daytime, but it's more fun at night. Sure. And look at the stars and hold up your phone and see what planets and constellations are out there and tap on one to get information. Yeah, stuff like that's. Really neat. My uncle, or rather, I guess Emily's Uncle Tim came to visit not too long ago, and he I looked over, was with my kid, showing her the room around him, and I was like, all right, what's that all about? And I went over and looked, and I don't know what the program was, but it was just the walls were dripping with blood and glow that wasn't there, but it very well could have been because they were like shark you're like an aquarium. There were sharks and fish and all these things, and she just of course, it blew her mind. Sure. But this is the world that she's growing up, and this is going to be totally normal. That application, when she's in her 20s will seem as primitive and clunky as a walkman does today. Oh, for sure. I mean, it looks clunky now. Yeah, I would say so. How about people walking around with the phonograph? We're going to say that one instead. I'm going to just double down even more. Triple down, I guess you could say. There are also other applications. Like there's one for the Gatwick airport. It's a passenger app where you can hold it up and find out information about wait times and where the restrooms are, where the restaurant you want to go to is. Yeah, there's also one that's helpful, actually. There's a handful of them where you remember where you park your car, and then when you're walking through a parking lot, there's like a big giant arrow or something over your car that you just walk towards. I would use that. Sure. Go ahead, buddy. Because it's out there right now. I use the primitive version now, which is I just take a picture of the row number. Knowing you, you probably, like, just carve a picture into a piece of tree bark, and then maybe you'll use your phone to know what direction your car is so you can walk into no, man, I'll drop a pen. I'm not a total luddite. Okay. The military, obviously, with anything tech, is where a lot of the application goes. They have something called synthetic training environments where you can fully well, there are a couple of ways to use it. You can fully practice stuff like you could practice a raid on a terrorist compound over and over again with as much information as you have about the compound. In the building. You can build that out virtually, or you can potentially at some point, have soldiers on the field that wear this stuff and look up and have overlays of stuff beamed down from satellites about blueprints or just information instead of hearing it to your walkie talkie or whatever. Yes. You know how when you zoom in and you accidentally move your thumbs in a certain way, all of a sudden the street map I think Google Maps becomes three dimensional and, like, you're kind of looking at it in a little bit of a three. Well, you wouldn't know. Everyone else listening to this episode knows what I'm talking about, but that's what they're saying. Like, you could be on a battlefield, and all of a sudden there's like a three dimensional visualization of what's ahead that you can know where to go. That's right. And it will show you where your car is parked, which is great. Or potentially, my friend was working on an app in Los Angeles for music festivals, so you can find your friends, stuff like that. Well, that's one that kind of pops up for something called Wikitude, and it's a pretty good example of an entire kind of type of augmented reality app where you just are looking at the world around you and it shows you all sorts of different information. So, like, a building you're passing might have a restaurant in it, and it will show you, like, the daily specials for that restaurant. And then over here, there's somebody walking down the street, and it has their Twitter handle over their head. And then there's the hotel rates for a hotel down the street, and all this stuff is right there on your phone, which is pretty amazing. But I guess hopefully you have to opt in for your Twitter handle to be shown in an app like this. But that's a really good example of an entire variety of apps, which is basically like the overlay of information, additional information about the world around us as we're moving through it. Yeah. And I could see a world where and this is what I told our mutual friend, because he was just like, what applications could you see? What could be cool? I guess I could see, like, if you go to the Museum of Natural History, you could load up anyone from Jerry Seinfeld to us to us to be your docent for the day. We could dress like Teddy Roosevelt. Good. Yeah. Or you could just point your camera at someone and it dresses them as Teddy Roosevelt. Because that's the thing. If that's not a thing, it's about to be next week, I'm sure. So I could see applications like that, historically, walking around a neighborhood getting information instead of going through the trouble to read the plaque by the statue. Yeah, for sure. There's one for pompeii that somebody built where you hover over the ruins and you look at your screen and it shows you what the building looked like before Pompeii was destroyed. Yeah. That's kind of cool. Yeah. So there's a lot of really great applications already for learning about our world. My prediction is that is what our world is going to look like when you're walking down the street or walking around a historical site, or walking anywhere, you're going to be inundated with information like that. And I think you will be able to curate it yourself where you select, say, if you're an Instagram user and you don't really use Twitter, well, it wouldn't show you people's Twitter handles. It would show you their Instagram handles. Or if it knew you were looking for a hotel, hotels.com would show you rates, but it wouldn't otherwise, if it was in the city that you live in or something like that, it will be ultra tailored to the individual. Yeah. They would never just feed you content that you didn't want to see automatically. Right, exactly. No one does that. No. Healthcare is obviously a big field for AR because you can do practice surgeries that aren't just generic. You can do it very specific to the person. The situation is like, somebody could come in and have a wound and they could point a camera or your phone a phone, I guess. I would imagine the hospital would have something a little more advanced, but maybe not. I don't think you need it. I think you just need a smartphone. I just think they would gussy it up at least. So you didn't feel like didn't you set that down on a food tray on an airplane? I mean, like, is that thing clean? But it would look at the wound and it would send a message that says you're screwed. Yes. Or you're great. Yeah. One of the diagnosis is you. Yeah, but reading about this, I was like, yeah, I guess I'll go look up images of wounds for a little while. And I did. Did you really? Sometimes I can't help myself whenever I see the word wound. If I'm researching, I'll just be like, let's go see what some wound pictures look like. No, I'll do that. And Emily, I was just like, Why do you do that? Yeah, it's like picking at a scab or something. It's tough not to. Well, and I also argued this just happened the other day. I was like, you know, it's that same curiosity. That is why Josh and I do what we do for a living. Yeah. The same one that also kills cats and right. What are some other great applications if you have sensory impairments? That is huge. Yeah. I want to give a shout out real quick here because I got this from this article called 39 Ways Augmented Reality Can Change the World in the Next Five Years. And it's by Yitsy Weiner on Thrive global on medium. It's a lot of words I just spit out, but they all make sense eventually if you type them into Google. And Yitzi Weiner, I guess, asked like, 39 different people what they thought about the future of AR and stuff that's, like, just around the corner, and this was one of them. Yeah, if you think about if you have partial vision and it can actually help you to see, it can make things pop more. It makes edges more visible. It's not going to restore vision, obviously, but it can actually help out partially sighted people. Yeah. Or if you have a hearing impairment, you can say walk around, and it'll say, oh, there's a train coming, because it hears the sound of a train flash on your screen. Maybe a picture of a train or just the word train or something like that. There's a lot of applications for that that will basically cure is not the right word, but that will make living in the world so much easier for people with disabilities. That's a really exciting thing. Too and shopping is also exciting. Well, that's probably as much as the military's funding will push this technology forward, retail will be at least as big a contributor as well. And it already is. Like, some of the coolest VR apps around are ones that help us consume better. Yeah. I mean, I definitely see this happening all around us. And in the near future, even more and more, you walk into a store, you're shopping for a couch, let's say, and you can see what that couch might look like in your home, or if it fits through your door or in your space, or what those glasses look like instead of trying them on. Right. They don't have them in the store. You can virtually try them on. Yeah. And you don't even have to leave your home either. Too another way to do it is like, you can just hold your phone up, and you can look at the space where you want a couch to go and select that couch, and it'll show up, and you'll be able to see what it looks like in that space. Yes. And I'm sure it will be complete with suggested purchases and add ons. Right. You'll just be able to click it and purchase it, and it'll show up at your house. And you might also want this autumn and this throw rug. Right? Yeah, you're right about you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, for sure. But the idea that all of this, our world, our augmented world in the not too distant future is going to be very personalized, that kind of comes through. Too one of those people that Yitzie Weiner spoke to, which, by the way, Yitzi Weiner has one of the better names of all time, if you fancy to me, Yitzi Weiner spoke to somebody who said, this is going to be really personalized. So this AR world that you're experiencing, if you go to a restaurant that a friend recommended, they might have left like a recommendation for a dish for you to eat, just scrawled on the wall. No one else would be able to see it because your friend left it for you. But this is like the kind of personalization that will have or if you walk into a store, rather than like tailored ads coming up in your web searches, tailored ads will come up in your field of view where it's like, hey, we heard that you were talking about this Depeche Mode album. Well, it just happens to be right there. Even though nobody buys albums anymore, go buy it, because this is a terrible example. But you get what I'm saying. That's what the ad will say. You get what I'm saying? All right, let's take our last break here and we will talk a little bit about some of the potential pitfalls and hurdles facing AR. Stuff you should know. Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know. Okay, Chuck. So Asus, which makes all sorts of tech hardware and stuff, they released a phone recently called the ZenFone AR. Yes. And it is basically made for augmented reality. It does all the other stuff that a phone does, but it has an extra a bit of hardware and software that makes it like an ace augmented reality. And one of the things that has on board is Google's Tango software. And Tango is basically like an AR suite. It has things like amazing motion detection area learning. Do you remember how we talked about markerless AR, where it's like, oh, that's a river, that's a walkway. It's really good at that. At determining markerless objects to figure out what needs to be projected where. And it's a really amazing phone as far as AR goes, the fact that it's out there really kind of shows. Like, people are really pouring money into this idea, this AR idea, and eventually that is why I think it's going to hit. Yeah. And the Zinphone looks it's not so clunky. It's like a regular smartphone and just at the top in the center, it has a little bit of a hardware situation. Right. But it seems like it could probably still just fit into your pocket nicely. Right. It's not super bulky. Nothing on your forehead. Nothing on your forehead yet. But that's the thing, though. You still need a phone. And most people not most people, but over 3 billion people, close to inching towards 50% of the global population has a smartphone at this point, right. So that's not an issue. Not the biggest issue, but there are some challenges and they are basically boiled down to hardware and bandwidth. Bandwidth is a really big deal right now. Until 5G is like fully integrated. It's just really tough to meet the bandwidth needs of AR right now on a day to day basis. Yeah. And like the kind of AR that we're talking about where it's called always on augmented reality, where you're just walking through the world and there's just that digital layer is everywhere. It's really mixed too so that it's really interacting with reality in a very believable way that is extraordinarily banned with hungry whereas walking down the street and streaming a YouTube video and HD requires something like five or six megabytes per second of bandwidth and something like 30 to 50 milliseconds of latency. Which is lag time between when your phone sends a command to a server and then receives the info back. That's about what it takes to watch an HD movie to stream an HD movie. But with augmented reality apps that's nothing like you wouldn't get anywhere with that no you'd need about 100 /second bandwidth and a latency of one millisecond and they think 5G could solve this problem. But we'll see. I think that it definitely will. They're talking about like an average download speed of a gigabyte a second in peaks of like ten gigs a second, which is way more than enough for an AR app. So I think 5G really will help move AR along but you said it earlier, we still have that problem with hardware with a phone. Like the phone holding your phone up in front of you is no way to move through the world. But that's basically what you have to do if you want to take part with augmented reality. Well, Google said, we have an idea, how about Google Glass? And everybody said that's a terrible idea to get that thing out of here. Yeah, this was six years ago. I remember Jonathan Strickland, I think he was sent some in his defense, I don't think he purchased them. No, but he really wore them a lot if I remember correctly. Yeah, that did not work out and one of the big problems was they didn't have it fully worked out before they said, hey, do you want to go ahead and try this thing out? They should have probably worked on a little longer, but the prototype was released as the product and they thought that this would just get such a claim that it's going to be the next big thing and then we'll work out the kinks as the money comes flooding in. Right. And that didn't happen because people didn't like the idea of people walking around with a camera honed on everything or themselves. No, that's a big one and it still is today. I mean, privacy is an enormous problem with augmented reality because to be a part of it like your wearable or your phone or whatever has to be taking in the world around it and that very frequently includes people and it's like you said, maybe there will very soon be an augmented reality app where if you look at somebody, they're suddenly dressed like Teddy Roosevelt. That's probably pretty innocuous. But also maybe it takes their clothes off and it shows them naked right there standing in front of you and all of a sudden you're learing at them and they know what you're looking at. And that is an enormous invasion of privacy. Plus, also with as much stuff as we share on social media, all that stuff can be cobbled together to create pretty amazing profile of you. And if all of that comes up when you look at somebody, when somebody comes into your field of vision while you're wearing an augmented reality wearable or something, that's an enormous invasion of privacy, too. Especially if the person hasn't opted in for that to be shared. That's right. And here's the real scary thing. They're talking about AR contact lenses that you wear on your eyeballs, where this is just the world you see at all times. They're not clunky glasses, they're not headsets. You wouldn't even know that someone has these in necessarily. And the problem now is they can't provide a power source, which means that they have not figured out a way to make them run on human tiers. Right. Human tiers are blinking. Surely there's a way to make them work from blinking, you know what I mean? Well, yeah, I could see that. You just got to blink a lot. Yes. So there was something that we ran across that I think if you ask me, this is why a lot of people are going to start using things like augmented reality wearables or implants or something like that. There's going to be what's called or there could be. I should say I don't mean to say gunna. Because it's definitely not a foregone conclusion. But there could be like a career arms races how I've seen it put where somebody who has this implant or who has gone out and bought these contact lenses or whatever is going to be a much more productive employee than somebody who still goes to the trouble of typing out an Internet search or something for information. And they're doing it the old school way, right. They're going to get left behind. And when you're talking about things like livelihood, people are going to say, well, I need to go get those contact lenses or I need to undergo that surgery to get that implant so that I can keep up in today's job market. That is what's going to get everybody into the world of AR. Yeah. And they're also clearly just day to day physical pitfalls, like walking into traffic or driving off a cliff because you're wearing those wearable while you're in a car or something like that. I would think that some of those are going to start coming with like you won't be able to operate it if it's moving over a certain miles per hour or something. I don't know how they're going to I don't know, man. I do not know. I do know that one of the issues that was raised about that though, is the ability to hack into stuff like that. And I mean, if we're just completely reliant and trusting of our apps or AR apps to kind of take us from place to place, we might stop thinking for ourselves and just kind of follow them blindly. You don't use waze, but ways is very well known. As good as it is for leading you on some real, like, dingbat side trips sure to save you, like, a half of a second. And I follow them. Like, very rarely am I like, okay, wait, where are you taking me? And you'll scroll ahead or whatever, look at the turns and text. Instead, you just follow it, and you have to look over sheepishly at the people who just watched you get off on a spur and then get back on and really not get anywhere. That's a really great example. But imagine if that leads you off of a cliff or something like that, and that happens. People literally have walked off cliffs playing Pokemon Go because they weren't paying attention to the real world around them. Yeah, and this isn't exactly AR, but again, Emily's uncle came to see us, and he's a drone guy, and he had a set up where you could fly the drone up, and then he put a headset on me, and then I could see through the drones camera. So the drone is 200ft in the air, and then I can look around and operate the camera. Cool. As if I was up there and I could not get that headset off of my head quickly enough. Yeah, well, that's another thing, too. I think that's another reason why that 5G is going to have to take places. Like, this thing needs to be as smooth as possible. People are just going to walk around throwing up everywhere. It did make me sick. It's just not my thing, man. I was like, I want to be in the real world. I don't want to wear a headset and look at something projected. I think that will definitely be a thing, Chuck. Or there'll be a whole movement of back to reality types rather than back to nature. It will be back to reality where people are like, no, we just want to experience reality as it is. None of those people would be like, how can you ever say what reality really is? What is subjective consciousness? You loon. And then they'll say, you're right. We might as well just get digitized. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, let's revisit this one in five years. Okay. Let's do Halloween 2024. If you want to know more about augmented reality, go online and start finding apps and see what you think. You'll love it. There's also a pretty good article on how stuff works you can check out, too. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. This is called a disagreement about trunk or treating. Okay. We had a very minor spat, which I thought oh, yeah, fun. Yeah, I thought so, too. Hey, guys been listening since 2016 and consider myself a devotee. I've marveled for some time about how good natured you are toward each other, even when you disagree slightly on some of the controversial topics I think it's an important skill to have, especially in the midst of divisive ages. After over three years of listening to your dulcet tones, however, your masks finally began to slip. The most unlikely of episodes trunk or Treating. I thought that the disagreement over the presence of Apple Bobbing at Trunk or Treating was going to boil over, but being the consummate professionals you are, you swiftly moved on. I did find the momentary annoyance in your voice is hilarious, though. And it just goes to show you that you take every episode very seriously, despite the seemingly laid back manner in which you deliver your pearls of wisdom. Long been waiting for a conflict between the two of you because I found your on mike relationship very funny and the fact that the first sign of an argument came when discussing a child's Halloween event. This is the most stuff you should know thing that has ever happened out loud. That's awesome. So that is from Alex in London. Thanks, Alex. You should go back and listen to the Barbie episode. We had a little spat on that one too, if I remember correct. And I will say this is not a water and grass level vindication, but we got at least one email from a guy that said our Trunk or Treating has fall festival stuff too. Yes, that's fine. He said because the kids, it would take them 15 minutes to visit the cars, and that's not long enough, right? So in this case, Trunk or Treating is a feature of the larger fall festival. But Apple Bobbing has nothing to do with trunk or treating. Let's just send this. Okay, let's do it. All right, well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Alex from London did, you can go on to Stuffytoe.com and check out our social links. 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. 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." | |
How Dementia Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-dementia-works | The number of people suffering from dementia is expected to explode in the coming decades and, in a pleasant surprise, countries around the world are taking steps to plan for the increase in friendly, caring ways. | The number of people suffering from dementia is expected to explode in the coming decades and, in a pleasant surprise, countries around the world are taking steps to plan for the increase in friendly, caring ways. | Thu, 19 Nov 2015 20:54:35 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=20, tm_min=54, tm_sec=35, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=323, tm_isdst=0) | 45631181 | 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 from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Noel. The stint of Noel continues. Everybody's like stuff you should know. No, that's not what we're calling it. It's the stint of knowle. Stuff You Should Know. All that's too clever. Yes. It's a little cutesy. Yeah, it's my only aversion to it. All right. Are you with stuff you should know. Changing the name of our show after eight years? No, just the name of it. Remember the Summer of Sam? Oh, yeah, sure. Why not? I don't like it. All right. Should we come up with the third idea? Yeah. The stint of Knowle sounds too much like something's wrong with Noel. That's why I like it. It's hilarious. There's nothing wrong with Noel, by God. And if you think there is, you need the answer to me. There's something you should know. See, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, it sounds like something Strickland would it come up with and we haven't been in a flame war with Strickland in a while. It has been a while. It's been too long. It's gotten soft. You just launched one across the bow. So, Chuck yes? Are you familiar with dementia? Yeah, sure. Are you running? Your family? Doesn't run in the family. But my grandmother, who lived to be 100, had dementia at some point, which when you live to be 100, that's I don't know about. Likely, but it's not surprising. It's probably pretty likely. From what I understand, it's not just a natural consequence of age, but it's pretty prevalent. Sure. And dementia is actually super misunderstood. It gets confused with Alzheimer's a lot, or there's a lot of different kinds of dementia. But dementia is actually it's not a disease. Right. It's a set of symptoms that's brought on by disease. Yes. I think that is widely misunderstood, but you are totally correct a set of symptoms. And it is not just your garden variety forgetfulness that comes as you age. No, because that is agerelated. That is totally age related things called age associated memory impairment. And that is that happens to everyone. Right. Just like you forget your keys more often, that kind of stuff. Sure. But when you do forget your keys more often, you snap your finger and go, I forgot my keys again. What is wrong with me? Yeah, that's normal. One of the big challenges of true dementia is when you don't realize that you're forgetting. Right. So that's when it gets scary. Right. And we said that it's not a natural consequence of age. And one of the things that I turned up in researching this is we're not exactly sure what causes dementia. We don't even know if some of the telltale signs of dementia are the cause of dementia in some cases or the result of dementia. Not entirely certain, but it is very widespread among the aged population. In the United States, I think 5.3 million Americans have dementia right now. Wow. And as our population ages, because the baby boomers are starting to get older, I think they're expecting something like 16 million Americans are going to have it by 2050. 16 million is, I think, about how many people have it around the world right now. And in America alone, we're going to have that number in 2050. And it's very expensive, actually. How much money? A lot. You ready for this? Yeah. In 2015, we have spent $226,000,000,000 on healthcare for dementia alone, and they're expecting by, I believe, 2050, when we are carrying for 16 million in $2,015 not futuristic, much more inflated $2,050. Right. In $2,015, we'll be spending about $1.2 trillion on dementia if somebody doesn't do something. Man yeah. It's very expensive. It's also extraordinarily sad as far as diseases or symptoms of diseases. Yeah. And I also want to recommend our May 2011 episode, a podcast to remember. Our memory episode ties heavily into this. So if you haven't listened to that one yet, go listen to that one either before or after. Or if you listen to it and forgot, go back and listen to it. That's right. So dementia itself is not diagnosed. It's not simply memory loss. It's memory loss along with one of the following, at least one of the following one or more aphasia, which is if you can't understand or produce language any longer. Apraxia. And all these are super sad if you've ever seen them up close. Apraxia, if you cannot make certain movements even though your body physically is healthy right. Agnosia, which is you don't recognize objects like the remote control or your grandkids, stuff like that. And then executive dysfunction when you have a lot of troubles planning and organizing and reasoning. So that along with the memory loss, or at least one of these, you could be diagnosed with dementia. Right. And so, like we said, dementia is a set of symptoms, right? Yes. It's actually brought on by disease. And the most common cause of dementia, I think something like 60 or 70% or something like that of dementia cases is brought on by Alzheimer's disease. I could have sworn we did one in Alzheimer's, but we have not. I don't think we have I don't know. We talked about it enough, I think. Yeah, it's popped up plenty of times, but we've never just done a straight up Alzheimer's. One, alzheimer's brings on dementia through something called neurofibrillary tangles, also known as beta I'm sorry, tau protein tangles and beta amyloid plaques, right? Yeah. And the plaques are just a protein build up, a sticky protein build up. Yeah. When your neurons fire and you have a thought, it's an electrochemical process, and there's residual that is left behind, and these residuals can build up in your synapses and cause your synapses to not fire as well. And when your synapses don't fire as well, they start to die off, and the neurons that lead from these synapses or lead to these synapses die themselves. And you have neural loss. Like, literally, the brain cells in your brain are dying off at a rapid rate. Yeah. And when it's caused by beta proteins or beta amyloid plaques and tau proteins in the cells than what you have as Alzheimer's yes. And they aren't sure the cause of Alzheimer's. Still, genetics, they think, has a lot to do with it. And you can live with Alzheimer's for a while, up to a decade, although they said in this article, molly says three to five years is more common. It definitely shortens your lifespan. And like you said, genes are definitely part of the risk factors. Protein E. Okay. I think which is weird, if you have a mutation on this gene, you have a higher risk of Alzheimer's, even though the gene just codes for a protein that carries cholesterol through your bloodstream. Yeah. It doesn't have anything to do with the tau protein tangles or anything like that, as far as I know. That's weird. Also, if you have a family history of dementia, of Alzheimer's, you have a higher likelihood, and then if you have down syndrome, you are at a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's in middle age. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. And we will do one in Alzheimer's. But that's how Alzheimer's can cause dementia. There's also vascular dementia. That was a case with my grandfather who had a stroke, and it accounts for about 20% of dementia cases. And stroke is when you have a loss of blood supply to the brain or hemorrhage and blood clot, and it can be either one big stroke event, which causes a lot of damage, and that's a single infarct dementia, or it can be a lot of the accumulation of symptoms because of a lot of little mini strokes you have over the years. Right. And then the damage just builds up and you finally once that last one, that is the straw that breaks the camel's back. And you have dementia. That happens pretty rapidly after that last one, that last stroke you have. Yeah. That's a multi n park when it's a bunch of them and little mini strokes are common. Sometimes you have them and don't even realize you've had them. Right. With my grandfather, he had the big one. Oh, really? Yeah, we talked about this before and I think something about speech, but yeah, he lost his ability to speak English, so that would be a fascia. Yes. He couldn't produce language. Well, yes, he could not produce language. He said things, but it didn't make any sense. Got you. But he had an understanding. You could see the frustration. I know how I'm supposed to my grandmother is driving us, let's say, and she doesn't know how to get there. He does, and he can't tell her, but he's telling her. It's just coming out all mixed up. And that's a hallmark of dementia. There's emotional changes in the person because they're not communicating like they want to. Say people aren't responding like they want the people to, and they'll get snippy and then ultimately say withdraw. They'll just give up on communicating at all because it's too frustrating or just too sad. It's one of the common results of dementia. It's a comorbidity no, it's a complication. Yeah. And with the single stroke event, actually, or with the multi strokes, it's different for everyone. There isn't any single, like, well, this is going to happen because this person had a stroke. It could be a variety of different things from paralysis on one side of the face or body, bowel and bladder control problems. He didn't have any of those. He looked totally the same physically. He walked and talked the same, except for the fact that they weren't real words. Right. That was like the most noticeable thing. I remember you telling me about your grandfather before. I don't remember what it was. It was a long time ago. We were talking about speech, like we're Nicki's area or broker's area. Yeah, something like that. So with Alzheimer's, at first attacks the hippocampus, which means that it's going to take away your episodic memory, which is your memory of recent events. Right. Yeah. And then it starts to move its way into other areas of the brain where your judgment is affected, your speech patterns are going to be affected, your personality is very much affected, and changes with Alzheimer's? With Alzheimer's? Not as much. With the stroke. Yeah. With vascular dementia, there might be some other things where, like, part of the face is sagging or the patient can't move their arm or something like that, but yeah, the personality will remain intact because those regions of the brain aren't affected. Like they are in Alzheimer's. Yes. And then in about five to 15% of dementia cases, it stems from something called Louie Body Dementia, which we were just talking about. I think Robin Williams might have suffered from. He definitely did. He definitely did. Yeah. They found in his autopsy, I think he was diagnosed with it before he died. That was one of the reasons why he took his life. Yeah. Because that can cause severe, intense hallucinations. Yeah, big time. Did you look those up? Oh, yeah, man. They're scary stuff. Apparently a typical one is very brightly colored animal or person that you see in great detail for many minutes on a daily basis. Like just intense hallucinations. I'm sure you think you're losing it. Right. And that's one of the first symptoms of Louis Body dementia. And it was discovered by Frederick Louis in 1912, and it has nothing to do with your body. A Louie body is there are deposits, again, protein deposits of the alpha synuclein that appear on the brain. So don't think of body in the terms of your physical body. Right. And this is also President Louis bodies and Parkinson's. So as a result, not only are you going to have symptoms similar to Alzheimer's with Louisville dementia, but also some of the trimmers and balance issues of Parkinson's. Right. Which is super sad as well. Is that what Michael J Fox has? Parkinson's? Yeah. And that's what the movie Awakenings was about, was that it like a group of Parkinson's patients that L Dobo worked on. Is that Parkinson's? I can't remember. I think they didn't realize what they thought they were locked in or something, and then they realized their Parkinson's tremors were so acute that they were not even shaking. They were just completely interesting. Their muscles were totally contracted rather than contracting and relaxing again and again. And Robert Williams. Yeah. How about that? Then we have something that used to be well, it's called now fronto temporal dementia. It used to be called Pix disease, but now Pix disease is a specific version, which I couldn't really suss out what the difference is, could you? No, I couldn't. As long as it wasn't just me, I feel better. But FTD is really an umbrella term. It's about 5% of dementia cases, and it's going to affect personality and behavior and language, like big time. Big time. And it's where your frontal and temporal lobes are actually atrophying and shrinking. Right. And the reason why is you remember with Alzheimer's you have beta amyloid plaques and towel protein tangles. Well, with the frontal temporal dementia, you don't have the beta amyloid plaques, you just have the tau protein tangles. But it's enough to cause massive neuronal loss. Yes. And this is like I think a lot of people at first think they might have Tourette because you can yell things out. Inappropriate behaviors. Yeah, like if your grandfather suddenly becomes hyper interested in sex and likes to talk about it in public or exposes himself to people in public, there's a pretty good chance that he has developed fretemporal dementia. Or if I did, because it's unusual in that it attacks younger people, it's going to onset between 40 and 75 years old, which distinguishes it from other types of dementia. Yeah. And if your grandfather used to do that stuff already, then that's not the case. The key here is that this has come out of the blue. Somebody is really just completely changed in their personality. They might get into really risky behavior, like gambling all of a sudden. Yeah. Shoplifting and risky investments or pulling all their money out of the bank. Yes. And with PIC's disease, too, apparently, apathy is a big indicator of this. There's a big personality change, and the person is no longer they have no empathy. They have blunted emotions, and then they may also be engaging in risky behavior. So basically, your grandpa or your grandma has just turned into, like, the transporter or me or you. Well, yeah. You're 40 and 75. You lack empathy. No, I'm just saying. Oh, I see. Because it affects you turned into you. Oh, no. You have blunted emotions and you gamble. There's also Huntington's disease. This is seems like much more physical in nature, uncontrollable movements, although there are changes in personality. But real fidgety herky jerky. Your brain loses the ability to control coordination, essentially. Right. Which is, I think, 50% chance of inheriting the gene, but you can live with it for up to 20 years. Yeah. Which seems like as far as dementia goes, one of the longer life expectancies. But again, I would guess this has kind of become clear. The hallmark of dementia is memory loss paired with some other problems, like not being able to create speech any longer, recognize speech or not being able to move, that kind of thing, or not being able to plan. And like we said, well, we should probably take a break, huh? Yeah, we got a couple of more types that we'll talk about and then some other good stuff. Okay. Right after this. 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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.com SYSK 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. comSK squarespace. The last two, actually, the last three were going to talk about, because there are many other kinds of dementia, we could spend hours and hours talking about all the different kinds. Hours. But we have talked about Kurzfelt Jacob disease, I can't remember which one, and we do that all the time. Is there a disease that kills by preventing sleep? Oh, is that the one which we should have? Rightly. Called How Prion Diseases work. Yeah, because it's a prions infection, it's very rare. About one out of a million people will be affected in any given year. Like mad cow disease or cougar. It's a sponge form disease. Yeah. So crazy. It is very interesting. It could be genetic. I thought we also talked about it in an organ transplant. Did we? I think so, because it can occur because of infected tissue that you are implanted with or from an organ. Yeah. And this is neuronal loss due to, like, holes literally being eaten into your brain by this disease. And then you can also get dementia from when you have HIV. If you are a boxer or, say, a football player in the NFL, you may have dementia from a traumatic brain injury, like a concussion or repeated concussions. Yeah. And there are plenty of diseases. There's also reversible dementia, too. If you have a vitamin deficiency, if you take certain medications, you can develop dementia. But this is reversible. Right. For the most part, though, age associated dementia is not reversible right. And like we said, it's kind of tricky to diagnose this stuff because it is normal for people to become more forgetful as you age and then to make it even more confounding. If you're a diagnostician, not only do people get more forgetful, there's an intermediate stage between dementia, a dementia diagnosis, and just normal age related forgetfulness, and that is called mild Cognitive impairment. So if you can catch this, from what I understand, and we'll talk about treatments and everything later, but if you can catch things like Alzheimer's and other diseases that lead to dementia early, although there's no cure for any of them, you can manage them a lot better and delay the death or the real devastation associated with it by a significant amount of time. But catching is the tricky part. And especially if you have dementia, you don't really realize that there's any kind of problem. So you're probably not going to take yourself to the doctor. No. But what you should do is listen to your loved ones because they are going to be looking at you a little more closely, then you can pay more perspective. Yeah, exactly. That's what you're looking for. So don't get offended if a loved one says, let's go get you checked out. Because you can do something if you catch it early on. Right. Unless you're very wealthy and it's your no good nephew that you've never trusted anyway. Very true. Then maybe bring a lawyer in on it. That's right. See what's up. So if you do go get checked out, from the second you walk in the door, your doctor is going to be eyeballing you and looking for any signs just from their trained eye, from how you walk to the way you answer questions, to how they interact with you. They're going to have to know your history because they need to have some context to compare it to. Right. Like, were you always a compulsive gambler? Is this like new behavior? Yeah. And it helps to bring, if you're older, maybe bring your grown son or daughter with you or whoever has a lot of contact. Sure. Although your spouse, you never know. I don't know, maybe we're trying to get rid of you. Oh, yeah. Like no good nephew. Yeah, exactly. I'm just kidding. Of course. Although I'm sure that happens. Then there are a couple of tests that they usually do in conjunction with one another. The mini mental state examination, the MMSC. Just a lot of basic questions there for mental tasks. But they're coded the tasks are yes. And they're scored individually. Yeah. And when you say question three, this person got an aid on, you can go over and be like, dementia. It's actually pretty effective. Actually, it is. And there's another test that ties into the MMSC that they both indicate one another, which apparently they're both really good at indicating dementia. But there are other tests called the clock drawing test. Did you look this thing up? Yeah. I thought that's pretty fascinating. It really is. It seems really like why would someone tell someone to draw a clock at a certain time of the day? Yeah. Usually they say draw a clock showing that it's ten after eleven. And it makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways because it draws on all these different kinds or different regions of the brain, different skills. Right. So first of all, you have to remember what a clock is and what it signifies. That's a big one. What it looks like. Yeah. Clock isn't made of squiggly lines or anything like that. You have to remember how a clock is laid out, the order that the numbers go in that it doesn't keep going after twelve to 13 1415. And then once you got all this, you have to show the hands showing that it's ten after eleven. So the hands won't be pointing at ten and eleven. It should be the longer hands should be pointing at the two, and the shorter hand should be just past the eleven. Right? That's right. This requires a tremendous amount of brain power, even though it's very simple and straightforward. And you can tell a lot about a person's mental faculties just by having them draw this. Yeah. The four specific things it requires are verbal understanding, memory, spatially coded knowledge, and constructive skills. And if any of those are off in conjunction with the MMSC, then they're going to have a pretty good idea of where you fall on the dementia scale. If you don't have the constructive skills to pay the bills, you may have dementia. That's right. And actually, I looked at one study about the clock drawing test. Basically, I think it was just a more recent, like, hey, let's go in and really look at this thing again. Right. And it checks out. They stood behind it and said, yeah, it's actually a really good indicator. Yeah. Like it really holds up. And I think they developed it in the 60s, but it didn't take off until the then sixty S thing. It does, but it's something you can do anywhere. And now they're starting to gather these different clocks that people with different types of dementia are drawing and basically compiling them into a database so you know what to look for even more. Like, oh, somebody draws a clock that has like a 13 1415 on it. They may have this type of dimension. Right. This one looks like Salvador Dali drew it. Right. Then they might have this kind of dimension. Yeah. Or they might just be super talented, very creative. Yeah. You never know. All right, should we take another break? Why not? Is it time? Sure. All right, we'll be back after this to talk about treatment and some of the other pitfalls of dementia. 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. 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. Comsysk 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. So, Chuck, I think it almost goes without saying, like, the problems associated with dementia, like, you lose your ability to reason in a lot of cases. You lose your ability to move and take care of yourself. You lose your memories, you have trouble forming new memories, you have trouble recognizing people. So living life is extremely difficult. But there's also, like, other complications that you may or may not think of. Right. So let's say you're an elderly person and you have a battery of medications that you need to take for unrelated heart disease. Yeah. Do you think you're going to remember to take those medications? Right? Probably not. Even if you have like a timer set or some sort of calendar or something like that, you may have trouble even remembering that you have a calendar that you need to go check out to see what's on there, let alone to take the medication that's indicated that's on that calendar. Yeah, that's a big problem. Nutrition itself is a big problem. Either you forget to eat altogether or you think you've already eaten or you physically have deteriorated so that you can't control the muscles to chew and swallow and you could choke. Right. That's a real danger. So when people die from Alzheimer's, it sounds kind of strange if you think about it. It's like, well, no, they forgot they lost their memory or whatever. No, the brain is actually being slowly destroyed periodically, and eventually it's going to reach the parts of the brain where you can't swallow any longer than you die from that kind of thing. You also can lose your sense of hunger. Like you just aren't hungry anymore. It's kind of tough to eat, especially when you're not thinking or remembering that you should eat when you're just not hungry ever. Yeah, it's a tough one. Hygiene, reduced hygiene is a big one. A lot of times in severe dementia cases, you either are unable to bathe and dress yourself and brush your teeth or you forget to. It just falls by the wayside. I know that was the case with my grandmother. She needed to be bathed by my dad because she lost interest in it or because she just couldn't do it anymore? I think both. Yeah, that's another. Indicator. You said that when you go in for a diagnosis, the doctor is going to be watching you and just kind of sizing you up. One of the things to look for is whether you look disheveled. Yeah, that's a big one. And especially if your son or daughter is saying, like, this is really bizarre behavior because mom always, like, dressed to the nines. Yeah, she left the house. She just wears this dirty old bathrobe all the time and doesn't ever want to take a shower. Yeah. That's usually an indicator of dementia. Yeah. It's not like she just gave up and doesn't care anymore. Right. It's part of the symptoms taking hold. Although another problem with dementia and one of the confounding factors is that depression can be a byproduct or morbidity of dementia because you recognize that your life is changing in ways that you're not happy about. You can't communicate anymore. You forget stuff all the time. You can become depressed. So then that could lead to you giving up on taking showers and dressing as well. Yeah. And not only depressed, but agitated and aggressive, riddled with anxiety. A lot of your emotional wellbeing and emotional health will be slipping away from you. Yeah. And again, this can be a direct result of chemical changes in your brain due to dementia. Or it can be like, this is the result of you recognizing these changes and just becoming upset about them. We talked about communication and the hallucinations. You're going to have trouble sleeping as well in a lot of cases. Yeah. And then personal safety. A lot of people die every day because of accidents that happen as a result of dementia. Right. People who shouldn't be driving get into cars. Yeah. And there's a push that's going on now, I think in the last year or so, as part of the Council on Aging, like the United States Council on Aging, there's a new initiative called the Dementia Friendly America Initiative. Really neat. Yeah. It's basically saying, look, we've got about one in eight people over 65 in the US. Have dementia. We're about to have way more than that in the next couple of decades. We need to be prepared for this kind of thing. So let's start training America how to recognize the signs of dementia and then how to react to it in a friendly and helpful manner so that people who are wandering around with dementia don't withdraw $80,000 from their bank account and walk around with it in their pockets outside. Yeah. And how do you do that? You get some money from the government as a grant to go out and hire people to literally go to businesses and go to restaurants and talk to waiters and waitresses. Or should I just say, waitrons? Sure. Go to banks and talk to tellers, go to anywhere where there's interaction with another human grocery store. Checkout people and literally train them on, like you said, how to recognize it and how to kindly deal with these people. Right, exactly. Apparently one of the things you teach people in service industries is not take it personally. Right. That if somebody is behaving erratically or they're using incorrect words and they're of a certain age, the chances are they probably have dementia and there's ways of dealing with it. Apparently responding to it in a soft, friendly manner tends to get results from the dementia patient, especially if you are not being an aggressive jerk. Right, exactly. Just being nice will frequently get good results and yeah, it is a pretty neat initiative. Absolutely. And necessary. Yeah. But I'm stricken by the idea that people are planning out this far ahead for this kind of thing. It's exceptional. It is. And scary, but awesome. So if you do have a family member, one thing that's important to remember, there's something called the caregiver burden that my dad and his wife definitely experience. It is really tough on you, on your family, and it can actually take a physical toll. They have some stats here. If your risk of death as a woman, if your husband has dementia, increases 28% in the first year after they're diagnosed and only 22% for a husband whose wife is diagnosed, it's still pretty significant increase. Sure. Just from the dementia diagnosis. And what they recommend in this article is to take care of yourself first because they found that if you are not going into this with the right attitude and you are upset or have anxiety, you're just going to do more harm anyway. Right. So get yourself right, take care of yourself and go into it in the right frame of mind and you'll actually be able to help better. Yes. And this caregiver burden or caregiver burnout is a very real thing physically too. Like you have low energy, you have low productivity, you become snippy, resentful, angry, and you can end up basically mistreating your own parent or spouse because you're so upset with this horrific disease. One of the hallmarks of dementia is that there are no two days that are alike. Yeah. And when you're dealing with the dementia patient, what worked yesterday isn't going to necessarily work today. Yeah, well, if you can no longer predict what your life is going to be like from day to day and you're spending I think I saw this one study that found an average of 22 hours a week of unpaid care by spouses, wives, daughters, that kind of thing, you can very easily get stressed out. The main thing you have to do is ask for respite care. Like you can't do it by yourself. You have to have other family members of your church or community come and give you a break so you can go do other stuff for a while. Absolutely. You could totally see how you could just very easily evolve a really unhealthy dynamic if you're just trying to do it yourself. Because you lose perspective, this becomes your norm, even though it's totally abnormal. Yeah. And, boy, you talk about a really sad way to damage what previously was a good relationship with a parent or something. It's devastating. Sure. So there are drugs that they use to help stave off dementia. Mainly right now, they are colonastraise inhibitors, and they suppress coronastraise, which is an enzyme that breaks down acetyl. Acetylatene CETA choline. Yeah. Which we've talked about before. That's what helps transmit messages between neurons. Right. So that'll help. Yeah. Because if you're not communicating as much as you were before, at least the communication that is going on can stick around longer. Exactly. It seems primitive as far as, like, brain drugs go, but it makes sense. Yeah. And then there's another one. Are they still using this? Melissa memantine. And it inhibits Glutamate, which we talked about before, which causes neuron death when overstimulated. Yeah, I can't remember where we talked about that one either. I just remember Glutamate from the umami episode. Yeah, it's definitely in that one. And then there's also stuff you can so these drugs will help some. That's for non vascular dementia. Right. With vascular dementia, you're going to want to take blood thinners yes. To keep more strokes from coming along and making the whole thing worse. And then with, like, Lewy body disease to deal with things like the hallucinations and stuff, you'll probably also be given antipsychotics as well. And one thing that they're starting to realize more and more is very difficult to really figure out what kind of dimension people have just from what's the scan. MRI. Yeah, MRI scan. And you can really go back and accurately identify types of dementia from autopsies. Right, right. And so for more and more autopsies, they're finding that there's a lot of what's called mixed dementia where you have Alzheimer's and vascular dementia right. Or where you have Alzheimer's and Louis bodies disease. It can be really tough to suss out all the different kinds of dementia a person might have. But if you can do that, then you can put them on a drug regimen that could really kind of help. More than just treating the Alzheimer's and letting the Louis body go unrecognized and rampant or unchecked. There's also preventative stuff you can do, too. Oh, yeah? Like what? Crossword puzzles. Yeah, I told you. Emily's grandmother Mary is 95 and very sharp, and she does word puzzles all the live long day. Is it Saruku? Yeah, she does all kinds of word puzzles. Things that I had never even heard of. Supposedly that helps save it off. Yeah. Apparently this one's great. Alcohol, moderate alcohol consumption, which is two a day for men or one a day for women. Okay. Has a protective effect. It stays off dementia. They're not sure why. They're not sure what kind of alcohol is the best. They just know that for some reason, alcohol has a protective effect. Probably up to that. Two drinks. And then it's probably bad after that. Yes. Then it becomes very bad after that. So you want to just moderate amount right. In all things people moderation. And then there are some things that you can do. Here's the thing. There's a debate on whether or not you are tricking your loved one by doing things like giving them an appliance that doesn't work so they can pretend that they're ironing or something because they used to love to take care of their laundry themselves. So here, let me remove the cord from this iron. Is that tricking someone? Is it not? And a lot of people think, no, that's what you should do because it makes them feel like they're being useful, they're not going to get hurt iron. So it's all good. Other people say no, that means they're not hanging on to that last bit of reality they may have. Right. I think it's fine. I think it's fine, too. And there's actually an entire village set up, I think, like, just outside of Amsterdam. Yeah, this is awesome. Called Hojeway, right? Yeah, hojuve. How would you say that? I have no idea. Because Dutch is the weirdest language. I'll say that. Okay, okay. It's what's called a dementia village, basically, where everyone who lives in this village, I think 150 people, all have dementia. And they live in group houses. Well, there are caretakers that live there, too. Okay, yes, you're right. And they live in the group houses with them. And a lot of the people realize that this is their nurse or just think it's a good friend of theirs. They don't really remember when they became friends. Yeah, exactly. And the houses they live in have different themes according to how the people lived, depending on whether they're blue collar, whether their memories go back to the 70s. This whole place is basically set up so that it's a very non threatening, safe place for these people to just kind of live and move about within. Sure. Safely. Yes, safely. And so they can go to the grocery store, they can go to the movies, they can go ride a bike. And the people at the movie theater know that the people there have dementia. Right. They're real movie theater workers and real waiters in the restaurant, especially trained. Exactly. So it's a less clinical setting than, say, a nursing home. And a lot of people say, this is awesome because it's as close to real normal life that they were used to as they're going to get. Yeah, exactly. Then, of course, there's other people that poopoo and say, no, you're tricking these people, but you can say, hey, okay, here's the big difference with this place. If this dementia patient gets lost in Manhattan and they run across the city worker who's collecting garbage, that city worker may do absolutely nothing to help them in hospital village, that city worker especially trained to get that person back to their house or alert their caretaker that this person is having a crisis or something like that. It's what we're trying to train people to do in the future. Yes. They've just isolated it to a community. Yeah. When you break it down to that distinction, I don't really see anything wrong with it. Especially when you are protecting the patients themselves. It's not like you're doing it to experiment on them. No. Because they'll produce gold in their urine or something like that. This is strictly for their protection, but also allowing them to live a free life outside of a clinical setting. Right. I don't see much wrong with that. I do get what the bioethicists are saying. Like, yes, you're robbing someone of their dignity by lying to them, by deluding them, or playing into their fantasies. Strictly speaking, yes. In the real practical world, I think this is great. If I'm at that point, then play into my fantasy. Exactly. Please. It is all the time. In fact, one of the people that work there say that people that do criticize it at a very good point. He's like, they don't understand what we're doing here. These aren't actors. They're like real employees of these places. They're just helping out. Right. Hospay Village. I hope I'm saying that right because I'm really putting myself out there. Oh, I'm sure you're not. It's become this kind of ideal standard of care, but it's also really expensive, I'm sure. So in a country where there's a lot of socialized medicine, it could do pretty well. Like in the Netherlands or in Canada. Yeah. When they take care of people even though they don't have money. Right, exactly. There's one called in Canada. It's called Pintanguishini Ontario. They have one it's a little smaller than the one in Amsterdam. They're also building one in Miami as well. So it is starting to take hold. People do believe in it, and apparently the patient's families are very happy with this kind of thing, too. Well, and hopefully with the initiative of what's it called dementia. Friendly. Friendly Americadfa.org. Yeah. Hopefully with those efforts, more and more people will because it's coming. Oh, yeah, it's coming. A lot more folks are going to be out there that we need to take care of. Yeah. We don't know how to cure dementia. We just know it's coming. I'm going to be one of them. You think, sir? Sure. At some point. If I make it that long. But not everybody gets to mention, no matter how long you live. I don't know, I got a feeling. Really? Yes. It does run in my family a little bit. Yeah. And I have my father's family jeans more than my mother's. I got you. I feel like so if I had my mother's genes, they all died from heart attacks and strokes and heart disease. Young. Not a lot of cancer. Yeah, pretty young. So if you make it past 65 yeah. You beat the heart stuff than the Bryant jeans did. Yeah, well, we're all going down one way or another. I may live to be 100. Yeah, man, I thought of something. Oh, yeah? I wonder, Chuck, if you and me specifically cramming all this information in every week is actually beneficial, or if we're just setting ourselves up for massive cases of dementia because we're just pushing stuff in and getting it out and pushing in new stuff and getting it out. Are we abusing our brains or are we exercising it? I question that sometimes. I bet someone out there, I bet there's a neurologist who has a good gut instinct answer to that one. Let us know. I want to know. Good news or bad? Okay, neurologists. There's going to be a subject line that just says neurologist. Guys, you're screwed. Yeah. I have bad news. If you want to know more about dementia, you can type that word into your favorite search engine and it will bring up tons of information and great resources. You can also type it into the search bar at Housetoforce and it will bring up a great article. Since I said search bar, it's time for listing or mail. I'm going to call this one Hecky Grasnow Lives. Okay. Although I don't think he is with us. He has only just started recently. Listening to the show, it's been a fantastic way to pass time and learn something interesting. I'm a home taught high schooler, so every time I listen to an episode of your show, I get a history or science credit. How about that? That is pretty great. But as great as that is, that's not why I'm emailing. I actually have a fun fact for you guys from your Playdoh episode in which you mentioned Captain Kangaroo. Well, my great grandfather worked on that show. He produced the songs for it, as well as several Christmas carols, including Frosty the Snowman and his biggest claim to fame, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. That is awesome. I've always thought it was very funny that a Jewish guy was responsible for the popularity of Christmas carols. My family, all still Jewish, watches the Claymation Rudolph movie every year because of that. Our own little taste of that irony. Yeah. I don't want to tell you what to do. I'm sure you have a lot of episodes on your plate already. But I'm just saying, Hecky Krasnow was a pretty interesting person. There might just be enough material for an episode on him. Up to you. Nice. Thanks for helping with my school work. That is from Aiden in Maryland. Awesome. Thank you very much, Aidan. And when I say Hecky, Krasnow lives on. Sure. Like viva la Hecky. Yeah. If you want to tell us about someone interested in your family, we love that kind of stuff. Also, if you are caring for dementia patients, we want to hear the highs and the lows of that. Just kind of bring it on home for us, will you? You can tweet to us at FYs kpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com STUFFYou know, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housedefirst.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it 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 McDonald's Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-mcdonalds-works | McDonald's is arguably the most famous fast food restaurant on the planet. Join Josh and Chuck as they discuss the humble beginnings, menu items, practices and controversies of the fast food giant in this episode. | McDonald's is arguably the most famous fast food restaurant on the planet. Join Josh and Chuck as they discuss the humble beginnings, menu items, practices and controversies of the fast food giant in this episode. | Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:11:53 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=20, tm_min=11, tm_sec=53, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=91, tm_isdst=0) | 40589076 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, Chuck, let's listen to some devotees. So, Chuck, I got a good feeling you like that? I love Devo, dude. That's my favorite Devo song. Akron Boys. Yeah. They're from Ohio, late 70s, early 80s. Quintessential New Wave band. Divo. Yes. We just listened to Gut Feeling. It originally appeared on their album Q. Are we not men? A say it, Chuck. We are Devo. Yeah, but with an exclamation and not the right. Yeah. It doesn't say we are devo. No, it doesn't. And I got my copy from the soundtrack of West Anderson the Life Aquatic with Steve Zizu. Right? Yeah. Is it life aquatic or aquatic life? The Life Aquatic. People are probably like, I thought this was on McDonald's. Yes, you would think so. And here's the reason why. Do you remember that I just said, like, 30 seconds ago, devo was the quintessential late seventies, early eighty s New Wave band. I do remember that. Well, apparently, the designers of Happy Mill toys at McDonald's agree. Right. They released a series of Happy Miles toys that are little characters based on different genres of music. And there's one called New Wave nigel and he's got these thin sunglasses and spiky hair, and he happens to have a very recognizable hat. So it looks like a flower pot that's upside down. Exactly. And to Mark Mothersba and the other guys in Devo, it looked a lot like what they call their energy dome hat. Right. Which they trademarked. So now they're suing McDonald's for unlicensed use of this hat. McDonald's, like, getting lined. Exactly. Yeah. That's pretty accurate, actually. Chuck, McDonald's, at any given point in time, has a handful of lawsuits against them. I think that's any big company, though. It is, but that's a good point. McDonald's has become this emblematic, symbolic face. The golden arches are like the logo of more than just McDonald's. The logo of corporate America. Obesity. Of America. Obesity. McJobs globalization. Globalization. Globalization. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Of course. Yeah. For being a fast food restaurant. They've come to take on these huge representations of these enormous concepts, and I got to admit, some they've handled well, some they haven't. But they're still standing. Yeah, well, they love it. You take the good with the bad. As much as they hate being the symbol of the face of obesity, they're like, yeah, but we sell a lot of Big Macs. Exactly. We know that you like them, fat boy. Right? Yeah. That's kind of the idea that I have them to chuck. Yes. We got Divo out of the way. We can check that off the list. Okay. All right. You want to talk about Mickey D's? Let's start with history. Okay. Because it's a pretty interesting history. It is. A lot of people out there probably think, oh, yeah, I know about McDonald's history, because I've stood there in line and read the plaque that says, ray crock invented McDonald's, and he started it all up. Yeah, the embossed plaque. Yeah, the embossed plaque. Not true. No, actually, I often wondered as a child why the founder of McDonald's last name wasn't McDonald's. It was crock. But it is, because McRock is. Would you buy a burger from a place called MC croc? No. It's like buying a piece of furniture from unpainted. Huff hines. Right. Very nice. How many times do we reference coen brothers films? A lot. All the time. Flashback to the great depression. Yeah. Let's go have another piece of pie. That kind of time period, that song would have gone well. It would have. The 1930s dick and mac McDonald. You might recognize that name. They were running a movie theater in California. Not doing too well. First question. Okay. Who names their kid mac McDonald? Yeah. Little suspect. Yeah. Wacky parents. And they were not doing too great. And so they noticed across the street. It's literally one of these stories where, like, boy, that hot dog business is gangbusters. We should open up a hot dog stand. Yeah. So they borrowed $5,000, which seems like a lot of money at the time, to open a hot dog stand. No doubt. Well, I think I get the impression that they open, like, one of those very early diners. Because they call it the airdome hotdogs band, right? Yeah. Airdrome. Airdrome. Yeah. Sure. I get the same thing. And by they moved that from arcadia, which was the original location, to san bernardino, and they changed the name to McDonald's barbecue. Right. So they went from a hot dog stand to a barbecue joint. Well, it wasn't barbecue. That just meant on the grill, I think, because they serve burgers and burgers, fries and milkshakes. Yeah, that change was a big deal because they dropped a lot of their stuff. Right. Well, they shut down. They closed the business for a little while to retool, which was you just kind of didn't do this at the time. Yeah, because they were already pretty successful. This wasn't like a slouchy business. But the McDonald's brothers or the brothers McDonald felt like they could do it better. I guess one of them had some sort of inspiration from the assembly line. Right. Yeah, I think from the auto industry. And so they created the speedy system. Speedy system. S-P-E-E-D-E-E. Right. And, dude, that's where it really changed the world as we know it. And that's not overstating it. That was the birth of modern fast food. It is. They also did away with the car hops, like people on roller skates to come up and take your order at your car. You had to come in. But yeah, more than anything else, they changed the fast food industry with that speedy system. Basically, they took the principles of the assembly line and applied it to food. So if you were in charge of cooking the burgers, you didn't put the burger on the bunch of cheese on the burger. Like, there were different people involved in the burger making process. I can attest to this because my first job was at McDonald's. Well, I worked there, too, for an hour. We'll talk about that later because we have some famous cohorts that worked at McDonald's. Oh, good. That I looked up. Nice. And we're not famous, but we worked there. Yeah. I didn't know your story. I can't wait to hear that. So they were really successful. Over the next six years, they sold 21 franchises, opened nine outlets themselves, and they were doing so well that they said, we need these multi mixers. They can mix five milkshakes at once because we need to increase the speed. And their multi mixer salesman was a man named Ray crock. Yeah. Here is where the little bit of fate comes in. These guys were running, I think are there eight shakes that it can make at a time? A multi mixer? Five shakes now. It's probably because they ordered eight of them. Yes. And they had them running all day long. And Ray crocs, it's the most multi mixers anyone's ever ordered at once. So he actually went out to the birdie to find out what was going on. Yes. Remember the hells angels podcast? I didn't know they were in Berdu. Yeah. San Bernardino. Right. Sorry. Yeah, it's okay. But then he went to go see it himself, and it's like, what is going on here? He was on board immediately. Apparently, Jacques Peppin put it the famous French chef Jacques Pepen. He wrote an article about Ray croc, and as he put it, he pitched the idea to the brothers to really start expanding their operation. And they said, well, where would we get somebody to do this for us? And Raycrack said, what about me? Right. And he became their franchising agent. Right. Yeah. Apparently, his original motivation was to sell multi mixers, and he figured if he could open up more franchises they're selling tons of milkshakes. They're lousy with milkshakes, so I can sell more multi mixers. So that was kind of how it started out. Yeah. And he opened his first McDonald's franchise in de plain, Illinois. Right. Yeah. And that's actually now a museum. That McDonald's location. Oh, really? There are two. There's a big mac museum, which we'll talk about where the big mac came from later. And then there's the McDonald's museum. Yeah. Anyway, so he opens up that one, and in the next five years, dude, he franchises 200 more restaurants. What's amazing, though, is that he wasn't filthy rich in the next five years. No. He actually had a lot of trouble getting these things off the ground. Sure. Right. So we've got one thing under our belt when we're describing the success of McDonald's. Right. And that is the speedy system using the principles of the assembly line for best food. The other thing that made McDonald's successful as it is was the real estate principles that the company took on, right? Yeah, he hired a guy named Harry Sawu born, and he only worked there for like a decade. But that completely rewrote their business model to the point where they were making more money off of real estate than selling hamburgers. Right. Because originally red Croc would be like, hey, we've got this kind of newish franchise. And McDonald's was in the first fast food restaurant. Howard Johnson's was around already. White Castle was around already. They had competition, right. And these bigger guys who'd been around for a while could just build as many as they wanted to in a region because they had tons of capital. Well, McDonald's franchise was still pretty young. So when they went to franchisees, these were very helpful people who maybe were for the underdog, that kind of thing. They were sort of green. They weren't like super investors. Right. So they didn't have a lot of money. So these guys would have to basically open one franchise at a time because the building expense and the land expenses so much. What Santa baren came up with is like just lease the land and then sub lease it to the franchisee. And then not only that mark up the leasing fees, but initially it was 20% over what they were paying to lease the place. Then they up to 40%. And then finally when McDonald's started rolling, it was either 40% or 5% of sales, whichever was greater. So, yeah, the franchise realty corporation made as much money as the McDonald's corporation for a while, if it doesn't still. Yeah, it was a stroke of genius, basically. And so that enabled Croc in to buy out the McDonald brothers for, what was it, 2.7 million in like 1963? Yeah, 2.7 and 1961. They gave up the rights to the McDonald's name dick and Mac. If you want to know what happened to them. They reopened the original San Bernardino joint as the big m. And Ray Croc was like, yeah, I don't like you reopening that original store, so I'm going to open McDonald's down the street and run you out of business. That's what happened. Yeah. And that strategy still followed today if you pay any attention to home Depot and Lowe's. Oh, sure. Thank you for that. And apparently Crock, this is in his autobiography, so we're not slinging stones here. He actually fostered this bitterness between himself and Dick McDonald, who was the surviving brother. And Croc considered the planes location the original first McDonald's. He never wavered from that. And himself the founder. Well, obviously if you've ever seen the embossed plaque, never hear any mention of the McDonald brothers. So people have challenged that from time to time. Enough so that the McDonald's corporation's official site now says, yes. Dick and Mac McDonald founded a restaurant. And Ray Croc originally came on board, but he's the founder of the McDonald's corporation. Right. So that's how they kind of justify that. Got you. I do want to point out, too, that unbeknownst to the franchisee, the capital that they got from raising the money with the leases, they use that to fund the opening of other franchises. So that's how they started kind of rolling and sort of like a Poncy scheme a little bit, but this one was slightly more legal. It was on the up, and I had a pretty good pay off. Apparently, Crock took McDonald's public in 65, and if you had bought $2,000 worth of stock that year and it's initial public offering, it would be worth 3.5 million today. Yeah. That's not a bad return on investment. So he bought the company in 61. By 63, he had opened up his 500. By 65, they went public, and then 20 years after they went public, they were included in the Dow Jones industrial average. Right. That is what's called a super rapid ascent into weld right. In success. The Dow Jones only has 30 companies, and McDonald's is one of them. What's more, and one of the things that explains that success but that kind of also supports it is that they started catering toward kids and cultivating customer loyalty at a very early age, thanks to a guy named Willard Scott, who you may know as the weatherman for the Today show for many years. The demented Smuckers jelly spokesperson. Or Bozo the clown. Yeah. Or Ronald McDonald. He's the first one. He was first in a long, long line of Ronald McDonald's, and he was the first character. And then pretty soon, they started adding more and more McDonald's characters. But let's stick with Ronald for a second. Did you know that they introduced Ronald McDonald in 1965? Right? I did, yes. I think it was 63. Okay. 63 by more kids could identify Ronald McDonald than they could the American president. That's American kids. Right. 90% of them could identify Ronald McDonald's six years after he was introduced. Yeah, yeah. And my research I don't know if it's true or not, but it says that Willard Scott was originally let go because he was too fat, and they didn't want a big, fat clown as their spokesman for their food. He is a leaner than usual clown, except for those huge, hawk thighs that he's always had. Oh, the saddlebag. Yeah. Like they're riding pants. Right? Yeah. Okay, so they come up with Ronald McDonald, but they're trying to figure out how to expand the characters. Right. Well, Chuck, you and I grew up in the 80s. We've ridden a fry guy or two before out in the playground. Hamburger. The hamburger. Grimace. Grimace. You've got Merma cheese. Who is one of my personal favorites. The big Mac cop. Oh, yeah. I wish you had his name. I do, too. Well, there's some listing or mail for us. All of these people originally were going to be licensed characters from Sid Marty Croft, the guys who used to eat a ton of acid and create children's shows. They charge puff and stuff. Right. So originally, McDonald's Corporation approached Sydney Marty Cross and said, hey, we want to license your puff and stuff characters. Sid Marty Cross said, okay, we'll totally do that. They waited for McDonald's to call back, waiting for him to call back. McDonald's finally called back and said, no, we're not going to do it, and blatantly ripped them off. So Sidmarty crop, they look a lot like oh, yeah. Sigmund sea monster. They kind of all had that same thing. I saw a commercial from the first one that Grimace appears in, and actually it features a young Jody Foster. Oh, really? It is straight out of the HR. Puffin stuff shows, like, instead of flowers, there's little cheeseburgers everywhere. I mean, it's just completely like a Sydney or a Crop ripoff. So much so that when the Croft brothers sued, they were awarded 50 grand. But that was it. Right. But did you know this Grimace, who's this bumbling, happy purple, weird sidekick of Ronald best friend, was originally Evil Grimace, which is probably what they call him. Grimace. He had three pairs of arms, and they were meant to steal as many shakes as possible. Really? Yeah. And then they figured that's just creepy, and Greece don't like it, so we're going to put it back to one pair of arms, and he's going to be nice. Wow. Yeah. Evil Grimace. Sid Mardi Croft had the place in Atlanta. You didn't grow up here, but when I was a kid, sid Mardi Croft land was at the top floor of the Omni, the old Omni, what became Phillips Arena. What? Yeah. No, it's an escalator. I remember. I mean, now it's probably not as long as I remember, but it seemed like it was the longest escalator in the world at the time. That went to the top. To Sidney Marty crossland. Did they create the banana splits, too? I don't think so. Were they from Atlanta? I don't know. The connection there, I know it was a pretty big failure. Yeah, it closed down in short order. Yeah. But I went I'll bet it was real popular among the hip teenagers. I bet. Especially in, like, 1976, right up their alley. All right, Josh, let's say you wanted to open a McDonald's restaurant back in the day, your Ray Croc, and how would you go about spotting a good location? What are you looking for? Well, first, I would put on my ten gallon hat. Right. I would board a helicopter. Yeah. Which he did. I would start flying around areas that were up and coming, and I would try to find an intersection with a church, a school, maybe some other stores, and I would plop it right there. Yes, that's exactly what he did. And specifically, I think, physical, space wise, developers look for more than 32,000 sqft. Right. Which is a little over 9700 meters. Nice. A height of 22ft, which I don't understand. I guess the height and clearance. Is that what they're looking for? Yeah, elevation they're looking for the McDonald's is for all the sea. Exactly. And they still to this day look to place them near intersections with traffic lights or airports, schools. There's a ton of people. And originally the thought behind it was they wanted to put it where the heart of the community was. Well, now they wanted to put it whereas many people as possible are going to pass by three times a day. Right. And they still use that classic speedy type system. I'm sure they don't call it that, but still the assembly line automated stuff has taken over many aspects. Obviously, if you've been to McDonald's in the last decade, you've seen the automatic fry cooker and the automatic drink filler, and you go to the drive through window and there's a little screen telling you what you're ordering. Let's talk about a drive through window because there are certain McDonald's in the United States where when you pull up to the drive through menu, you place your order. You are speaking to someone in a call center in another state. Do you know that is another state or another country? Another state. Okay. I think there are some that are in other countries, right? Yes. But based on the New York Times article I read, these were McDonald's in Missouri and they were talking to people in Colorado and they would take a snapshot of you on the computer in the call center. Yeah. So when you get to the window to pick up your food, they see a photo and they say, well, this is that Chuck guy. He's all tubby in his front seat and he's salivating for a Big Mac. So here's your Big Mac. And then they say that the picture is destroyed. Oh, is that what they say? Because I wondered about that. Destroyed. Yeah. So McDonald's, I think, because of as much money as the company has, it's long been on the cutting edge of, like, new technology, anything that can be used to cut down costs. McDonald's is into. Yeah, absolutely. And they're also into, believe this or not, cleanliness. Yeah. Ray Croc, they said, was like obsessed with being clean. I got the impression he was a tad OCD, maybe. Well, my theory is, and I worked in the restaurant business, you can never have a restaurant that's too clean. So I appreciate his dedication to cleanliness. Apparently like to say, if you got time to lean, you got time to clean. And anytime somebody said that to me after they turned around, I'd be like, yeah, give me the old high heart one. Sure. There's a lot of leaning in the McDonald's around my neighborhood, actually. Yeah, I think there are most of them. But even that apparently is a step up as far as McDonald's and other countries go. McDonald's is widely credited for changing the standards in the industry, the restaurant industry, for bathroom cleanliness in Hong Kong, Thailand, social interaction. Because apparently in Hong Kong, there was never such a thing as, like, organized lines to stand in line and get something. So they were literally forced to stand in line for the first time to complete their order. So some say that it brought some social graces and organization to these kind of chaotic scenes. That's great. And you know what? I believe that because when I lived in La. I would always get muscled in on by little Asian women and it used to bother me. Then I was like, you know what? I bet you in their country, you're fighting to get in position to get your whatever's in the market. That's exactly what they want you to think. Yeah. I was duped into being kind. I understand. Cut in front of me. That's fine. Exactly. Here you go, lady. Welcome to the US. Right. What a sucker. Chuck, what's your favorite menu item at McDonald's? Answer me. I'm going to go with the hangover helper. Double quarter pounder with cheese, mayonnaise only. Add French fries on top and smush it all together. Mayonnaise only. No ketchup or mustard. I don't do that stuff. Pickles? No. Onion? No. You got to have the sesame seed bun, though. So you have a burger cheese bun with mayonnaise and French fries? Yeah. Okay. I don't think that appears on the menu. Really? Oh, that's the Chuck special. I'm a straight up double cheeseburger guy. Yeah, those are good. But we can talk a little bit about the history of a few of their menu items because I find it kind of interesting. I do, too. That's why I asked you. The Fileta Fish was born in the because at the time, we had really great Catholics in America who had abstained from meeting meat on Friday. And Ray Croc was like, we got Lagging sales on Friday because all these Catholics can we invent something here to make up for the sales. Right. And they were losing sales to places like Big Boy. Sure. I love big boys. Sure. And the reason why they are losing these sales was because these places had a fish alternative. So Ray Croc comes up with a brilliant idea, and it is the Hula burger. Right. Which was a slice of pineapple instead of meat on a bun. Yeah. Not a very good idea. No, it wasn't. But luckily, by this time, the McDonald's corporation was smart enough to know that they need to test menu items first. And they tested it, but at the same time, they tested another item called the filet of fish. Yes. Which was, I think, thought up by a franchisee. Correct. Lou Groan and he thought of it and put it on his menu, which McDonald said, that's cool, let's see how it goes. And it went over like gangbusters, and they said, you know what? We're going to add this to our national menu. Yes. So a franchisee beat out the CEO and chairman of McDonald's Corporation. That's something. Well, that means you smart enough to listen to them as well. Yeah. Well, I think that's kind of a recurring theme. It seems like Ray Croc surrounded himself with people who were smart and sharp, but also he listened to them. Right. And when they were milling about the office, he'd make them push a broom or something when they were walking to the hall. If you're too busy to lean, you're too busy to clean. Now if you got time to lean, you got time to clean. And the Big Mac, too, had similar origins. It was a franchisee idea out of the Pittsburgh area. Right. Yes. Which is key, I think, to its success. Yes. The fact that it was in Pittsburgh and it wasn't in Los Angeles. Very health conscious Los Angeles in the 70s, though la. Has always been that way. Okay. Jim Delagati, who invented the Big Mac, which we all know is two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun with the third bun there in the middle, which is key to just keep it all together. Sure. Evidently. Right. So people in Pittsburgh said, this is awesome, and Ray Croc said, okay, we're going to add this to our menu. Right. It actually became their signature sandwich. Yes. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. And I find it odd that earlier we mentioned that the McDonald brothers opened up their other restaurant once their name was taken. It's called the Big M. Apparently, there's no connection there, but it seems a little hanky to me. The Big Mac and the Big M. Well, I hadn't made that connection. Really? Yeah. What do you think? No. I'll tell you what I think. Think I big Mac is a reference to truck drivers and big guys who would eat a sandwich like that, which is actually kind of daring because you're almost automatically cutting out your female customers. Sure. The big or petite Mac maybe would have been a better name for it. Maybe. So. Whichever you like. And, Chuck, you mentioned the McDonald's brothers in their original restaurant. Well, they kept selling hot dogs for a while, right? Yeah. Why didn't McDonald's sell hot dogs? Do you want to know? Sure. Because Ray Crock felt that the mystery meat and I just made air quotes put into hot dogs didn't fit or live up to McDonald's standards. Sure. So no more hot dogs. No. Even though you have pure all be franks now? Of course. I'm sure you did back then. Still won't find one. No. I bet out of spite. That's my idea. Josh, FlashForward to my favorite McDonald's menu item all time really invented. Oh, yeah. We are talking clearly about the circular broken yolk, egg with cheese, canadian bacon on an English muffin, which in Canada they just call it bacon. Right. A-K-A-D egg McMuffin. And another franchisee herd. Peterson operated six McDonald's. He actually came up with the first national ad slogan, where quality starts fresh every day. Convinced Ray Croc to try it out. He'd loved it. And then they got into the breakfast business. Right. And they debuted it with another McDonald land character named Bertie. The early bird. I remember that. Yeah. Don't you remember Birdie? She was clearly a female. She had like an orange flight suit and a scarf and flying birdie. The early bird. Yes, I remember that. Yeah. And we got one more to talk about. You can't talk about McDonald's without the chicken McNugget. And actually remember this one clearly because I was right at the age yeah, like 2012 years old. Jerk. This was actually thought of by a CEO, which was rare because usually the franchisees owners were coming up with these. Fred Turner was the chairman, and he put out a request and said, you know what? He commissioned it. I love the quote. He commissioned a chicken finger food without bones about the size of your thumb. Pretty specific. Yeah. So they came back here it is sort of even looks like a thumb a little bit now that I see it. It's going to be tough to eat them. Yeah, I used to eat those. I used to eat them like crazy. Not anymore. Nothing but barbecue sauce. I would do a mix of the barbecue and the sweet and sour. Yeah, it's a good mix. It is. So we need to talk about a little bit of criticism. Right? Yeah. And the good that they do. We'll follow with the good that they do. Well, Devo is not the only people who have filed a lawsuit against McDonald's. Neither are sudden. Marty Croft. Right. And it goes both ways. McDonald's has been known to file a lawsuit or two. Right. Specifically, probably most famously against Greenpeace. Yeah. The Mclidenal case. Yeah. Did you read the Mcliibal pamphlet? No, not the actual pamphlet, but I kind of know what it's all about. It's a little broad, in my opinion, to have drummed up that much iron and anger. Oh, really? In the mid eighty s, two London Greenpeace members basically started printing pamphlets. And I guess what it was at the time, nobody was talking about this stuff. And maybe they were the first about cutting down rainforests for grazing land for cattle, that McDonald's was using inhumane practices of killing the cattle, exploiting workers, that kind of stuff. I guess now that I think about it, it's so ingrained into our culture now, awareness that maybe in the mid 80s it just totally wasn't right. Got their attention. Yeah. And it got McDonald's attention, too, because they sued these people. Yeah. And they won. They won because these guys who put out the pamphlet couldn't back up everything that they stated in the pamphlet. With fax. Do you know why? Because they were poor and they worked for greenpeace, and they defended themselves. Okay. So these two acted as their own lawyers, and McDonald's lawyers buried them. They wouldn't give them documents that they asked for. They buried them in procedural stuff in one. But at the same time, these two people and greenpeace as a whole are just doing as much PR as they can about the case. McDonald's just took a huge hit. That was probably the first real turning point as far as McDonald's image goes. Yeah. Where it wasn't just like, McDonald's is the greatest thing ever. Right. And people started to really kind of pay attention to, like, wait a minute. Where did you get your beat? Ronald McDonald said he loved my child. What do you mean? He really just wants profits. Yeah. And they were famously sued in the 90s with the hot coffee that spilled on the old lady's lap. Yeah. And I always thought that was just, like, an example of how we need tort reform. Right. I didn't realize why the woman was awarded the money. She got third degree burns in her crotch and was in the hospital for eight days. Right. But the reason that the jury awarded her such a huge amount, it was in the tens of millions, I think. Right. It just said, well, I don't know how much it was specifically, but compensatory and punitive damage. It was a lot of money, and it was for spilling coffee on her crotch. Right. But the reason that the jury awarded her such so much money was because McDonald's was well aware of the problem and had for many years, received hundreds of complaints, but just didn't do anything about it. That their coffee was too hot. Yeah. And then Josh, in the 90s again, McDonald's took a bold move and came out and said, you know what? We're no longer going to cook our french fries and beef fat, even though it's so good. I know. Do you remember the change? Yeah. And we're going to cook it in vegetable oil. So that was a big announcement. And then this sort of implied in a way that they were vegetarian fries because it's just potatoes cooked in vegetable oil. Not true. Because they contain beef flavoring and sewage. So Hindus, obviously, and vegetarians had a big problem with this. But McDonald's very fairly said, hey, man, we never said that these were vegetarian fries, but we'll pay up anyway. They pony it up, like $10 million in an apology. Yeah. And that's what you do when you got deep pockets. Oh, yeah. You pay up a little bit, apologize, it goes away. Yeah. And the next person in line steps up to suit you. Right. But then, in the meantime, 5 million people step up in line to order a double cheeseburger. Yeah. Absolutely. That pays for everything. A couple of more big, high profile things. There was the book Fast Food Nation that charged McDonald's with globalization and anti union tactics, stuff like that. And that was also mentioned in the McLibel pamphlet that they only use or only employee workers who are basically down on their luck, have nothing, have no alternative. Sure. They overwork them. They exploit them. So there's high turnover. So there's no chance of unions or unionizing among McDonald's employees. Right. And then Morgan Spurlock, of course, with the film Super Size Me. The documentary famously went on a 30 day diet of nothing but McDonald's and no exercise and almost died. Did you watch it? No, I've never seen it. It was entertaining. And he does like McDonald's was in the firing scope, but he was making a statement about the fact that when we were kids, a large drink was like 18oz, and now you can get, like, a 72 ounce soda. Do we really need that? Right. And actually, they had some big effects, I guess, in McDonald's. They took their super size option off of their menu right after the film was screened at Sundance. Yeah. They went proactive on this one. Big time. Yeah. Which was pretty smart, actually. I guess it's not that much action, but still, it was a big deal. Yeah. Little indie filmmaker got them to change their menu. So instead of super sized, it's now called Large. Right. Chuck was fast food. Nation turned into food inc. The movie? Is the movie Food Inc. Based on fast Food Nation. No, there is a movie fast food nation as well. That Richard Linklater did. Got you? No. You're thinking of waking life. Okay. We should also probably say that there's some good that this company has done aside from making great greasy hamburgers. Right. Which I do love. I don't eat McDonald's much, but, boy, is it good. Obviously, first and foremost, you got the Ronald McDonald house. Right. Great organization. Sure. What do they do? Well, if you have a kid who is in the hospital a lot, especially out of state, seeing a specialist, and your family needs to be there to support the kid, but you don't really have enough for a six month hotel stay. Right. There are houses around the country called Ronald McDonald, houses that your family can go stay at for free or next to nothing that are close to these hospitals, children's hospitals. So you can be near your kid and have to fly back and forth or lose your job. That kind of thing. Right. They also, like we said, have been charged with globalization, and they will counter that. No. When we go to these countries, we have cultural specific menu items, and that's very true. We have, I think, an article about wacky McDonald's menu items from around the world, and we actually try and incorporate the local culture into our menu instead of just forcing this American thing down their throat. Right. That's what they say. Right. And there's a picture, actually of a pair of McDonald's workers in India. And there's the Maharaja mac and the vegetable burger with cheese, both of which I imagine are cooked without beef, since India is kind of big on the cow warship. Right? Yeah. I don't think that McDonald's would go over very well if you walked into one in Mumbai and, hey, here's one of your gods right here on the menu. Yes, they take a beef off the menu there. Right. So this is a perfect example of the good that McDonald's does. Yes, there's good. It's called globalization. You're taking a multinational but very culturally specific company and adjusting it as needed locally, localizations. Great. But the thing is, it's so disingenuous when people put that point out, because, of course, McDonald's isn't going to serve hamburgers in India because they want to sell food. Exactly. So, yeah, they're going to adjust their menu to reflect local values, because without that, no one's going to buy it. Josh I know we're kind of short on time. There's some more stuff we got to stick in here, though. We need to talk about the McNaughan. Did you ever see that? The fried chicken head? What? Yeah. I'll show you a picture. This lady purportedly got in her box of McDonald's chicken wings and fried chicken wing head, and it's exactly what it looks like, but Snopes has said that it has not been verified or disproven. No. Yeah, you got to see it. It's really funny because she has refused to turn it over for inspection, and so it's just kind of still floating out there. It was, like, ten years ago, so I'm sure it's gone away by now. Did you ever hear the rumor about the cow's eyeballs in the shakes? Not true, as far as we know. Yeah. My favorite McDonald's thing is in Los Angeles. I worked in the film business, and we shoot most McDonald's commercials are shot at this one fake store in La. The whole thing is on wheels. Not literally the building, but everything in there is on wheels. It's got lights all rigged. It's all false. And every day when you shoot there, they have 04:00 fries, and at 04:00, the production stops, and they bring out, like, 50 large fries for everyone to just chow down on. So it is a functioning McDonald's. Yeah, but it's not a functioning restaurant. But you got to be able to fake the cooking and all that stuff. Got you. Okay, that's awesome. And you worked there. We need to tell that real quick. No, we don't. I worked there for an hour. I worked there for a few weeks. I worked there for 1 hour. I went in the training and the basement. Yeah, so did I. And they gave me took my uniform size, showed me the little video, told me to clock in and out, and I was like, all right, you start in the morning at, like 04:00 a.m., and the next morning I was in Athens, and the alarm went off, and I went, I can't do this. Yeah, good for you. Never went back, never cashed my check, so I got to check out there with my name on it. Oh, really? You should get that for like, 450 or something. It's all been itself for sale on ebay. And Josh, we would be remiss if we didn't talk about some of our famous cohorts who have worked at McDonald's. OK. And they are as follows. A. Chuck. Shania Twain. Yeah. Sharon Stone. Yeah. J the Rat. Leno. Really? I'm in Coco's Corner. Okay. I'm in Camp Coco. And Pink had a quote. She says, quote, I would open the restaurant because I'd be tripping on acid. And I would say, can I have a bathroom duty? And I would sit in the bathroom and watch the tiles. Nice. So that's what Pink was doing. Carl lewis. Olympian. Carl Lewis. Cool. Macy Gray. Yeah. If you had a funny voice taking your order, at some point it might have been Macy Gray. Where did she work, does it say? I do not see where that was now. Okay. Rachel McAdams, super smoking cute actress, and DL. Hughley worked at McDonald's and us. We did. And a lot of them still say that it was like a great job and it taught them order and cleanliness and all that good stuff. I didn't get any of that from McDonald's. I worked there for an hour, so I can't really say I got a paycheck. It was good. Sure. What was your station? I would do just about anything. Bathroom front? I don't remember. I never cooked anything. Like, I never cooked patties, but I made fries, put cheese on, stuff like that. It was all over the place. They were superstars of the line. No, it was just like the guy was I don't think he ever met Ray Croc, the guy who managed that place. It was a little too involved for a late 20s guy with the 17 year old staff he had going not to catch any dispersions or suggest he was up to anything. I mean, he was just too on our level. Hopefully you want to be your buddy. They say that one out of every eight people in the American workforce worked at McDonald's at one point, and I think 50% of their executives started out in their stores. Yeah. And there's a million stats we won't get into how many fries they sell in the fact that it wraps around the earth a gazillion times every day or something ridiculous like that. Okay. There's so many stats. We got a lot of good McDonald's content on the website. I'm going to finish this with two words shamrock, shake, boom. I'm going to finish it with one word McRib. Yeah. Nice, Chuck. Sure. We almost forgot that great Simpsons episode on the MCB, too. If you want to know more about the Simpsons McDonald's, the McRib, the Shamrock, Shake, DL, Hughley or Devo. You can type any of those things into the handystarchbar. Howtofworkscom I defy you too. Since I said that. I think it's time for listener mail. Do we have time for listener mail? No, we don't. Let's do this. Let's put out the call. Okay. We are coming to New York City, folks in June 1 week in June for Internet Week. Or is it the second week? I think it's June 7, the 14th. Yes. And we are looking to have a stuff you should know. Happy hour with the fans, whoever wants to come. And we need some help on finding a place that will host this happy hour for free. Well, yeah, we just need a place that we can show up and be and let everybody know we're going to be at. We don't need to rent it or anything like that. Well, preferably be someone who would shut down except for us. And they will be guaranteed. Probably a lot of people in there buying food and drinking beer. Awesome. So, New York City fans, if you have any connections, please let us know. And we are actually looking for t shirt designs. Yeah, we're having a t shirt design contest. We're going to select what the best three for. Maybe we haven't worked that out yet. All right. We haven't worked that part out, everybody, but we are calling for t shirt designs. Look for activity on that on the Facebook fan page. Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant and stuff you should know. Podcast fan page on Facebook and probably some tweets on it. We're going to have a Twitter feed coming up soon. I think it's going to be like S YSK maybe or something like that. We're getting with the times. Yes, finally. I guess that's about it then, right, Chuck? If you have an email that you want to send to us, we'll get back to listener mail next week. Yeah, wrap it up, smack it on the bottom. Send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffs.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blog on the Housetofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer. And best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgueref and Georgia Hardstarks, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you won 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 Death Masks Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-death-masks-work | One of the earliest civilizations we've detected, the Myceneans, kicked off the habit of creating a mask of a deceased person's face in deathly repose. What began as an ancient rite has only recently fallen out of practice around the world. Learn about th | One of the earliest civilizations we've detected, the Myceneans, kicked off the habit of creating a mask of a deceased person's face in deathly repose. What began as an ancient rite has only recently fallen out of practice around the world. Learn about th | Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:25:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=21, tm_min=25, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=15, tm_isdst=0) | 30286230 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. Welcome to stuff you should know from houseuffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles WTOK. Bryant. This is a very plasterific episode of stuff you should know. Did you ever work with plaster when you were a kid? Art class. I had one of those little pottery wheels. Yeah, like the Toyota version of it. Oh, cool. And there's something like wet clay in your hands is really a neat feeling. Hey, just tell Demi more that yeah. That made for one sexy scene. Male nipples. What made an appearance in that scene? Lesuz shirtless. Yeah. Okay. I believe so. He was always Shirley? Yeah, I think he was. He was shirtless for most of his career. Yes. Have you ever seen that Dirty Dancing at the end of that movie, when they do the whole dance show down thing, somebody put Iron Man in over Patrick. No, over Jennifer Gray. So it's the whole scene, but it's Iron Man dancing with Patrick so easy. And it's really neat and hilarious. For the song, Iron Man is used instead of no, Iron Man, the cartoon superhero, the comic book hero is dancing with Patrick's Way for some reason at the end of this. I got to see that. Now, what that? Looks like you should check it out. I cannot visualize it. We'll visualize this, pal. July 2234, Chicago. See, it's hot. Really hot. 30 something people, 32 people, maybe 33 died from the heat that day. That's how hot it was in Chicago. We should say. Chuck and I, because of our work schedules, we are frequently sequestered away from everybody else while they do fun things like hilarious book exchanges is a good current example. Yeah. If you hear people laughing in the deep background, which is something you've never heard before on our show, that's because our department is having a party without us. It's really sad. All right, so back to it, back to July 2234. There was a Gable dying of heat. Yeah, there was a movie, a Clark Gable movie that guy named John Dillinger wanted to go see. Famous gangster John Dillinger. He was a famous bank robber. Yes. He was an Indiana man. And over the course of a year, he robbed a ton of banks. He apparently robbed a police station or two, killed at least one cop. And on his birthday, a couple of months prior, I think in May, he had been made public enemy number one by Jugger Hoover's. FBI. Yeah. On this night, July 22, 119 34, he will be betrayed by a woman in red. Madam, as a matter of fact, Anna Sage. Anna Sage, that's right. And he went with his girlfriend and Anna Sage, who was his girlfriend's landlady to see this movie. And after they came out, the FBI was waiting for him. He takes off running, pulls out his gun while he does, and they just kill him with a hail of bullets. One of them gets them in the back of the neck and it goes out as I. And that did it for John Dillinger, aka Public Enemy Number One, and sold out by Anna Sage, as it turns out, who is then deported back to Romania, I think. Oh, really? For her troubles. Yeah. Thanks for the help. Yeah. Now here's your one way ticket on this disease ridden ship. Exactly. So he dies, but that's not the end of the story. He was basically put on public display. Either he was put on public display or the public said, we're going to need to see this guy. Yeah, that was sort of a thing, though. I remember when Jesse James was killed. Yeah. Same deal, though. Like these notorious criminals, sometimes when they were caught, it would be like a big thing. Like back in the old days, they would put out in the town square in the pine box. Right. Come by and look at them. Chicago in the 30s was not that far removed from that Wild West. I get your picture taken next to the body of Jesse James. Right. So that's kind of what they do with Dillinger and at least two different groups, actually three, but only one was authorized, made casts of his face after he was dead. And we call those death masks. What those guys were doing was carrying on a centuries old tradition. Millennia old, really, if you want to get technical, of basically making a negative image of a dead person's face. So you can make, I guess, masks from it later on. Yeah, or a full statue. Head bust, if you will. Yeah, or bust or full statue, if you really want to go all the way. But curiously, and I find this to be one of the facts of the show, they did make a positive of Dillinger's face. And Jay Edgar Hoover had one in his office, as, I guess, sort of a trophy of sorts. He did. I thought that was pretty cool. I never knew that. Yeah, that would be cool. To not only have a death mask of John Dillinger, but the one that was in J Agar Hoover's office. Yeah. That's just specific. Yes, very. So I said that this is a very old thing and it goes back at least to the Egyptians, but they're the first ones who we know made some sort of funerary mask of the deceased. They had a very good reason, and theirs was that if the soul if you didn't make a mask of the deceased, the soul couldn't find the body any longer. It wouldn't have a face in the afterlife. Yeah. Because as you learned in our mummification cast, the face is wrapped up. Right. So there is no face any longer. So there you have it, you got like a king cut. And it's not like the regular death mask. It doesn't look like them. Right. Or Nate right. Or can be. I think King Tuts was actually like that's, his face. Oh, really? Yeah. They went to that level of trouble. I mean, I knew they tried to make it look like him, but was it actually a mold of his I believe it was. Oh, wow. Yeah. The Egyptians weren't the only ancient group to do this either. Chuck the Myceneeans, whose civilization was discovered by Heinrich Schliema, he found some death masks, and they're really rough and weird looking, but they took gold sheets that were pliable enough so that they laid over people's faces, and they made, like, again, a funerary mask. Wow. Yeah. So if you weren't super famous or nobleman or have a lot of money, you could still get the old death mask. It was probably made of linen and painted gold or papyrus, maybe. But you could still get your death mask, right. Even if you weren't king tied. Sure. The Romans did a lot of this. Too. And the Romans actually had I thought I knew everything about ancient Rome. But it turns out that they made death masks and they're at the funeral. A person who kind of looked like the deceased would wear their death mask. And then other people would wear that person's ancestors. Their dead relatives death masks. And basically you just have. Like. A dead family reunion at the person's funeral. Then after the funeral, that recently deceased person's death mask was put together with all of his relatives or her relatives. Just wait for the next person. Yeah. And then he would come out with everybody else to bring the new person into the circle, which is kind of neat. I didn't realize that they did that. It's very odd. And I wonder if they would do impressions of them, like, oh, I'm Uncle Slovius. Look at me. I love wine. I mean, sit on my lap. Yeah. So you mentioned the ancient Romans, caesar. Julie caesar actually had a full wax cast of his entire body after his death, stab wounds and everything. And Mark Anthony was, I guess, dumb enough to go show it off to a crowd, and they rioted and burned down the Senate building. Yeah. So I don't know what reaction he was looking for. That probably wasn't it. They're like, we love your records. Not that Mark Anthony, I guess with the Romans, too, with Egyptians, basically, throughout history, if you weren't wealthy, you probably weren't going to have a death mask made of you if you weren't wealthy or you weren't, like, the king. Yes. And one reason is because a lot of times these were artists before photography. Artists and painters and sculptors, as soon as someone died of note, they would get their death mask made so they could then paint them and sculpt them and have a reference for what they look like. Yeah, and same thing. I mean, artists didn't paint nobody's, you know what I'm saying? Exactly. So you didn't need to have a death mask made of you. And this is pretty much the way it was in Europe for most of history, except in Italy. Italy pretty early on said, if you achieve something notable, we'll probably make a death mask of you. So if you see early inventors and artists and those kind of like poets, if you're in Italy, you'd probably have a death mask made if you're a notable personality. Right. Like DA Vinci, sure, he's probably got a death mask. But elsewhere, England, France, all that, it wasn't until late modern history that you started to see death masks of non noble people coming out. And as a matter of fact, it was Madame Tusod, the lady behind the wax museums, who kind of brought death masks to the masses during the French Revolution, she and her uncle Philippe Courteous, they were just masters of wax, and they worked a lot. Yeah. There was one of Louie the 16th Mistresses underwent the guillotine, and she apparently had a terrible grimace on her face when she died. I wish people could have seen the face she just made. You also curled up your hand for some reason. Yeah, I don't think she didn't, too. Yeah. And so Philippe Curtis, he basically pinched her face back into the decapitated heads, face back into a nice position, and then rolled her in some wax that he laid out next to the grave. Wow. Yeah. They were operating on this higher death mask level like no one ever has. But the Madame Two Sewed Wax Museum that you enjoyed today grew out of a death mask operation. Interesting. And it seems like a very macabre thing to do, but it's different now. These days, we like to remember our deceased ones as living and look at photographs of them doing things where they're alive and lively and go die over there, where we don't have to think about it. Exactly. Close casket funeral. But it wasn't the same back then. Royal and wealthy families would display these death masks of their relatives in the parlor room or the drawing room or here in the main hallway. And it was a point of pride. It wasn't like, macabre weird. Then eventually it became pseudoscientific with the advent of phrenology. Yeah, I wish we had a good article on that. I haven't seen one. It's pretty interesting. Like the early days of that stuff, they will put it together. It's like when people were just starting to figure out the brain and not really having any idea what they were doing. Yeah. Really missing the mark a lot of times. Yeah. So phonology basically was the idea that you could predict a person's personality, behavior, whether someone was a criminal or not, how intelligent they would grow up to be by the shape of their face, the shape of their skull, the bumps on their skull. And so phrenologists, as this field grew in the 19th century, kind of increased the demand for death masks because they wanted to compare people side by side. Right. So you've gotten some pretty cool death masks of, say, like, John or Joseph Merrick. Oh, really? Yes. I think there's a full body cast of him. Wow. Or a criminal or a genius or whatever. And these phenomenologists would keep him side by side and try to compare and figure out there's got to be a key there somewhere. Right. And they have themselves convinced, but they were all wrong. Was there something? There had to be something to some of that research. Right. I think there was a lot of consensus among scientists, and they're all wrong. That's all it took. Less disappointing. One cool thing is that later on in today's world, you can look back at some of these death masks and gain a little bit of insight, diagnostically speaking, on how someone might have died. Right. In this article they mention Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott. They think now he died of a stroke because his death mask, he has the telltale signs of the droopy face on one side. And Abraham Lincoln, they think, might have had a wasting disease because he had live masks made, which is the same thing, except you're alive before he died, had a couple of them made. And they look at these now and say, you know what? Abraham Lincoln might have been dying of? Like, tuberculosis or something, maybe. Right. Is that what they just said? A wasting disease? I think that's a wasting disease. Yeah, that makes sense. Consumption. But then, of course, Booth took care of that in a more hasty manner. Yes. Don't want to give a spoiler away for the movie, but pretty sure we can get shot. Speaking of Booth, his brother Edwin, he was one of the most famous actors, at least in the country, if not the world, when he was working. Oh, really? And he had a death mask made, and it was collected by a man named Lawrence of Arabia. No. His name was Lauren. No, lawrence Hutton. And Lawrence Hutton was a literary editor for Harper's Magazine, which is still around today. Very good. And he was in a junk store in New York one time and ran across a death mask and just was immediately smitten with the idea of collecting these things. So he spent the rest of his life traveling the world, finding death masks, buying them, having a made of people. In some cases. He had one of Edwin Booth, and he amassed this incredibly large collection, the world's largest individual collection of death masks. And when he died, he bequeathed it to Yale. No. Princeton. I'm sorry. Oh, nice. So Princeton has this museum of death masks now. Holy cow. I didn't see that. Well, lucky for you, buddy, they digitized it. Oh, really? Yeah, they have this really nice website, the Lawrence Hutton Death Mask Museum Website, and it's got all of them on there. It's really interesting. Some are very old and poorly done. There's one of Lincoln that it's just like looking at Lincoln's face because he's so recognizable. But to see the details. Yes. Daniel Day Lewis right there. Right. And you can't hear his weird voice, but you can almost hear it just looking at it. But it's the details. That's the thing about death masks that are so, I think, alluring to some people, is it's not only the detail of their age and face and what life did to them, but it's also the detail of the absence of life. It's a death mask, like the hollow eyes, or in the case of Dillinger, the bullet hole. Apparently, his death mask was so detailed, they did such a good job with it that you could see the abrasions on his face from where he hit the pavement when he fell down dead. Yeah. Looking at some of these up close, like, the details are remarkable. It's pretty eerie. Yeah. So if you can't make it to Princeton, you can check out the Lawrence Hutton. Just type in Lawrence Hutton Princeton, and they'll bring that up. It's pretty cool. Little website you can spend some time on. Yeah. And if you do go to Princeton, they got a great little Brew pub. You should go to see the death mask. Go have some beer. What Brew pub? I mean, I can't remember. I mean, I assume it's still there. It opened new when I was living there in the mid ninety S. I bet you it's still there. But it was kind of new at the time. It was like, whoa. Brewpub. Yeah. This is crazy. It's crazy. All right, so let's talk about how you do this, shall we? Yes. You need to do it really soon after the person dies because you don't want the bloat to set in. You can distort the face. And they want the death face not two days after that. Right, exactly. Yeah. So they would apply grease to the face, especially on facial hair, because it made it easier to take the bandages off. And they didn't want to rip out your eyebrows. Yeah. Because you still had a funeral to hold. Exactly. You didn't want to look like Sergeant Mouser from Police Academy. Do you remember? Yeah. He's got his eyebrows going on. Have you ever seen anyone with no eyebrows? I saw Mouser. It's just weird because sometimes you can't pinpoint why they look so freaky. I remember a guy in high school shaved his eyebrows. One of the bad kids oh, yeah. Came in one day with this. That's how he was rebelling. I don't know. He was just one of those bad kids. Like, I didn't associate with them because I was a good boy. Right. But he came in one day in my industry large class, he has eyebrows shaved. And it freaked me out. Really? Yeah. I definitely didn't have anything to do with after that. It was really strange looking. He shaved his eyebrows. Yeah. I think it was probably the Pink Floyd thing. So then you apply the plaster bandages. It's interesting. The first layer is where you get all your detail. That's really what the death mask is. And then all the other layers just reinforce that first layer. Right. It telegraphs it. Anybody who's ever hung drywall knows that if you don't get that thing smooth when you tape it, it just is broadcast throughout the whole wall. It's just ruined. Yeah. I just burn the house down. My guest bedroom. Yeah. You know, that is a very bad job in there. And it's funny, when contractors have come by since then, they've gone in that room, and I've been like, yeah. Boy, I don't know who did this drywall jump. Hilarious. It sucks. All right, so the plaster sets. Back in the day, it took about an hour. These days, it'll set in just a few minutes. And then you carefully remove the mold. You've got your negative, and then it's up to you. You can do a wax positive, you can do bronze. What else? However much you want to charge people. Yeah, I guess so. Marble. There's one in Napoleon that they made out of marble. Really? Yeah. He's not very intimidating when you see his death mask. Yeah. I mean, they broke his spirit pretty good. Yeah, sure. Exile to an island where it's just you and some other jerks. Yeah, it might have been nice. Yeah. I don't think he liked it. He was too bent on taking over the world. To stick him on an island was like the greatest insult is what you control now, Napoleon. Just little tiny space. You said that these days, plaster dries in a few minutes. And actually, there were death masks. I'm sure somebody somewhere is still making a death mask here or there, but George Bernard Shaw had one made when he died in the 1950s. Oh, wow. So it's still something of a modern event. I'm totally going to get one made. Are you? Yeah, why not? All right. Nikola Tesla had one made. Yes. Have you ever seen his is interesting because I've only seen the one picture. That one? Yeah, as a younger man. So when he got older, I don't know, the ears were huge and his nose was really large. It doesn't look that large in this picture. And I guess I've never seen it in profile, but yeah, he looks sort of like David Bowie. No, it was the old guy who took all the drugs. Walter, Matthew, not Burrows, but Timothy Leary. Sort of looked like a Timothy Leary before he died. Got you. Just old. Remember Timothy Leary died on Webcam, right? Oh, really? Didn't he live stream his death even before anyone knew how to live stream? He figured it out somehow. I had no idea. I believe he did. That's sad. I'm sure it's up on the Web. All right, so we tell our awesome kind of fact of the podcast story. Sure. Man of the unknown woman of the scene. A-K-A. The Linconid laser. 19th century Paris. Josh here's the story. An anonymous woman moves to Paris from the country, falls in love with a young man, and gets her heart broke. And two by this French jerk. She is distraught. She cast herself into the river and the river. I believe so. And nobody claimed the body ever. And the mortician was taken by her beauty, and he said, oh, this dead lady is so hot. Well, maybe. But he was taken with her beauty and her calm, almost peaceful expression on her face. No one ever claimed her. He did a death mask and said, now she is known as the Unknown Women of the Scene, or the Sin, aka the Lincoln. And a lot of people ended up having copies of this death mask in their house as, I guess, art or something. Yeah. It's kind of weird, but, I mean, this is before collector's plates had come along, maybe. True. And it was like spoons from St. Louis or this lady's death mask. Right. So the author of this article poked some holes in that story. Yeah. The truth is that this death mask was in wide circulation, right? Yes. But it probably wasn't from a woman who drowned, because her features would have become bloated and distorted by the time she started to float to the surface. And she also looks kind of peaceful. So they think that it's probably a life mask posed for by a live model, but they never recorded who it was. But the mystery around it, I think, probably helped sell some of the death masks. Sure. So they kept it going, and then that's the end of the story. You think? Here's where it gets really good. Me yes. Peter Safar, an Austrian doctor, is developing this really radical new thing called trying to save someone who's having a heart attack. Right. Rather than just being like, oh, well, yeah. Which is something I could do. There is something you can do. It's called CPR. And he championed it and got in touch with a Norwegian toy maker named asmund Lardoll. That sounds so made up. It does. In Armandozerian. And said, you know what? I need a way to teach this. I need some sort of, like, plastic dummy to teach people how to do this new thing called CPR. And the guy says, I got just the thing. We'll use this face of this woman of the scene and throw it on a dummy bust. And that is who Recessa Annie was. And as I was reading this the whole time, I was like, no way is that Recessa Annie. And it was on the following page was the sentence that became Recessa Annie. And I literally felt like I don't know, it felt like exalted. Yeah. Man. I used to put my mouth on that thing on the 19th century death mask? Yeah, every summer for lifeguarding. My mom used to teach CPR classes, and she had a recessa annie and the kid, too, who had, like, that snappy little tracksuit, like dark blue tracksuit, striped colors. You had these in your house? Yeah, it was a little off putting, the new, but yeah, eventually I was like, it's neat. Yes. I can't believe I'm still a little blown away. That's who they ended up using. Yeah. Very neat. And when you looked and I looked up the death mask, and then I looked up pricessa. Annie and I was like, yeah, that's her. That's cool. Except she's got nostrils and a mouth hole. Right. Which is very important if you're going to practice CPR. Right. Or if you're going to make a life mask. You want to make sure that the person has a way to breathe, and that's usually through straws into the nostrils. Josh if you live in Michigan midland County Historical Museum. There they have Jesse James and Butch Cassidy. You can go by and check that out. You know, if you go to the Makers Mark Distillery, their little tour, they have a Frank James gun. One of the owners'grandfathers was the guy who Frank James surrendered to, and he handed his pistol. It's pretty neat. Have you ever been there? Did you dip your own bottle? No. They let you do that? They do. Yeah, I know. Why didn't you do that? Man how can you go to the makers market and not dip your own bottle? If you dip your own bottle, then it becomes a memento, and that seems like a waste of bourbon. Oh, you wouldn't drink it? Sure. All right. Where else? There's this very cool thing called the Black Museum. I looked this up in Scotland Yard. Oh, yeah? I want to go there. Well, you can't. I know. I want to meet a Scotland Yard detective who can get me in. Well, you can't. You're not a Scotland Yard detective yourself. I will then go to Scotland Yard Detective School so I can get into this thing. This thing has been around since 1874 and then moved and refurbished in the 1980s to New Scotland Yard. And it was originally called the Black Museum. Now. It's called the crime museum. And, dude, they have, like, letters from Jack the Ripper in there. Wow. They have nooses that hung famous people. They have weapons from famous murder cases and a bunch of death masks, apparently. Why would you not let the public in? That's a travesty. I think any British police officer can go if they, like, make a reservation. Like, you don't have to be a Scotland Yard dick, but, yeah, pretty cool. Jack the Ripper letters. That's awesome. Yeah. There's got to be some movie plot based around the Black Museum that you could come up with that seems like just the name itself. Like everything comes alive. Maybe at night. Yeah, there you go. There's your movie. And poor Ben stiller gets in trouble, and that's where it goes south. If you want to learn more about death masks and you want to see some cool pictures of death masks, you can type the words deathmasks into the search barhouseofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time. For what? Well, a couple of quick pieces of business and then listen to mail. Okay, so what's the first order of business, Chuck? Well, we got a TV show coming out on Science Channel January 19, which is right around the corner, 10:00 P.m., airing two episodes on the first night premiere. Night after Idiot Abroad premiere, which is a very good lead in for us. Oh, yeah. We're super excited about that. And what more do you need to know? Nothing. You need to know that you should be there and watching. Yeah. Set your little DVR and give us some love. Make some noise at the Science Channel Facebook page. That will help us out. Yeah. And Twitter. Yeah, we appreciate it. What about listening? Okay, Josh, I'm going to call this Martha. Martha's got a few corrections for us. Okay. And we haven't done corrections in a while, but on our topic of peak oil, okay, she's in the business. She knows a lot about it. First of all, she Affirms me, which I like. Chuck was right, guys. Dinosaurs in no way, shape or form make up oil or gas deposits. Most of the source material comes from things like algae and phytoplankton that has died and sunk to the bottom of its lake, ocean, or sea. Number two, the things you said about proved reserves being unreliable. It's partially true, guys. In some countries, like the US. And Canada, UK and members of the Eurozone, approved reserves are actually audited by regulatory bodies. In the US. It's the SEC. This because an investor would most likely consider the amount approved reserves a company has access to, since that tends to be a good indicator of the health of the firm. Whether or not it's a sound investment, if you misrepresent your reserves to the public, the SEC will come after you, and the penalties can be severe. So in some countries, the proof reserves is very conservative, actually heavily audited, and is probably pretty reliable. But she did point out that other countries where they might not want to be as forthcoming you can get some hinky numbers, right? I feel like we said that I can't remember. And then, number three, she takes us to task a little bit on fracking. She said, I know it's a contentious subject and we just should do a podcast on this. It's in my ideas, too. You guys refer to fracking as causing an environmental disaster every time someone does it. You may call me a shill, but even Lisa Jackson of EPA, who is not a friend of the oil industry, has said that there are. No proven cases of fracking resulting in underground fresh water contamination and fracking has been conducted in the US. Since the 1940s. It's far more likely that poor, well designed and bad cement jobs would be the culprit. However, there is a big study being conducted right now by the EPA, so all this may change if they find something. But as of now, the science doesn't support the position of most anti fracking groups. So I definitely want to do a podcast on this now. Let's do it. I feel like she's challenged. I feel like she's using psychology on this right now. She is. I love your show. I find it fascinating, but I'm weird like that. Keep up the great work. Can't wait to see your TV show in January. And that is for Martha. Martha, that was a perfect letter from an expert, somebody in the field taking us a task, being nice about it, letting us tell everybody else that maybe we got it wrong, maybe we didn't, and then mention here on TV show exactly. So thank you for the perfect letter. Yes, if you want to send us the perfect tweet, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can send us the perfect Facebook posting at facebook. Comstuffyshenknow. And you can send us a perfect email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetaffworks.com. Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school is out, the sun shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen 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 of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
Is fluoride making us stupid? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-fluoride-making-us-stupid | Fluoride is a common additive in toothpaste and the water supply of some countries. It's purportedly good for dental health, but some evidence suggests that it's actually harmful. Discover the dark side of fluoride in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Fluoride is a common additive in toothpaste and the water supply of some countries. It's purportedly good for dental health, but some evidence suggests that it's actually harmful. Discover the dark side of fluoride in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:31:26 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=18, tm_min=31, tm_sec=26, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=225, tm_isdst=0) | 25581272 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Everybody loves Altoids, little mints that come in tents. But once you the ments are gone, you can do some really neat things with the leftover. Ten people have made empty three players, cameras, even stoves. Check out howstopworks. Cominnovators to find out more. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. It's stuff you should know with Josh Clarke. That's me. And Charles W. Bryant. That's you. Right. And this is really stuff you should know. Yes. Not like the usual gobbledygook that we just toss out there. This is an important one. Sure. I think so, too. We're talking about what? The CDC classifies in the top ten accomplishments of public health of the 20th century. Indeed. It also might be one of the most nefarious pots ever perpetrated on the global public. Good stuff. Let's do it. Let's do a Chuck. We're talking about fluoride, the seemingly innocuous stuff that is added to our water supply and our toothpaste and diet pills. Mouthwash. What else? Soft drinks. Well, that's stuff that we ingest. It's also in rat poison and things like that. Antipsychotic medications? Yes. Not painkillers. Tranquilizers. Tranquilizers, yeah. It's all over the place. And actually, it is exceedingly difficult to get rid of or to get away from anything that has water in it. Say, a soft drink sure. Is going to have fluoride in it too, because pretty much all of our water has fluoride in it, at least here in the States. Yes. 60% of American cities fluoridate their own water fluoridate water that already has naturally occurring fluoride in it, which is hinky. It is. Hanky, let's talk about fluoride first. Right. Back in the 1940s here in the States, we should also say around the world, this is not necessarily the case. There are some countries that absolutely don't fluoridate water. Some used to. Like Denmark and Switzerland are among those that used to and don't anymore. France never did. No. But in the States, we've been hot and heavy about fluoridating water for a long time, since 1945, when Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first city to add fluoride to it's already fluoridated water. Right. And Grand Rapids became the kind of model city for this. It was studied extensively. And the whole reason we started fluoridating water is and as Chuck likes to say, I find this hinky. Sure. Scientists discovered that areas where naturally occurring fluoridated water was being drunk by the citizens. There was also a correlation with a decline in dental carries. Right. All about the teeth. Dental carries are any kind of signs of decay, like a cavity or something like that. It's an umbrella term for them. Right. So they decided, hey, we should add fluoride to the water and put it in toothpaste, and we'll get our teeth in shape here in this country. And since then, everybody's fine with fluoride. It's totally cool if you'll remember toothpaste used to be touted with fluoride? Yeah. It's actually a little more difficult to find that little label these days. Right. The Ada. American Dental Association says it's great. The World Health Organization, they came out in 1969 and said it's good stuff, big organizations are behind it. And there actually has been a major decline in tooth decay since then. Back in the early forty s, I believe in the US, the average kid had 15 dental carries. Right. That's a lot. That is a lot. I mean, that makes me look good. Do you have a lot of cavities or a lot of fillings? I'm like a crackhead over here. Yeah. I remember when I was a kid and I kept getting fillings every time. I rather sardonically. Told my dentist one time, why don't you just go ahead and fill them all right? Now just get it over with. You were sardonic way back then. Yeah, I keep coming back in here and you do a couple every time, so why don't you just go ahead and do them all? He said, well, that's no kind of attitude, really. Right, exactly. And I went, Me? Yeah. Okay. And all of a sudden you forgot what you're talking about. Exactly. Yeah. So, again, Florida endorsed across the board almost by almost every major dental association, public Health Association, the CDC, as we said, the World Health Organization, and they all point to studies that show that fluoride is perfectly fine, even though it's an insecticides and rat poisons and tranquilizers. Right. The problem is, there are also plenty of studies that have surfaced or been conducted over the years that show fluoride is not necessarily fine. Now, are we going to get to the dark side now? Is it time? I don't see any reason to hold off any longer. I mean, we talked about how there's been a decrease in dental carries since fluoride was introduced. Right. The thing is, the impression I have is everybody seems to be okay with adding fluoride to toothpaste. Right. But it's the water supply that really gets people's eye up. Right, right. I think, because it's already in there. Not just that. And also, we should say that the optimal, as far as the EPA is concerned, the optimal amount of fluoride added to drinking water is four parts per million. Right? Yes, indeed. And anything over that up to 14 parts per million, is considered dangerous. Right. And way back in 1092, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that more than 200,000 people in the US. Were drinking water with fluoride levels above four parts per million. And what are some of the dangers? Well, some of the dangers are discoloration and corrosion of your teeth, which is called dental fluorosis. Yes. Which is ironic. That something else. The whole point of fluoride is to prevent dental decay. Right. And over exposure, or prolonged exposure, say, oh, I don't know, over the course of a lifetime, it can actually degrade your teeth health. It can actually accelerate decay. And not just teeth, but bones as well. Right. Which is skeletal fluorosis. Right. It can also cause seizures. It can also cause severe gastrointestinal upset, can lower your IQ, supposedly. Allegedly. Well, that's not necessarily allegedly. There's a bunch of studies that have been shown that there is at least a correlation between high fluoride exposure and low IQ. Right. China's big on that. Actually, there's been a slew of studies that come out of China that show that. And the Chinese have also conducted other studies outside of China. So it's not just China that's got heavily fluoridated. Dummies. Right. So, Chuck, I guess now let's pull the trigger. Let's get into the whole conspiracy aspect of this. Yes. There's something called the fluoride conspiracy, which we found quite disturbing. We did speak for you. Yeah, please do. And should we go back to 1924 and kind of set up how this happened? Yes, let's go back in time, Josh, like we'd love to do. 62 years from the release of Ghostbusters, the IG Farming Company in Germany, they're a chemical manufacturing company. They started getting loans from banks here in America. So what that led to was Henry Ford and American Standard Oil merged with IG Farmer. And in the early 30s, all of a sudden, there were more than 100 corporations who had cooperatives and subsidiaries in Germany. So all of a sudden, we have a lot of manufacturing and business going on in Germany. Early 30s. Right. Flash forward a little bit to 39 under the Altat Agreement and the American Aluminum Company, which is the largest producer of sodium fluoride, and Dow everyone knows about Dow, the chemical company. Sure. They transfer technology to Germany as well. So all of a sudden, you have what's known as the fluoride mafia. Right. Quote unquote, because that was the largest producer of sodium fluoride in the world at the time. Right, right. And I guess we should say that here's the deal. Fluoride is a byproduct of a lot of manufacturing processes. Hydrofluorocylicic acid is exactly. We should also say at this point that the studies that are conducted on the dangers of fluoride, which no one disputes, there is such a thing as fluoride toxicity. Right. That's fact. What's in dispute is, number one, whether or not it will actually affect intelligence, and number two, whether the risks of fluoride toxicity outweigh the benefits to dental health. Right. Okay. Right. Okay. So go ahead, Chuck. So now flash forward a little bit more into World War II. The US. Government sends a guy named Charles Elliott Perkins, and he's a research chemistry guy. They sent him to Germany to work with the chemical plants over there with the IG Farming Company. Right. And a German chemistry told him of a scheme which was devised that the German chemists were going to no, they had been they had been giving fluoride to prisoners of war. Is that right? They were fluoridating, heavily fluoridating, from how I take it, the water at the POW camps in Germany, to, quote, make them stupid and docile. Yes. Interesting. Very interesting. So apparently that caught the attention of the Americans. It did indeed. In 1939, Gerald Cox, who was a chemist employed by the aluminum company. Right. Yeah. It concludes in a study with lab rats that fluoride reduces the cavities, dental cavities. And this is where everything just kind of picks up from there. Like, all of a sudden, fluoride is associated with a reduction in dental caries. And now we need to just start adding it to our drinking water. Right. Oscar Ewing, who is a longtime attorney for the aluminum company, is appointed head of the Federal Security Agency, which places him in charge of the Public Health Service. And over the next three years after that, 87 American cities started Florida in their water. Right. And this is just an early example of the revolving door. You know about the revolving door, right? We've talked about it before school. Me. It's like Paulson. Yeah, paulson, when he was head of the treasury. Sure. He was a Goldman Sachs man. And of course, Kashkari, he was a Goldman Sachs man too. The revolving door is basically this interaction, this interplay between the private sector and public office. So the private sector will send some of their top people to serve in public office, affect policy change that helps this private sector, and then they come out and get huge bonuses in a cush job. Exactly. This is exactly what you're talking about now with Oscar Ewing in. Allegedly. Right. We need to keep saying that word. Oh, yeah. So basically, Josh, the aluminum manufacturing and fertilizer and weapons industries start conducting this education and research for fluoride, saying how great it is when it's one of their biggest byproducts. And apparently the deal is it's a very expensive byproduct to get rid of it is it's also toxic waste? So very conveniently. They have all these studies that come out and say, hey, it's really good for you. And we buy these companies and we just happen to have a bunch, so let's start selling it to municipalities to put into their water supply. Right. Should we talk about Eddie Bernays? Edward Bernays, real quick. Yeah, actually, Chuck, we had a suggestion from one of our listeners a while back when we talked about I think it was a propaganda episode, right. And he sent in some stuff about Edward Bernays. Oh, really? I think Edward Bernays actually deserves his own podcast. This guy created PR and like the kind of thank you for smoking PR, the original spin doctor, what they call it. I think we should do one on them. I agree. Okay, so Barnay is funded by these industrialists to try and encourage this PR campaign that fluoride is good for you. You're going to read the quote? No, I want you to. All right. So Bernaise is quoted as saying, you can get practically any idea, except that if doctors are in favor, the public is willing to accept it because the doctor is in authority to most people, regardless of how much he knows or doesn't know. How about that? Yeah. Which is true. And actually, Chuck, I should say, you know my cute little girlfriend, she's sharp as a tack. Indeed. She and I were watching something about an elliptical machine or something that was an infomercial for it, and they had this doctor on, and he was touting the health benefits of this machine, but it said his name and then New York cardiologist. And it just completely went over my head. And she stopped and was like, what is the fact that he's a New York cardiologist have to do with anything? And I realized, like, New York Cardiologists had just buzzed into my brain and it was an infomercial. So I took the guy with a grain of salt to begin with. Right. But I did not notice at all that it was a New York cardiologist I was listening to. But I'm sure that still had an effect on the legitimacy that this guy had. In my opinion, if it would have said Des Moines Pediatrician, you probably wouldn't have had that chevroygan pediatrician. Sure. We always make fun of Shabbat for Detroit. Even worse for Eau Claire. Yeah. Wisconsin. So basically, these doctors weren't necessarily bad guys and ladies, but they never really got these studies. A lot of these studies were allegedly suppressed, and people that opposed it were called cranks and quacks. And so all these doctors are seeing these cooked studies, essentially cooking the books. Nice. Chuck allegedly get them. Chuck recently declassified documents about the Manhattan Project Josh, where we made the atomic bomb, found out that fluoride is a key chemical ingredient in the atomic bomb. Even worse than that, though, there was an Ada study that apparently said that fluoride does pose a health risk, and the Atomic Energy Agency actually redacted much of this study. So when the American Dental Association is being redacted by the Atomic Energy Agency, right? That should raise some sort of flag. You know the reason they gave, though? What? National security. Oh, sure, yeah. And apparently, Chuck, whenever the government pulls out national security, including lawsuits which are archnemesis, IRA Glass recently covered in this American Life story on the origins of things. There's absolutely nothing you can do. That's it. The judge just says, well, this case can't be tried. But you know what else happened in 2003? The Water Act. Yeah. The Water Act was passed. And one of the little things in the Water Act that you may not know about people is that it made it impossible for water companies to undergo civil or criminal hearings as a result of adding fluoride to public water. So he basically said, you can't sue them because we passed the water act. So if someone finds out something awful, there's nothing you can do about it to make money. Yes. Unbelievable. So again, we should go back and say that if you ask the CDC, the Ada, the World Health Organization, if you ask any of these agencies, is fluoride dangerous? They will conclusively say no. Or we should say, does fluoride give you cancer? Right. They will say no. Of course. There are plenty of studies out there that link fluoride to cancer. Again, these studies appear to be repressed. Have you heard of Phyllis Mullanex? Yeah. Great. Let's talk about her. She was, what, a Harvard researcher? Yes. Toxicologist. She was a New York cardiologist in the 1990s, and she was about to publish a study on the links between cancer and fluoride and also IQ, too, was that right? Well, yes. She thought that it might lead to lower IQ and ADHD. Yeah, because during her studies of rodents, they were displaying symptoms and signs of ADHD. And we'd also already long known that fluoride exposure causes osteosarcomas, which is bone cancer in rats. She was doing the link between ADHD, lower IQ, and fluoride, and she was fired a couple of days before her findings were published. Right. So she goes to the National Institutes of Health for a research grant to continuous studies, and they said, fluoride does not lower IQ. It does not affect intelligence, and turn it down. Sorry, we have no money for you. Right. National Institutes of Health are not supposed to write the conclusions for researchers before their studies are published. Right. And you know what she was fired from what her job was. She was ahead of toxicology at the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston. Yes. Interesting. The plot is getting so thick, I can barely put my hand in it. It is. This is honestly, I'd never heard of this. In Ben Bowen, they did on the soon to be released stuff they don't Want You to Know, a video podcast. They did one on fluoride, so we kind of borrowed from them. Well, we actually asked Ben, the godfather, for his blessing, and he very generously gave it to us. Right. Go to Florence. Right. So, Chuck, here's the biggest one to me. This is the one that gets me the most. Okay? Okay. So the studies that show that fluoride poses little to no health risk if it's delivered at four parts per million or less in fluoridated water. Number one are about 20 years old. Right. And number two were conducted using pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride. Right. This is the stuff that actually is in toothpaste, really high grade stuff. And that's why no one really has any problem with fluoride and toothpaste. It's the fluoride in the drinking water supply, as we said earlier, that people are worried about. One of the reasons why is that while some cities do put sodium fluoride in their water supply, it's still not pharmaceutical grade. And even worse. A lot of cities use hydrofluorocillicic acid, which chuck, you mentioned that it's a byproduct of fertilizer production, munitions production, aluminum production, scrubbed from the smokestacks. Say it again, Chuck. Scrubbed from the inside of smokestacks of fertilizer plants. Fertilizer plants. And put into our water. Put into truck, shipped to water treatment plants, where it sold the cities and inserted into the water supply. Dude, I'm not Mr. Conspiracy Guy. It interests me. But this is one of those where I was blown away. Well, I think the great irony of this podcast is that the aluminum foil hats were wearing were actually produced by Alcoa. Come on. How's that for full circle? Yeah, but we're not getting any. It's bouncing off all the radio magnetic electromagnetic waves. What am I saying? I know what you're saying, buddy. So that's Florida, actually, that's kind of just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah. Really? One thing that I took part in is that it seems like more and more legitimate groups are undertaking studies or re evaluations of some of the studies that were conducted on whether or not fluoride poses a health risk starting in the 21st century. And it looks like people are starting to take a slightly more scrutinizing view of it, because over the long dead. And so are all of the revolving door people who got this whole thing started. So we'll see. Right. The EPA is one of them, actually. Thank God. I saw one of their scientists in their union, chapter 280. It's taken a big stand against it. Dr. William Herze, and he's the Vice president of that chapter of the EPA. And he says that fluoride is a hazardous waste product for which there is substantial evidence of adverse health effects and contrary to public perception, virtually no evidence of significant benefits. Right? Boom. Right. And when the scientist union starts talking, it's bad because you've got egg heads and leg breaking teamsters right. Rolled into one. You don't want to mess with that. A Teamster nerd combo is deadly. And actually, if you're looking for a legitimate source, a legitimate voice of opposition to fluoridating water, you should check out anything Dr. Hardy Lineback has written. He's an associate professor of dentistry. He's the head of preventative dentistry at the University of Toronto. Okay. He's a vocal opponent of fluoridating water. He's got some great points. Hardy, Limback. Cool stuff, Josh. Yeah, that's Florida. That's it. We should probably have to find another conspiracy one to do, because our conspiracy ones really get people going. People love that CIA and LSD fake moon landing. Actually, MKUltra was used in some of these experiments that was part of under the MKUltra umbrella. This floor ideal. Well, there's like 249 or 149 programs under MKUltra. So you're going to get the fluoride sooner or later, especially if the Nazis are saying, dude, it totally makes your population docile. Right? And they're like, you should try LSD. Yeah, there was a big exchange back and forth. Everybody is just, wow, pretty cool. Is it time? Four. Listen or mail? All right, Josh, I'm going to call this I've got a couple here. I'm going to call it. Answer to our query that we pose. Which one? When we asked what the woman who had the lightning go through her kitchen? And we actually asked paloma. Yeah, Paloma. So, Josh, if you remember, Paloma wrote in and said that she had this lightning travel through her kitchen and allowed buzzing, popping sound, but it went right in front of her face and passed from one wall to another. Absolutely. But left her totally unharmed. Totally unharmed. And it didn't even leave a mark on any of the walls that have passed her? It did not. And there was no thunder in the area afterward. Right, right. Or there was, but it was far away. Right. Okay. No loud clap of thunder. So this one is actually we had a few people right in, but this is from Tyler. He's a grad student at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota, class of 2013. He's a youngster yes. He says, I nearly lost it when I heard your quandary today. I've been listening to you guys for months and never felt that anything truly worthy to add, but now I'm thrilled. My older sister had gotten a series of Time Life books. Remember those? Containing a plethora of odd and amazing stories? I think I read I have those, actually. Yeah. Well, I had the old west series. That was the best one. Shot a man for snoring too loud. You remember that? Yeah. When she moved, I took up the collection and let them gather dust. However, I recently started reading them, and they're both entertaining and revealing. The story you read on the air sounds very close to ball lightning. Sure. The only major difference is the writer didn't mention any damage to her house, and most Ball lightning stories do note some damage. So I'm not 100% sure, but it sounds like ball lightning. So we got that from Tyler, and we also got that from Kent in Elgin, Illinois. Brian and Montana, who's 14. All right. Sarah of Unknown origins. Kelsey in Astoria, New York And Finnigan also said that, and he also requested that I do my cheek thing and say ponzi. But Finnigan, Josh and I are not dancing monkeys since we perform trips for you. It's a puns there. You're so easy. I am so easy, yeah. So thanks to all of you for writing that in. I have to say, as far as I know, ball lightning's existence has never been conclusively proven. But again, you know me. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. Josh soft encounter. Clark yeah. Soft encounter with fact. Does that make sense? Yeah. All right, well, if you want to send us anything, whatever, send us something. We're not going to call for anything because every time we do, we get a bunch of stuff. I want a bunch of different stuff, whatever people want to do. And, Chuck, didn't you want to issue a command for this stuff you should Know Nation. Oh, I did. I was proving itunes and I was looking at some of our reviews, which some are very kind, some aren't so kind. Some people don't like, wow, fine, whatever. Okay? But we only had like 700 comments, and I saw that Adam Corolla's podcast had like 5000, I should say. At this point, Chuck flew into a rage. He broke chairs, he finished off the fifth of whiskey, and he groped anything in sight, including me. It was ugly. It was ugly. So I just thought I'd say, hey, guys, go to itunes, if you will, at some point, and leave a comment and review in the Stuff You Should Know section. It doesn't have to be great if you don't like it, then you can say that, too. But I just want to get the count up a little higher, so that is my call. We have a lot of listeners and not many of them have responded yet, so let's hear it. This is such a clear abuse of power. Please. How disgusting. Pretty please? All right, so if you want to send us an email about anything at all, remember anything at all, you can send that to stuffpodcast@houseupworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Want more housetoftworks? Check out our blog on the Houseofworks.com homepage. Hey, if you're a fan of Altoids, the Curiously Strong Mints, you probably have a lot of empty tens laying around. You can do some pretty cool stuff with them. You can make survival kits, flash drives, even robots. Check out Altoids on Facebook to find out more. 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 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 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." | ||
How Profiling Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-profiling-works | At its base, criminal profiling is a legitimate investigatory tool. The Supreme Court has drawn a clear line that bans profiling when it includes race. So why do we still do it? | At its base, criminal profiling is a legitimate investigatory tool. The Supreme Court has drawn a clear line that bans profiling when it includes race. So why do we still do it? | Tue, 28 Jul 2015 17:24:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=17, tm_min=24, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=209, tm_isdst=0) | 46776390 | audio/mpeg | "Do do. What was that? That is a heraldic announcement. Yes. Before we get going, I know people on social media already know this stuff, but I wanted to announce on the podcast that Chuck here has adopted a baby girl. Chuck has a baby? A beautiful baby. Yes, she is. She's cute. She was ten days late, so she came out not looking like one of those little alien creatures. No, she's fully formed. Yes. What's her name, Chuck? Her name is Ruby Rose Bryant. Man, she is so cute. And she was born on your birthday? Yes. Isn't that crazy? One of the better days of the year, july 15. But isn't that remarkable? I think it is remarkable. Out of all the days. Yeah. And I was literally I was just like, well, let me scroll through the celebrity birthdays just for giggles to see who shares your birthday. About three quarters of the way down, it's all your face, that's all. And I'd forgotten it was your birthday because I was just in the right and immediately I was like, Emily, you got to see this. You'll never guess whose birthday she shares. So I think that's really neat. Anyway, thank you, everybody, for the support. Stop. Chuck. Yes. On behalf of every stock, you should know listener out there. Yes. Congratulations to you and Emily. Do you feel like you can speak for them? Yes, of course. Okay. Because there might be one guy out there, he's like, I don't care. He can stop listening right now. But I do have some people to thank. This happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we stayed in this little area called East Village. It was literally like a block in this loft in airbnb loft and above pizza place and across the street from a bar. Oh, I bet you have some people. I think. Yeah. These people took us in as family. It was like, literally every day for ten days late. We're out there two days early. So for like two weeks they were like, what's going on? Where's this baby? So I want to thank Hodges Bend, which you would love to do. This cocktail bar. Yeah. Right up your alley. It sounds like it. You said cocktail bar? Yeah. And not only do they make, like, fresh ingredients, but they don't have, like, a thing of cucumber sliced up. They sliced cucumber as needed. Nice. And the jalapeno, they were doing it right there. So Jamie and Nate and Nicole and Ian the chef at hottest band was the stuff you should know. Fan. Oh, yeah. He came out and he was like, is that who I think it is? How fortuitous. How fortuitous. And then East Village bohemian pizzeria. We stayed above this place and they were great. Did the smell drive you nuts all the time? No, but we ate a lot of pizza. So Pat there and my boy Max max and I really hit it off. We're like genuine life pals now. Nice. And he at the end, I go to leave, and I just give him a letter saying thank you, and here's my contact info. And then, like, PS, by the way, I have a podcast. He's an ornithologist. He has his Masters. Wow. But he's not doing that right now. He's running a pizza joint. And just a really smart guy. I think you might like this podcast. I do. He comes up and tells me afterwards. This is, like, our parting words. He's like, Dude, you're chuck. Oh, really? I had a weird thing he said. I knew that you seem familiar, but I didn't want to say anything. Like, he watched the TV show. Oh, wow. So Max was like, that's probably why I didn't want to say anything. Yeah, he didn't want to bring it up. So a huge thanks to those guys. And then our case worker, Jessica, also a Stuff You Should Know, that is amazing, because at the end of our first call, like a month ago, she went, all right, we've got business done. I have something. I have to admit, she's like, I'm a huge fan. So it was weird. It was like the Stuff You Should Know nation sort of caring for me. Yeah. And all of the people you put a picture of Ruby rose up yes. And broke the Internet. People love newborns. Well, yeah, but people love Chuck newborn. Yes, but it could have been a puppy and probably gotten I don't think so, man. That was very sweet. Yes. So that meant a lot to me. But Jessica and her two sons, Hugh and Henry, I know they are listeners, too. They are awesome boys, and she really took care of us. I'm glad it worked out like that, man. Three weeks in Tulsa. It was weird and stressful, but it sounds wonderful. Yes. Good start, though. Yeah, we were in there, and we helped deliver this baby, and I was in the man zone right behind. I am so proud of you guys. I'm so happy for you guys. I also want to say Jerry is not allowed to talk. Jerry feels the exact same way. She's well, we could take the duct tape off today, maybe. Jerry, how do you feel? Yes. She said yeah, she agreed. She just spelled out on the speaking spell, call the police. Anyway, this is not going to become the new baby show. She will probably disappear from your lives. But just know that we're all doing great, and thank you for the support. Okay. All right. Yeah. Nice job, Chuck. Congratulations. Thank you, sir. 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 Jerry. Which means it's time for listener mail. Oh, wait, that's early. Wow. How about that? My brain just start. That's it. We leave that in there. Do you want to yes. Or maybe I should just read listener mail. We can go home. Okay. It's build your own episode. Yeah. It's a Mad libs. Fill it in. I'm profiling. Yeah, styling and profiling. I'm pretty excited. Are you styling and profiling? Well, this is a graph. That's a different thing. Yeah. Okay. I think that has to do with photography. No, I think styling and profiling just means you're living large. Yeah. You're fashionable and hip. Oh, got you. Yeah. This is different. And this is a Grabster article, which is the mark of quality as we all know it is. It's refreshing to see. And we should just say right off the bat, profiling is a super divisive topic. Oh, yeah. There are many ways to look at it, and they make sense sometimes on both sides. It's a tough one. Yeah. So that's my caveat. It's divisive. So one thing that Grabster immediately points out is not all profiling is profiling like you think of sure. We're going to talk about all the different ways. Right. There's plenty of accepted forms of profiling, and the first one is the standard all points bulletin. Or be on the lookout. Right. That's the kind that no one has a problem with. No one does. Yeah. Because you know what that is? That's the silver Toyota Tacoma was spotted today, and white male in his mid 40s with spiky hair and sort of chubby with a big, gross, gray black beard has committed a crime. Right. And he's wearing cargo shorts and flip flops. Oh, I see you're describing yourself profiler, but you put in there white male. Yes. And the reason is what? I am the reason why people don't have a problem with this is twofold. One, a crime has already been committed. Okay. I committed a crime. So the police work is finding a perpetrator that has already committed a crime. And secondly, that profile is based on eyewitness accounts, descriptions of the person. That's right. So that profile is being used to track down a specific person. It has nothing to do with anybody else who's white. Right. It has nothing to do with anybody else who drives a silver Tacoma. It has nothing to do with any of that jazz. It's just this guy is suspected of having committed this crime and he looks like this. Yeah, you see it on the news every night. It's not just cops that uses the news will say the suspect is wearing a handsome checkered oxford, button down, wispy hair and white straight teeth. Exactly. So they're describing you. Oh, you think my teeth are nice? I didn't say that. They said they were white and straight. That's nice, if that's what you're into. This is coming from a guy who just found out he's about to have to lose his front tooth all over again. Start over. Yes. Man, that sucks. Which I know there are some fans out there that are laughing. Aaron Cooper, that toothless chuck is coming back in the house for it's really just him? Yeah. He's the only one who'd be jerky enough to laugh at that kind of misfortune. I know. I'm sorry to bring that up. I'm just still reeling from that discovery. It stinks. You think you get an implant and it's for life. Yeah. Especially when they sell you a lifetime implant. Yeah, exactly. All right, so like you said, including descriptions and skin color is not controversial in this case. No. Everybody from the Feds to the local police are okay with that? Yeah, they're all in on it. Everybody's like, yeah, this is fine. This makes sense. Sure. Not a thing. That's right. The next one is psychological profiling. And this is when you don't have a lot of physical evidence or you don't have an eyewitness, and you're trying to fill in the blanks and make some good guesses. Billy Blanks, based on I remember that guy. Some good guesses. Based on the crime scene or just the circumstances of the crime. Yes. Again, a crime has already taken place, and you're trying to figure out who solved it, and you're taking committed it. You're trying to figure out who's going to solve it precogs which you figure out the same moment as you do when you figure out who committed it. It's interesting. A mind bending twice you've jumped to the end of something. It's so weird. I don't know what that means. I think you know what it means. Sometimes they are vague. Oh, wait, I haven't finished my thought. Okay. I didn't mess it up that bad. Let me go back and finish. All right, the point is, it's drawn from available evidence yeah. Clues. Clues, yeah. That you're bringing together to try to drum up an idea of who did this. Yeah, right, exactly. Okay. Sometimes it can be vague, but if you watch TV and movies, it is probably not how it really goes down, but it's super specific when you see it in fiction. Right. I think this man who was beaten his child and he probably lives alone. Sherlock Holmes was really good at that kind of thing. It's a good point. Love Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, that's good stuff. Did you know he was a morphine and cocaine addict? Oh, really? Yeah. I guess you need both in, like, the original stories. Really? Yeah, in the books. Wow. Not the real guy. Right. Are you sure you're not just thinking of Robert Downey, Jr. Oh, I'm 100% sure. Okay. I mean, I've read the originals, and he shoots morphine in it, and Watson is not very happy with the whole thing. Oh, is he clean? Yeah. He's straight edge. No, he's not straight edge, but he's not a junkie. Right, but he didn't care. He was like, Watson, wash my toes. All right, moving on to predictive profiling. Well, yeah, this is where it starts to get a little messy. Yeah. It can get a little controversial. Even psychological profiling is a little controversial. I have to say, Chuck, it's not a proven, tried and true thing. It's as much a guessing game as anything else. That's true. But it's not nearly still as controversial as predictive profiling, because now you're trying to say these people will probably commit a crime. Right now, civil rights are an issue. Big time. Big time. Police officers do great work. Ideally, they are not just reacting to committed crimes, but they are driving around the neighborhood looking for a suspicious person that might be about to commit a crime to prevent crime. To prevent a crime, which is tough to do, you know, right place, right time in most cases. And you use the word ideally, right? Ideally. Okay. Yes. So even when this happens, the Supreme Court is roundly sided with police officers. There's profiling for justification. So it's legally speaking, okay. It's on the books. It's on the books. Give an example of the kind of profiling that's okay to be used. The one in the article is great. Let's say you're in South Florida, and you're traveling up I 95, and it's 04:00 a.m.. And you're in a rented black SUV with tinted windows, and you have the spare tire in the back seat removed. I'm sorry? It's removed from the trunk area. It's in the back seat. It's just sitting in the back seat. Might be a drug trafficker. Right. And the cop is basing this on something like a profile. Yeah, but a profile based on previous experiences with other drug dealers in the same area, because that's a really big one right there. One of the things for using profiles successfully is it has to be over a certain period of time and associated with a certain place. So you use Miami? Yeah. And say Miami in 1985. Okay. Right. If you saw that person, and you would say, well, this is probably a cocaine trafficker based on all the other dealings with cocaine traffickers who use the same transportation mo. Yeah. And we should point out the tires removed because you can then hide the drugs where the spare tire went. Right. And then that's why the tires in the backseat. Yes. So these are red flags. Yeah. But if you're, like, in Wyoming in 2015, and you read an article about how that held true in Miami in 1985, that is not necessarily a justifiable transference of profiling because it exists in a different time and a different place. That's right. So, like you said, this can be high level policy. It can be unofficial policy. It can be just merely experience as a police officer. That's something you've encountered from time to time. And basically to determine if this profile justifies a search warrantless search, that is. In other words, you haven't gone to the judge and applied for a warrant and had them review it and all that stuff, or rubber stamp it, which we'll get to. It's got a stand up in court. So you got to be careful. As a cop, you do. You have to have what's called an articulable suspicion yes. Which was established by a supreme court ruling, terry versus Ohio. And the supreme Court said this is actually from a Matthia Abby article. It's really worth reading. It's called why Baltimore Blew up. It was in Rolling Stone like a month or two ago. It's a very good article, but he talks about this Terry case led to what are called Terry stops. Whereas if a cop has a suspicion that they can put into words, meaning it's not just a hunch right. That somebody is either just committed a crime or going to commit a crime, that that is probable cause. It sounds for a search. Yeah. And here's ed had a great example here. Like, let's say the cop in court would say this the suspect appeared nervous, made several contradictory statements. In the back seat, I saw a shoe box full of old film canisters, which drug couriers commonly use. The car smell like air freshener spray, which is used to cover up the smell of drugs. And I spotted them driving slowly up and down a block that I know is frequented by drug dealers. Right. That's called good police work in court. Right. That's called like a prosecutor's dream cop. Yeah. And if you go back and you notice all of that stuff, all of these things are based on a block that he knows to be frequented by drug dealers. 35 millimeter canisters. Maybe he read a Police benevolent association newsletter article about that. Right. All of this stuff together becomes what's called cumulative similarities. And supposedly a Florida highway patrolman named Bob Vogel is the first guy to put this down on paper. He was very controversial, which is you take all of these different things and put them together and you can form a profile and you can use that to pull somebody over right. And then eventually search their car if you're a Florida highway patrolman, right? Yes. So you have the Terry stops, which are used for broken windows policing and just for pulling people over. Yeah. But they require an articulable suspicion. Right. But they can be based on what are called cumulative similarities, which is a profile. Either, like your police department is saying, be on the lookout for people driving with their spare tire in the back seat at this time of night. Yeah. On so far, this has all been upheld by the supreme Court. That's right. But there is a very fine line that is frequently crossed, and we will talk about how that runs afoul of the constitution right after this. All right, Josh, before we took a break, you mentioned something called the constitution, and there are a couple of amendments that come into play when you're talking about searching, seizure, probable cause, profiling. Sure. And they are the fourth and 14th amendment. The fourth reads in hold the right of the people to be secure. In their persons. You said, JFK. I went into him. Wings and Churchill. Sure. It's both. Houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons of things to be seized. Right. So there's some big words in there, right? Big. Big like money words, like it's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Which means as far as the Supreme Court is concerned, some cops just can't say, I'm going to push you up against the wall and pat you down for no reason whatsoever. Yeah. Or I'm going to pull you over for no reason and I'm going to start your car on the side of the road. Exactly. For no reason does not happen, right? No, of course not. Sure. So that's the Fourth Amendment right. Yes. And there's another big term in there, it's called probable cause. You have to have and a lot of people say that 1968 Terry versus Ohio ruling is just too broad and articulable suspicion. Like, what is that? But even still, there has to be some sort of probable cause. And a lot of the times as we'll see it's just from something out in plain sight or something like that, but there's a big struggle over what constitutes probable cause. But the point is, the Fourth Amendment says you have to have probable cause or else it's an unreasonable search. That's right. And a police officer in most cases has to go get a warrant for the search of a home or something. And there's a whole issue of rubber stamping warrants these days, of course, that the judge may not even really review. It's just a formality. Right. Or for anybody who's watched enough Law and Order episodes, all you have to do is go, I smell pot. Do you smell pot? Wink, wink and then kick the door in. Yeah, exactly. Because you can't prove that the cop didn't think he smelled pot. Exactly. Now, there's the threat of perjuring himself on the stand, but I imagine at least as far as, like, Brisco and Green are concerned, they're hoping that they're going to find such gangbuster, overwhelming evidence that everybody's going to forget about the fake smell of pot. Right. So there was actually a case which relates to probable calls called the US v. Sokolo that made it all the way to the SCOTUS. Did you read about that case? I did. It was well, that was when the ruling was right. Yeah. So what happened was the DEA arrested a guy at the Honolulu Airport, found over 1000 grams of cocaine in his carry on. He had a kilo and the agents knew all this going into it. This is why they arrested him. He paid $2,100 for round trip tickets with a roll of $20 bills. He traveled under a name that did not match the name under which his telephone was listed. Okay. He was originally going to Miami. And this is like, at the time, he only stayed in Miami for two days, even though a round trip flight from honolulu takes 20 hours. So very quick trip. In other words, he was almost flying as long as he was there. Right. In miami, he met up with a man named tony montana. Apparently, he appeared nervous, and he did not check his baggage. And the district court denied motion to suppress the evidence that it was justifiable the court of appeals disagreed and overturned that. And then eventually it went to the supreme court, and they said, no, it's okay, because they had what was, quote, a totality of evidence. So here's the thing, though. The thing that makes that so groundbreaking. And nowadays, we were raised under soclo. Right. It seems like this is just the norm, but it was a groundbreaking case at the time, because none of that it's not against the law to pay your plane ticket with cash. It's not against the law to not check your bags. Now, at the time, it wasn't against the law to travel under an assumed name. Yeah. And I don't think at the time, it was against the law to go to Miami just for two days. Right. Exactly. None of this is against the law. Yeah. And so if you just followed the strict interpretation of law up to that point, they couldn't bust this guy, even though when they busted him, they found a kilo of coke, like they knew they would, in his bag. There wasn't enough there. And the supreme court said, you know what? We think that when you put all that stuff together, there is enough there. Yeah. Now, what constitutes that totality? Is it two pieces of evidence? It's one thing. Sure. How much does it take to profile? But what they were saying in socallow was yes. The stuff that you've seen from other proven criminals applied to somebody else who you don't yet fully know as a criminal is enough for you to bust them. Right. And see if you're right. Yeah. Again, it's not, like, groundbreaking. He didn't go straight to jail. They looked in his bag. Yes, but do you have the right to look in the bag? Is what it comes down to. Yeah. And they were saying that the supreme court's interpretation is this stands up to the fourth amendment. Yeah. And I imagine the guy went to Miami for two days. Right. Get your civil rights. Goodbye. So, with the 14th amendment, it states in part that no state shall make or enforce any law which will abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the US. I think everybody wants the kennedy voice again, chuck. Okay. I think anytime you read amendments from the bill of rights, you have to do it like that. Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws. Yeah. So this one applies. You might say, well, we've got the Fourth, we don't need the 14th. 14th says, look, man, you can't just bust somebody without this. Again, due process of law, and we have a due process of law. And what the Supreme Court did with cases like So Colo and with cases like Terry versus Ohio is they said profiling is part of the due process of law. That's right. So one thing that they have gone back to again and again and again is that if race is factored in almost any circumstances, there are circumstances that is where racial profiling is allowed in police work. But for the most part, if you're basing your suspicions of criminal wrongdoing on race largely or in part, then that is not that runs afoul of the Fourth and the 14th Amendment, and you're not allowed to do that. Yeah. The Grabster points out that cops, unless you have an APB out on a Hispanic male or a black male right. Then you're supposed to be colorblind as a cop. Exactly. All right. You're supposed to be supposed to be so the Eric Garner case, the Michael Brown case, all of these cases where black males were basically stopped from either doing a petty offense or just stopped based on suspicion because they were black in their neighborhood. Yeah, it prompted the executive branch to release a new set of guidance, like an updated set of guidelines for racial profiling. And they basically spelled out examples. I posted to it on the podcast page for this episode, but they spelled out examples for when it's appropriate. And they said if it's an all points bulletin for any police yes. If you're traffic or if you're patrolling and looking for criminals and you're basing it on race, absolutely not allowed. But they said they gave an example where, like if, for example, you are looking for somebody who carried out a hit on a gang leader yeah. And, you know, there's this rival gang and this rival gang is probably the ones who carried out this hit, and every member of this rival gang is Hispanic, that you could use that as part of the profile in searching for your suspect. It just makes sense in that case. Right, because I don't look for the little old white lady. Right, exactly. Yeah. Because it's that specific. But you wouldn't cast a drag net over all Hispanics. It would be Hispanic men related to this gang. You see what I'm saying? I think the lesson here is get the little white lady to do the hit. It's been done before and you're golden. It has been done before. Which is one of the problems with racial profiling is it's distracting. Yeah, we'll get to that. But that's definitely true. And when you watch Cops, it's not always like sometimes I will see on the TV show, they will pull over. They'll stop a white kid, like, suburban white kid that's in a bad neighborhood because they'll be like, well, he doesn't belong here. He's probably buying drugs. Right. Because this is the street where people buy drugs. There's a crackhouse down there, and this guy is from the white suburban county out in the suburbs, so let's pull him over. It's a racial profile. That's the same thing but different. Right? Well, it's the same thing. Yeah, but you know what I mean. Yeah. All right, so let's talk about probable cause analysis. This is good. During a traffic stop, there's several things a cop can do, and each one requires different kinds of cause in order for it to be legal. Yeah. Again, they aren't supposed to just pull you over for no reason. They're not supposed to you're supposed to fit some sort of either you broke a traffic law or you fit a profile that has been agreed upon is okay. Yeah, but a cop to pull over for and again, we're not knocking police officers hard work, and mostly they do great work, but a cop can pull someone over for anything and say, like, when you made that turn, you swung a little too wide, or you hit that yellow line. And so I'm suspicious that you're drunk. Right. You can almost invent a reason to pull someone over under any circumstances. Right. So let's just start with that. When you pull over a car, supposedly to pull someone over legally, you need to have witnessed a violation, or you can run the plates and see if their car is stolen or if there's a warrant out for the owner. That's a big thing you see on cops all the time. Yeah. And the cop can make a stop as long as they can describe specific factors that fit the profile. Right. Car full of black kids. Not okay to just pull that car over. Not for that reason. Right. But if they say, like, I saw smoke coming out the windows, they were driving erratically, and it smelled like pot smoke from the road, then that is a reason. Right. Number two, when you go to question the suspect, that's moving things up a notch. You don't have to get a ticket when you get pulled over. You might just get questioned if you seem suspicious and they'll shine that light in the car and they'll look at everything that they can see without actually searching the car, and that's well within their right. What's called plain view. Exactly. So if you have, like, a bag of pot sitting out on the front seat with you and the cop sees it, that just opened your entire car and your person up to a search yes. And that means you are super high, because now there's probable cause. But if you have long hair and you have an open half gallon of ice cream next to you, Still not enough might raise his suspicions, but that still should not be enough to give them probable cause to search your car. Well, I got profiled in Texas. Me and my best friend Brett, many years ago after college, did a big OutWest trip for two months, op said. He said he pulled us over because I didn't have my seatbelt on. Why he really pulled us over is because we were two scruffy looking guys with tattoos and beards in a Volkswagen van. And he searched the van. He asked if he could, and we said he could. And he searched the van for, like, an hour on the side of the road. Long story short, Chuck did five years, five hard ones. No, we didn't get caught with anything. We got away. And he basically was mad at us that he wasted his time, and the last thing he said was, Get out of Texas. And I said, I'm trying to, sir, but the point is that that cop asked you if he could search your car, right? He did. And if you give consent, then you are waving your Fourth Amendment rights, but you don't have to give consent. Many people know this, and there are some states that make the cop tell you you are allowed to refuse the search of your car. Not all states do. I've never heard it either. Instead, the cop just says, can I search your car? In the most intimidating voice possible. And most people will just fold like a house of cards because they're scared of the cop or whatever. Even if they do have something in there, they're not going to be like, no, you're not allowed to search the car. So the point where the cop asks if he can search the car is usually in the absence of something that nothing in plain sight, but also that copious suspicions are raised, he just can't quite prove it. So they'll ask you if you can search your car. If you say no, the cop can say, well, I'm going to detain you temporarily. Right. Yeah. Basically, I will wait it out. I can get a warrant. I'm going to search that car. Right. Okay. If he wants to get a warrant, that's different. What he's doing now is trying to do everything he can to search your car without having to go to the trouble of getting a warrant right. Without probable cause, like seeing a bag of pot in the front seat. Right. Time was that they could detain you for up to, like, 90 minutes while they called the canine unit out, and the canine unit has been shown to. If the canine unit sniffs around your car, that's not an unreasonable search. And if the canine smells something or indicates that there are drugs present, then that does provide probable cause for a full search under the Fourth Amendment, right? Yeah, they changed that. Oh, really? Yeah, in April, this past April, the supreme Court had decision that said, no, you really can't make people wait around while the drug dog comes out. They're like, we're not opposed to that. But the point of a traffic stop is to promote and encourage traffic safety, not to cast a drag net for drug couriers. And you cannot detain people without a reasonable suspicion to wait for the drug dog to come out. If they tell you you can't, you're not allowed to search their car. That's good. I wonder if it had anything to do with if you look up online, there are ways that cops can make a drug dog signal, basically by how they're handling the dog. I would guess so. And there's a lot of suspicion, and they'll play them side by side. Like, you see, this cop is doing it. Right. And if you see this cop watch this little thing he does, then the dog barks. And basically, there was a lot of speculation that bad cops would dog tail well, not that, but yeah, essentially making the dog signal a false alert just to give them reason. Well, the dog barked, so now I can search your car. And maybe it all started because, I mean, to bring this up a second ago, suspicion can be they seem nervous, right. Like, everyone's nervous when a cop pulls them over. So even if you haven't done anything, it's just nerve wracking. It's like white coat, blood pressure. A lot of people's blood pressure is high at the doctor because they're nervous about being at the doctor. There's someone standing at my window with a gun. Right. It's nerve wracking. Yeah. So the Supreme Court said, no, you have to have a reasonable suspicion to detain somebody on the side of the road that they've committed another crime. It can't just be, I'm pulling you over. You have to wait for 90 minutes while the drug dog comes out so I can bust you or try to bust you or whatever. That was a big deal that they came up with that. Yeah. We didn't in Texas, we didn't have the drug dog come out, but I felt like we were on the side of the road for an hour while he dug through that entire van. Just you could tell he really wanted to find something. Yeah. All right, let's open the can of worms, my friend. Racial profiling, it's a big deal in this country. It's a problem, and let's talk about it. So that is basically it's a form of predictive profiling, where one of, if not the only, factor is skin color. Right. Let's say that Mexican people are way more prone to sell meth. So let's go hang out at that Hispanic neighborhood. Right? There's a couple of things wrong with that. Right. And that is racial profiling. Some people actually defend it, saying, well, if you look at prison statistics, hispanics are far more likely to be imprisoned for drug crimes than, say, white people. So that makes sense. Right? Right. Okay. The other side right. I'm playing along here. The other side of the coin is that you can use the same statistics to point to the idea that Hispanics and blacks are disproportionately targeted for drug busts than other people. Right. Ed points out this is one of the problems with this debate is both sides use the same statistics differently to prove their point. Yeah. Another thing he points out is that some people say that it is institutionalized racism and it's harassment. Minority straight up people who defend against it say cops harass criminals, and if those criminals happen to be minorities, TS, that's not our fault. And I think that's just the reality of the world we live in. Even further, there are people who say, yes, racial profiling is a thing and it's an effective tool of law enforcement. Sorry. Welcome to reality. Exactly. Those people usually have their arguments demolished pretty quickly, including by professionals. I read this interview or an article about a former chief of police for Palo Alto around San Francisco area. And he also grew up as an Oakland cop. And he was talking about that kind of racial profiling that you were where they would just sit out in high crime neighborhoods and pull over anybody white. Right. They were doing like that for the same reason. And he was saying it almost never worked. He said that they also would have, like, long drag nets on stretches of highway and they would target Hispanic people in, like, low riders. And he said almost never worked. And he said that it's ineffective. Right. It's also lazy policing because he said the better alternative is to forget who's what color, but just watch for somebody leaning in a car that's just pulled over under the curb or somebody making furtive moment movement looking for actual crime. Right. Look for behavior that is actually linked to crime. Not there's a white person in a black high crime neighborhood, so therefore they're buying drugs. Or even worse than that, there's a black person who lives in a high crime neighborhood. They must be a drug dealer. Right. Let me go stop and frisk them. That is just lazy policing. It's shorthand policing. Whereas if you look for actual criminal behaviors, you're going to be far more successful in busting the bad guys. But even worse than it being, like, lazy policing and ineffective in a lot of ways, this guy pointed out, like, I've seen this in many different places. If you want to encourage mistrust and animosity toward the police, scoop up every member in the community and take them to jail just on the off chance that you might find something that sticks. Yeah. If you want to set a town off or any population off, do that for a few years and see what happens. Yeah. And that's what we've been seeing time and time again. It's systematic. Yes, systematic targeting and then a systematic reaction to that target. Absolutely. And I've mentioned cops a lot. If you're out there saying, well, yeah, but on Cops, every time they pull over that shady black guy in the neighborhood, he has something on them and gets arrested. Or that white kid in the bad neighborhood, he's there to buy drugs. It's a TV show that's edited. Right. They don't show you the 25 stops where there is no crime because it would not be a fun TV show. Exactly. All right. So I think people use that as, like dummies. Use that as proof sometimes. Like, watch Cops, man, every single time. Right? Yeah, exactly. Right. Like, all meth users are scrawny and white. So if you see a scrawny white guy, meth user that's right. Or marathon runner. Right. Obviously, there can be rogue cops, racist cops that are doing their thing on a singular level or with their partner, but it becomes a real problem. That's a problem. It becomes a super real problem when it is part of the system, in which was the case with the New Jersey State Troopers in the late 90s. They did a ten year study and found out that 80% of all traffic stops were minorities over a ten year period. 80%. And they found that there was a, quote, macho, elitist culture within the state trooper ranks in, quote, and basically, even though they officially said racial profiling isn't right, there was a system in place where veterans would really coach and teach the younger complex, like, this is how we're doing it. Yeah. And they were basically outed. The authorities assigned federal monitors to those troopers, and evidently by 2006, a report suggested they had eliminated that profiling completely. Which is good, if that's the case. Yeah, and I'm sure it is. New Jersey state troopers are intimidating. You ever seen those guys? No. They're the ones that look like the military uniforms, which is a whole other issue altogether. Well, I mean, not like M 16s, but they said I'm talking about sure, like the dress blues and the boots and all that. It turns out, Chuck, 22 states have launched that ban racial profiling of motorists, which is great until you think that that also means that 28 states don't. It's kind of weird, if you ask me. And I found a study also from Illinois that found that in Illinois, black and Hispanic drivers were two times likelier to be stopped and searched, but white drivers were two times likelier to have contraband on them. Weird. Not only weird, it's startling how it's not effective. It's not leading to stopping crime, which is sort of the point. Well, and then another very controversial bout of racial profiling that this country went through came after September 11, of course. And in the aftermath of that, you would remember every month or two, you'd hear about someone who sometimes seeks who aren't even Arab, would get kicked off of, like, a plane or something like that because they made the pilot nervous just being there by being around. Yeah, or TSA would like pat down, disproportionately more Arab people than white people, and now supposedly they base it on your behavior rather than your race. They're not racial profiling any longer. I have to say I haven't heard of one of those cases in a while, but it seemed like for a while we were hearing about it all the time. Yeah, I think there was a heightened sense of everything back then, of course, right after 911, but so this guy who used to manage the Bengurian airport in Israel, Raphael Ron, he pointed out that that was the exact opposite of what you want to do. Yeah, he said the worst attack in the history of this airport was carried out by Japanese in the early seventy s. And he said, if we're focusing on an ethnic group, then we're potentially missing someone that's about to do something bad. Right, which is exactly what happened in 1972 at that airport. Three members of the Japanese Red Army walked in with machine guns and violin cases and just opened them up and started opening fire on the crowd and killed, I think, 26 people. And they were hired by the PLO. PLO knew that they could never walk into the Israeli airport, but Japanese people would unnoticed. And so this guy is saying the same thing, like, if you're really on the lookout for your enemy, again, watch for behavior. Do actual police work. Don't just use this lazy shorthand stuff because it's going to tick off this entire population and it's going to cause you to miss the real crime. Well, yeah, it sounds like a movie. The cops are at the airport and they detain this Arab guy who's like late for a business meeting. And then in the same shot, the white dude who is a Timothy McVeigh just walks right behind them with the bomb on his body. You realize you just described the subplot to Airplane, too? Did I? Yeah. Remember Sonny Bono had the bomb? He's a little mild mannered weasely dude. Yeah, that's right. And I think he walks through while they're jacking up some like, I think PLO dudes. Maybe that was subconscious. Wow. So that's a profiling. The tip of the iceberg, I would call that. Oh, sure. We could do a series of shows on this, I'm sure. And if you want to know more about profiling, in the meantime, type that word into the search bar of your favorite search engine and I'm sure it will bring up all manner of terrible stuff. You can also type it in the search bar@housethefworks.com and it'll bring up this article by the Grabster. And since I said grabster, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Weapons, which is short for water enema from a water slide or from a slide. And this is from Tiffany last name withheld she says. As a kid, I remember being a chubby eleven year old girl excited for her first trip to Disney World. In the water park, then known as Typhoon Lagoon, had a brand new neon green with black polka bathing suit, was all excited, and to go down the Kawabanga, a 214 foot tall water slide on a steep 60 degree angle, they tell you to keep your ankles crossed. But as a little chubby eleven year old girl, my brain comprehended, but my little legs did not have the strength for all 214ft. I think you see where this is headed. After plumbing at the bottom, I immediately knew something was not right. I clenched my thighs as tightly as I could, pulling out the massive water slide. Wedgie. Not two steps from exiting the slide, though, a different type of waterfall began to trickle down my legs. No matter how tightly I clenched, I couldn't stop it. I waddled up to a gorgeous Australian teenager employee and explained, I need a restroom right away. With a smug smile, he pointed all the way to the other side of the lagoon, which was a long walk. Just as I entered the bathroom, with all the force of the water that had entered my body, it exited, and I single handedly shut down a small portion of Disney that day. As embarrassing as this was, I was more upset that my new bathing suit was ruined. My parents were furious because they had to show out $50 for a new one pronto. I hope I didn't gross you out too bad. Oh, you did. Think of it as a cautionary lesson for your listeners. Thanks for all your hard work. I hope to see you guys sometime in Detroit. And hey, October. Tiffany last name withheld we're just going to call you Tiffany Poopypants. We're coming to Detroit in October. Yes, ostensibly. Ostensibly. And also we want to say Detroit in advance of us coming. We're sorry for all the jokes we made about you. It'll all come home to roost. See you in October. If you want to tell us the growth story that happened when you were a kid, don't. Just tell us something else and tweet to us at s yskpodcast. Join us on Facebook. Comstuffyshonow. Send us an email to stuff podcast@howstepworks.com and join us at home on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com." | ||
a65d14ce-5462-11e8-b449-53f6a11b8136 | Who is The Man of the Hole? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/who-is-the-man-of-the-hole | In 2018, there's a man from a lost tribe still living deep in the jungles of Brazil who has been all alone since the mid 1990s. He's referred to as the Man of the Hole, and has had no face-to-face with modern humans. Who is he? | In 2018, there's a man from a lost tribe still living deep in the jungles of Brazil who has been all alone since the mid 1990s. He's referred to as the Man of the Hole, and has had no face-to-face with modern humans. Who is he? | Thu, 16 Aug 2018 13:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=13, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=228, tm_isdst=0) | 35885636 | 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. There's Jerry. Jerome Brolin. Boy, I am not in a good way today. Chuck, you off your game as if you can't tell. I think you're fine. Oh, thanks, man. I feel a lot better. Sure. Yeah, no, I'm okay. I can tell you I'm surrounded by friends, family. I mean, your dad's in the corner. It's weird. I have TV. Oh, man. I Instagramed a photo of my mom and dad. Oh, yeah? From the 70s. Yeah. And I captioned it. They're, like, looking at each other kind of lovingly, and I captioned it the moment before I was conceived. You know what? Jerry showed me that today. Oh, yeah, she did. I look a lot like my parents mixed together. Well, the first thing I noticed was like, wow, that's what Josh would have looked like as a grown man in the because that profile of your dad I don't know. I'd never seen your dad young, so I was like, man, that's really you. Yeah, I totally saw both. Yeah, because you look at my dad, you're like, oh, that's Josh. But then you look at my mom, you're like, oh, there's Josh, too. Very bizarre. Yeah, I guess I definitely favor my father. Is that right? Yeah, a lot of people just favor one or the other, but I'm 50 50. Yes, that's what I call you. All 50 50. I think that's a new one. There's a tshirt. Yeah. 50 50. Clark oh, I know. The point I was making. There's this How Stuff Works article that you sent called The Man in the Hole, and it talks about this guy who is the last of his kind, as this article put it, like the loneliest person on Earth. And I was like, yeah. I mean, I'm sure this is a lot like being in solitary confinement or something like that, but no, this is way beyond that. In this House of Works article by Jesslyn Shields, like, really drove it home. She wrote, like, what if you were the last person who could speak your language? The last person who remembered what Halloween was or a Coca Cola or that a dog says, Woof. Like, imagine that. And I'm like, yeah, that's way different from being in solitary. Solitary confinement would be bad enough. You know, you're physically restrained, but at least, you know, out there that there are other people who know the same things, you know, that speak the same language you speak, that your family still out there, that kind of thing. This is utterly different. And this man, the last tribesman he's called, or the man in the hole is possibly not just the last of his kind. He might be the only person on the entire planet in the situation that he's in. Maybe. Isn't that bizarre to think? Yeah, I mean, we did another show on other undiscovered people quite a few years back. I don't know how he didn't get to this guy but I saw this article and it was striking, especially if you've seen a couple of videos and I think there are only two pieces of video of this dude. One I saw where they were sort of shooting, they were zoomed in on a hut and that's where he lives. There's a series of thatched huts in the Tanaro indigenous reserve in the Rondonia state of Brazil, about 20,000 acres, big area of the forest and jungle. So he lives in these thatched huts that are scattered about in the middle of nowhere and they were able to get them on film. Kind of zoomed in between the cracks and you see the guy kind of looking a little bit but you can't make out much. So I saw that video and then I saw another one where it was a pretty good shot of him from a distance making good work trying to chop down a tree. That was the most recent video. Right, well, let's just go ahead and get into this. He was found or discovered in I think 1096 when some loggers from the state of Rondonia, which from the impression I have, this is a very rough and tumble state populated by loggers and cattle ranchers and there are very few laws from what I understand and things are settled by the gun, is the impression that I have run donation. It's right smack dab in the middle of South America and it's extraordinarily densely jungle in the Amazon. Yeah, I mean that one New York Times article like the guy was talking, that they were talking to said from a helicopter, you look down there and you think there's just no one down there, it's just all jungle. He said but when you get down there, he said, there's a lot of people and drug runners and bad men everywhere. So this guy is definitely an anomaly because he is not hanging out with anybody. No, and the reason why they think he's alone, Chuck, is because back in 1995 when the rumors of like a wild man in the jungle started to circulate, they think that he had just recently survived a slaughter that had killed off the rest of his trial, which was only like supposedly five or six people at that point because they think the rest had been slaughtered. And that's a common thing we're going to come up on in a couple of these is these ranchers and loggers. They're like, we want to go clear this land and there's a tribe, a native tribe, there an indigenous tribe. So let's just slaughter them and get them out of the way. It's really an awful, awful thing and it's been a very common thing apparently since the when ranchers and loggers moved into Rondonia, just snatching up land. And again, this is the Amazon. This is basically pristine forest rainforest that people who have never been contacted by anyone from the outside world live still to this day. And this guy is one of them. So at first they thought maybe he was just a member of a tribe that we already know about. And then over time, as they started to study this guy, it became quite clear that he's a member of a tribe that we didn't know about before. And we're pretty sure he's the last of his kind. Yeah. So there's this organization called Funai. Funai? The National Indian Foundation of Brazil. And they have been tasked with for the past 20 years monitoring this dude. And before his companions were killed, monitoring his companions. And you sent a nice follow up on Fanai. They have a few departments, and one is called the General Coordination Unit of Uncontacted Indians, the CGII. And that was established in 1987. And they're the only department of government in the world which protects indigenous peoples who don't have contact with the outside world or nearby tribes. Yeah, because before, in the 19th century and even through a lot of the 20th century, it was just basically Christian missionaries who were making their way into the Amazon to contact tribes and bring them Jesus, basically. And also healthcare and food and all that stuff, tools, the implements of modern culture, but also to proselytize, too. And there was a lot of it just wasn't very well thought out. And as a result, even from the best of intentions that a lot of these missionaries had, a lot of tribes died. So in 1910, Brazil came up with their I think it was like the Indian Protection Services was the name of the department that they first came up with. And the Indian Protection Service, they took over from the missionaries. And it was a step up in that sense because it was more coordinated. There was thought to it, there was some sort of study. But the point was to take Uncontacted Amazonian tribes and bring them into the modern world so that they could assimilate with the modern world. The point was to basically reduce cultural diversity in Brazil. And that kept going until the 60s when there was a huge expose about the Indian Protection Service that they had just fallen down so terribly in their mission that there's basically mass extermination slavery, rape, every horrible thing that you can think of that could befall a human being happens to these tribes under the watch of the Indian Services Protection over 60 years. Yeah. So the department in the CGI was founded by a man named Sydney Pasua, I guess how you pronounce that. And this was a big sea change in policy, which was, like you were saying, the previous strategy established contact to try and get them integrated at some point to this new policy, which was don't even contact these people unless they are under serious threat. Because history has shown all manner of bad things can happen when you contact these people, one of which is certainly introducing them to new diseases and things that will kill them that they've never seen or experienced. There's a big debate still on what the best policies are here. Yeah. So these American anthropologists, white American anthropologist, men who, I guess wrote an open letter in either science or nature I think nature basically saying Brazil and Peru should reverse this longstanding policy of not contacting Indians in the Amazon and should actually plan peaceful, well organized contact so that they can be better protected. It's the anthropologist stance that if you don't protect them, they're going to die one way or another, that there's no way that they're going to remain isolated in the long term. Maybe you've got another generation, possibly, of some of these tribes that could live like this, but beyond that, it's just not going to happen. There's too many powerful interests banging on the doors of their preserved areas who are more than willing to hire people who will accept money to go kill these people just to get this land. And by just leaving them alone, you're leaving them very vulnerable. Whereas if you plan out contact, then conceivably, you can show them that there are things like medical treatment. There is better ways that you can protect them. You can kind of give them contact, and that even more so. Interviews with groups that have become have initiated contact or have had contact me with them said, we would have made contact with you guys earlier, but we thought we were going to be enslaved or murdered or something. We had no idea that you wanted to actually help us. Had we known that, we would have contacted you guys decades ago. So those two things put together. These American anthropologists have said, we endorse this, and Fun, I and a lot of other groups, including the UN. And human rights group in the UK called Survivors International, have said, no, that is totally disrespectful. That flies completely in the face of agreed upon procedure and protocol. Just be quiet. You're being neo colonialists. Yeah. I think it's interesting, though, because what they're trying to do is, like you said, have very highly controlled contact. And the assumption that they don't want to be contacted, at least through their eyes, appears to be false because, like you mentioned, they're afraid of being kidnapped or something or overtaken. And had they known, like, oh, you just want to give us some nice tools and maybe inoculate us, and we'd actually be down with that as long as you leave afterward. Right. And these two anthropologists said, you got to do this smartly. Like, you basically have to go in with cultural translators, usually tribes who have made contact with outsiders before, already established contact that live in the same area, who might be able to translate between the outsiders and the actual uncontacted tribes. And you need healthcare providers who are going to stay there for at least a year. You need at least a year of sustained care, or else yes, they're going to die from these diseases you're going to bring in. Inevitably. Yeah. They give good examples, too, in that article about how this has backfired with missionaries. Like the Yora people, they were there for six months, and the missionary said, well, let's go on vacation. And then the Yora died a few weeks later. And then in 1975, missionaries provided care to a community. They took a vacation and then they died as well. So they're saying, you got to have a plan to go in and stay there. You can't just go in, bring them some food and machetes and not spring break and then get out of there. But I get the idea that this is still a pretty hot topic of debate. Oh, yeah, those anthropologists, they set off a huge debate, and I think it was sparked by the video that was released by Survivor International of the man in the Hole chopping down a tree. And the video was taken in 2011, but they only just released it in July of 2018. And this is very much still going on, this big debate. And it's a huge issue. And you can kind of see both sides. Like, I just read about Foo Nye's counter to it that like, look, dude, this is our thing. We got this. You just mind your own business. We have our own policy. Stay out. Right. Stay out of it. But then if you read the anthropologist letters, you're like, actually, they have a couple of good points here. So it's not a clear cut picture one way or the other. Definitely. There's a lot of nuance to it on both sides. All right, let's take a respite. Let's take a furlough or vacation. Yeah. And we'll come back and talk a little bit more about the man in the hole. All right, so the reason they call him the man of the Hole or the man in the Hole is the odd thing of inside these thatched huts, of which he has several around this area. Inside the huts are these. And all over the place there are these holes with spikes for trapping animals. But he has these six foot deep holes inside of his own huts, and apparently no other tribes around him have done this. And it's very unusual thing. And the belief is that it's for his own protection. I guess if he's being fired upon or something by loggers, he can jump down on one of these holes. Yeah, that's the impression I have, too, which is extraordinarily sad. It is. The reason why they think that he has these holes is because he's had terrible run ins. This seems to be evidence that he is the survivor of a slaughter or a massacre, because this is not a normal technique that they've seen with other tribes. And they found it at every single one of the huts that they've come upon of his. Yeah. They do know though, from monitoring him for the past couple of decades though, that he hunts with a bow and arrow. He farms probably at night and stays out of the as much as he can. Stays inside during the day out of fear, which is also awful. But he farms like papaya and corn and other fruits and vegetables. He has all these traps set everywhere. Like I mentioned, they have found handcarved arrowheads torches made from branches and resin. And at one point they actually tried to make contact. They had several points. Well, at one point when they tried to make contact though, he fired upon them with his bow and arrow and actually hit someone in the chest. One of the funai agents. Yeah. And they were like, all right, we're out of here. Yeah. At that point they stopped trying to initiate contact with this guy. And again, this is like peaceful contact they're trying to initiate. Not like, hey man, get off of this land. They're like saying, do you need anything? Do you want some food? What do you want? And the first few attempts to contact him resulted in him just basically slipping into the shadows in the jungle and just disappearing. Then it progressed into standoffs, then it progressed into a shooting. And so they stepped back. Survivor International and Funeye and some other groups stepped back and said, this guy is escalating in hostilities. He's showing us he doesn't want anything to do with us. It would be something if he'd shot the first time and then slipped away the second time and the hostilities were decreasing, but instead it's going the opposite way. The hostilities were increasing. So he's getting that he has the opportunity to contact these people who are coming with their hands up and not trying to kill them. And he's still saying Back off. So finally the government said, we're just going to back off. And they backed off this policy of not contacting this guy, not even attempting to contact this guy, but instead monitoring him, making sure that his preserve is protected and then leaving him things like the axe that he was seen using in that 2011 video or seeds for some of the plants that he grows. Yeah. Which a lot of times he doesn't even accept or take these gifts. I imagine he's not retrusting. And like you said, as far as protecting the area, in 2007, Funai and the government eventually increased the area to 31 sq. Mi around where he was is off limits to any trespassing or development. Later expanded to 3000 ha. So I think they added another 3000 ha okay. To the already square mileage. And this has really ticked off the ranchers and the loggers because they're like, our business is being held back by this one guy and they want to kill him, to kill him. As a matter of fact, when the government announced that it was not only keeping up the practice of preserving this guy's land 31 sq mi, but adding an extra 3000 ha which brought the total to 42 and a half square miles or 110 km\u00b2 that this man has to himself. The five ranches that surround this preserve hired somebody to go try to kill them. Fu and I went and checked on them a couple of weeks after that announcement was made public and they found that their outpost was ransacked and that they had found shotgun shells, spent shotgun shells in the forest floor. So there's clearly an attempt to make on the guy's life. And for a couple of years they had no idea if he'd survived until that video was made in 2011 that showed this guy who is now 50. They've been tracking him since he was in his age, in his 50s. Now chopping down a tree? Yes, chopping down a tree like it's nothing. So they knew that he was alive and in good health as of 2011 and they're assuming that he's still alive. Man, how good would a movie be about this guy? I know. Just have a lot of it play out in silence. Yeah, that would be amazing. That would be cool. I mean, it's crazy to see a video of this guy from seven years ago, like in the world we live in to think about there are still places on earth where this guy it's almost like the Japanese straggler who had no idea that the war had been over for whatever, 30 years living in the jungle. It's just amazing to think about the fact that this is the loan guy out there by himself and what his life must be like. But not only that, it's like when we did the paramedics episode, I think I said something like there's no greater symbol of humanity than paramedics. I think this is another really great symbol of humanity, paramedics in this guy. Well, no, the fun I brazilian government's response to this. This man has been part of a tribe. It's the last of his tribe. And the Brazilian government has said this man deserves to live his life out in peace in the way that he wants to in his traditional way to be left alone. We're going to designate 110 km\u00b2 that belong to no one. But this man, despite the fact that all around him is the outside world trying to press in, we're going to stand in the way of that so that this guy can live out his natural life. That just gets me right in the bread basket. Yeah. I think the Disney version of this movie is they would find a lone tribeswoman somewhere, drop her off and have them meet cute by the papaya tree. Yeah, and the ranchers want to tickle him. But if it were live action these days, they would hire either John wayne or Fisher Stevens to play the last track. Fisher Stevens? Yeah. Remember he played the Indian programmer in short circuits? Really? Oh, that's right, yeah. Jeez. Yeah. That was as recently as the 80s, right? It's not like Mickey Rooney playing an Asian man in the not like that was any better. No. Boy, Hollywood. You've been getting it wrong for so long. They have. At least Mongol got it right, though, right? Maybe, yeah. We haven't seen it yet. Should we take another break? Yeah, we should. All right. We'll take another break and talk a little bit more about some of these isolated tribes right after this. Okay, Chuck. So the last tribesmen, the man in the hole, he's being left alone. And that's policy in Brazil and Peru, from what I understand. Now, there are some tribes that have actually accepted contact and have made peaceful contact and have become, I guess, a little more integrated. I think there's three degrees that funai. Separates tribes into indigenous tribes into there's totally uncontacted, which is like they are living off on their own outside world, has nothing to do with them. There's partially contacted or partially similar to emails. Right. They're living in the jungle, but they still have an iPhone. Right. And then there's fully assimilated where they live in a city now or something like that. Or they have a job in the city or something like that. So it's not just in the Amazon, it's not just in Brazil where there are uncontacted tribes. Although that is definitely the place where you're going to find the most. I think I saw somewhere between 50, 80 and 120 uncontacted groups of indigenous people are presumed to be living in the Amazon still today. Yeah, I mean, just that random swath of numbers shows you that there's still so much they don't know for sure. But there are other parts of the world where there are uncontacted tribes. And you found an article that ran down a few of them. One that surprised me was just off the coast of India on Sentinel Island. In India. North Sentinel Island. A good old Cracked article which may have been done under the watch of our now colleague, Mr. Jack O'Brien. Nice. Shout out to Jack and his daily Zeitgeist podcast. Yes. Which I was on. Have you been on yet? You got to be on. It's great fun. As a matter of fact, I'm going to laugh. I'm going to go on again. Yeah, well, please do. All right. Yeah, but the Sentinelese on North Sentinel Island, Indiana, they don't even know if that's their real name. They just call them that because I guess we have called it North Sentinel Island. Not you and me. But other people who named it. I think the British. But apparently yeah. Probably we don't know a lot about them. But in 2006. A couple of fishermen drifted there in their boat near the island and were killed and buried in shallow graves. And helicopters came. And they were like. We got to find this burial site and get these guys back. At least. And they started firing arrows at the helicopter, and it was just out of there. And the local cops were like, no, we're just going to leave those guys there. We're not going near it. They have actually this has been going on for a very long time, apparently. Marco Polo remarked on them, wrote about them. He was traveling, I think, the 12th or 13th century. So they've been fierce for years now and apparently survived the 2004 tsunami, the Indonesian tsunami. That's crazy, because this is an island that the tsunami just swamped, and they managed to hang on just fine. I think ancient people have survived more than one tsunami. I guess you're right back to the that was a pretty bad one, though. Yeah, pretty amazing. This other one, the coral y tribe of Papua Indonesia, they were contacted in the 70s by, of course, missionaries and archaeologists, and they were using stone tools and living in tree huts and stuff like that. And their big belief as a tribe was that the world would be destroyed by an earthquake if they assimilated and changed their customs. So missionary said, all right, you know what? We're just going to leave you alone. I think these people might have invented bungee jumping. Do you remember that? Them? They sound really familiar. I think it might be. Maybe so, but they are in the middle of nowhere, so it's a long way from even, like, other remote villages, which is I mean, that's a mark in your favor for now. But as the Amazon basin has been showing us since the so much of it has disappeared due to clear cutting for ranching logging. You just have no idea how much longer that's going to hold up, no matter where you are in the world. I mean, we're at seven and a half billion people now, and then I think the next 30 years, we're expected to hit 10 billion. That's a lot more people that not only need more land, but also are going to be using up those resources that are currently on that land right now. Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, if they discover oil where the Corawai tribe lives in Indonesia, there goes that isolation. Yeah, probably so. I think that's a real danger for all tribes. I think that's probably what those two anthropologists were talking about. They're saying, like, long term, we need a plan here, everybody. We can't just be like, well, we just won't contact them because it's just not viable, I think was their point. Yeah. What about this one? Really was interesting to me. The Old Believers. Have you ever heard of them? Yeah, there's, like, some GQ article in the last couple of years about that. Are they well dressed up? I think so. In Burlap, apparently. Yeah. These are Soviet well here's the deal. In 1978, there were these geologists in the Soviet Union that were looking for iron ore. They were in a helicopter, and they saw a cabin way out in the remote areas of Siberia, and they found a family there that actually spoke a language, I guess. What would that be? What language? Old timey Russian. Old timey Russian. And they were huddled in fear, and they were yelling, this is for our sins. They were dressed in burlap and living off the land. And apparently they were a group of people called the Old Believers, which left the Russian church, the main Russian church in the 17th century and had been, I guess, looked at. They kind of went everywhere. It was sort of a diaspora for the Old Believers. Some of them just went to other countries and seeking asylum or whatever. And apparently some of them just look to Siberia and we're like, no one's there. So we'll go there. Nice. It sounds creepy, though. The Old Believers. Oh, yeah, that's a terrible name for them. It seems like they could scan you or something, make your head explode or they worship Cthulhu or something. Yeah. So I almost feel like we should look into them a little more because I think they could probably hold up their own. I think you might be right. I also remember hearing about families that lived in the Ozark Mountains in the Midwest of the United States, I think around Arkansas that had been out of contact, didn't even know the Civil War had happened. They were just that isolated. So, yeah, you tend to think of it as just strictly indigenous peoples and that it's just in the Amazon. But there's groups all over the world. It's fewer and further between outside of the Amazon because there's less unpopulated areas. But it happens. And one of the sad things about all this is for one of these other tribes that you can go read this Cracked article. What's it called? I didn't see the title, actually. It's just suddenly there were five isolated groups who had no idea that civilization existed. Correct. Lists were always so great, are always so great. They've come in handy from time to time. But one of the sad things they point out for one of these other tribes is that in Peru, and I imagine in some other South American countries, there are these awful things called human safaris, where they will take tourists around to look at uncontacted tribes from afar and close up. They're like, here, drain some of this Ayahuasca through your nose, and we're going to go check out some tribes hanging out on a river bank somewhere. Man. So weird. Well, I want to add one more thing. I came across an article that wasn't really apropos of what we're talking about called the Right to Kill foreign Policy magazine. And it's about this other tangential issue that governments like Brazil have to deal with. Which is like some of these isolated groups practice things that the outside world finds abhorrent or is illegal in the outside world. Specifically in this article, Infanticide, if you're born with a disability, and I think about 20 of Brazil's isolated tribes, there's a chance that the community will decide that you need to die. Again, it's the practice of infanticide. And Brazil's, like, we are not quite sure what to do about this, because our constitution guarantees everyone in Brazil the right to live, but it also guarantees the indigenous groups the right to live according to their customs, so they have no idea what to do. And it's a big thing about moral relativism or moral absolutism and which one is correct. And it's really interesting that they're having to think about this right now. Yeah, for sure. It's a really interesting article. Definitely worth reading. Okay, I will check it out. Are you talking to me? Yeah, I'm talking to everybody. But specifically, well, if you want to know more about isolated tribes, you can look those words up anywhere on the Internet, and they're going to deliver you some amazing stuff. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. And she said amazing stuff. Wellkie, here, dude. I have a handwritten letter on construction paper. Beautiful. Isn't that nice? Yes. I love it. Hey, guys. I hope this finds you well. My name is Claire, and I'm 21. In fact, for my 21st birthday, I came and saw you guys live in Cleveland. Awesome. That was a great job. It was. I got a hearing college, and I'm studying mathematics with a license in education, so I'll be teaching high school math, being a fan since 2015. Thank you for the many nights you have calmed me and all the information I've learned, and I've been wanting to write for a while just to say thanks and send appreciation, but also a request and a little something. Whenever you talk about math in any regard, please be more positive. Please stop getting it wrong. Please be more positive and encouraging. We're well known for pooping math and saying, I hated math. Well, it's so intimidating. It's just so stupid. It is. But she says this math is hard and already has a stigma for people who hate it or to hate it. But as a future educator, since you two are sort of educators, require that reach a huge audience. Your outlook and attitude about math is important. It's okay to not like math and think that it's hard, but know that you and anyone can do math. I know it's a silly thing to ask and point out, but I think you could both have a positive impact on the math stigma. I wish you and your wives and Chuck, your daughter all the best. Thank you for all of your hard work. And thank Jerry, too. Jerry has to put up with you, too, all the time, so she's definitely been working hard, and she writes sarcasm. Smiley face. Have a fabulous day. And that is from Claire. And, Claire, you're right. We just joke around, but we should take more care with our words about the maths. You know what? Frankly, Chuck, I think Ms. Claire makes a great point that we should just basically take all the jokes out of our podcast entirely. No. Just so no one takes it the wrong way. No, just make it nice and neutral. She is right, though. She is right. We should take it easy on math. She very nicely said. Back off math. Yeah. Does she draw little Yosemite Sam at the bottom there? She did. Yeah. Look at that. Nice. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Claire did, you can go to your local post office. We love that place. And you can also instead go to the Internet. Go to Stephen.com, find all of our social media links there. Or you can send us a newfangled electronic mail by addressing it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.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. 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How Mexican Wrestling Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-mexican-wrestling-works | Perhaps it's the colorful masks or the high-flying, rapid-fire acrobatic moves. Whatever it is, there's something uniquely and particularly entrancing about Mexican wrestling, called lucha libre. Learn more about lucha libre in this episode of SYSK. | Perhaps it's the colorful masks or the high-flying, rapid-fire acrobatic moves. Whatever it is, there's something uniquely and particularly entrancing about Mexican wrestling, called lucha libre. Learn more about lucha libre in this episode of SYSK. | Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:12:28 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=15, tm_min=12, tm_sec=28, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=19, tm_isdst=0) | 38676767 | 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. I'm Josh Clark. This is Charles, Debbie, Chuck, Bryant. And that makes the stuff. You should know the Ole edition. Yeah. Call me El Choco. Is that your name? Sure. El Choco. I don't know. What does that mean? The chocolate? I don't know. It probably means something bad. Choco. We might just look that up. Let's look at it. Or it might mean nothing at all. I just said instead of chaco, I said chaco. Well, it's that kind of like crunchy sandals. Choco. No, it's a canyon. All right. Yeah. The canyon that the Anasazi used to inhabit. That's my luchador name. Okay. And you pronounced it correctly. It's not Luke Luch. Oh, the people say Lucador. I did in my head. Did you? Until I looked up the lucha libre vavoom. Yes. The sexiest of all wrestling matches. I just went over a how to video. All right. What's your intro? Well, this is pretty much it. This long, meandering, terrible thing. While we're talking about chuck Mexican wrestling, also known as Lucha Libre, file this under fun. Yeah, this is pretty cool. We're going to go ahead right now and promise a larger pro wrestling podcast. I think we should do it. Yeah. Because there's a documentary out now that I want to see called Memphis Heat. Oh, really? And it's about Memphis wrestling, where Jerry Lawler came from. Andrew Kaufman was involved in what basically gave birth to WWF, what I consider the heyday. Sure. And Lucha Libre is very reminiscent to me of the older days of American wrestling. Right. Which I'm not into anymore. It doesn't go, kid. I was oh, yeah, man. Hexagh jim Duggan the Hulk andre the Giant WWF. Yeah. There was a cartoon. Didn't they have a cartoon? I'm pretty sure they did. Oh, I'm sure they have. Yeah. If they haven't, then they're way overdue. Yeah. Have you ever heard Jason Spiegel's laundry? The Giant, by the way, it's amazing. He does something with his throat. And he did it in that one movie with Paul Rudd. It was actually pretty good. And then he did it on Saturday Night Live recently in a skit called Andre the Giant orders ice cream. He goes to an ice cream shop and just eat those wallets. Nice. Yeah, it's real nice. I will definitely check it out. But we're talking about Mexican wrestling. Yes. Today we're talking about Mexican wrestling. And to talk about Mexican wrestling, unfortunately, you have to go back to the beginning of wrestling, which originated in America. Yeah. This kind of wrestling. Sure. Yeah. We're not talking like GrecoRoman or anything like that, but professional wrestling started in the late 19th century in America, and it had a little bit of a boom. It was very serious. It was very legitimate. And then people got bored with it. Oh, really? Yeah. So in the 1920s, these guys, these three professional wrestlers called the Gold Dust Trio awesome. Because everything they touched turned to gold. They were like expert promoters. Yeah. They were like, you know what? I think we should stop taking ourselves so seriously. Let's just start making things up. Yeah. And everybody said, what? And they're like, yeah, we do this in carnivals. Right. It's entertainment. And everybody said, well, yeah, this is a carnival act. They said, well, we know about KFAB. KFAB is basically like keeping up the suspension of disbelief. Okay. It's made up stuff, carried out as if it were real. Right. That's the whole premise behind professional wrestling, which I'm sorry to break an eleven year old heart right now. Professional wrestling is fake. The athleticism isn't fake. Right. But if somebody, the guy outside of the ring is not really sleeping with the other guy's wife right. And that's not why they're fighting right then. Right. Okay. The storylines are manufactured for entertainment purposes. Exactly. But they're all amazing athletes, and they all do really get hurt and inflict pain many times. Right. Yeah. Real blood. Sure. Okay. Well, in a lot of cases, yeah. They have a little blood pressure in some cases. So this is 1920s when pro wrestling, as we understand it with the KFAB started. Within ten years, we had Lucia Libre mexican wrestling. Yeah. Thanks to a guy named Don Salvador. Lutheros Gonzalez. That's right. He is the father of the Lucellibre. Yeah. And he started the first Mexican wrestling league called the Impress Mekana de Lucillibre. Thank you. And it originally came from Spain, from what I understand, too, and they called it catches. Catch can and then just catch. But then during the Spanish Civil War, I think people, the Spanish went back to Spain and the wrestlers migrated over to Mexico. Is that how it works? Yes. Okay. The Spanish Civil War shut everything down. Shut the league down. Yes. What was that movie where it was about the little boy and it's set during the Spanish Civil War in the orphanage. Yeah, that was what's his face, the Guillmo del Toro. Yeah. What was the name of that movie? It was good. It was very creepy. So see that movie, look it up. So, yeah. So Don Gonzalez said, okay, well, let's take it back to Mexico. And that's where Mexican wrestling came from. That's why it's seated in Mexico. The earliest Mexican wrestlers used to go back and forth between Mexico and Spain until the Spanish Civil War, and they said, Spain is a little crazy right now. We're going to stick to Mexico. And not only that, we've got a steady supply of professional wrestlers from America. They're going to make up some of the earliest luke Chadors. Yeah. He was inspired by Texas wrestling. Right. Right. Which I thought was pretty awesome in the 1930s. Yes. Well, I think if not based in Texas, there were carnivals that were being held that came through Texas that we saw, and so he gave birth to what was it called? The impressive Mexicana de Lucia Libre. Yes. The EML, which is now the CMLL. Yes. And this is like, the WWE of Mexican wrestling. It's like the big one. Conseil mundial deluxe libre. Why do you crack up every time you did so earnest? Well, I'll try to be authentic. So, Chuck, since you are so into the Spanish pronunciation, can you translate Lucia libre for the listeners? Yes. Free fighting or free wrestling is what it's called or translated as. And one of the reasons why is because sort of loosey goosey. It wasn't like it's entertainment and not sport. Got you. So you want to talk about the entertainment? Let's talk about lucid libre as a whole on a very broad scale. Okay. The luchadora is the name of the wrestler. Lucillebre is the wrestling. Right. And one of the biggest things that distinguishes them from their American counterparts is the mask. The mask is huge. And while not all of them wear masks, most of them start out wearing masks. Right. Very important to the culture it is of their wrestling. And it's a really big deal to not wear the mask. Like, you can't just go up and unmask a Mexican wrestler. No. They'll kill you on the spot. Yes. This whole kind of persona of the luchador goes outside of the ring, too. And so you may be in your local grocery store, and if a luchador lives nearby, he will probably be grocery shopping wearing his mask. Yeah. They carry that identity. A lot of times. They will pass it down to their son and carry on the family tradition of the lucrator. Very important to the culture. It's not just some redneck sport like it is here, right? No, not true. I'm sorry. Did you like how quickly I agreed? Yes. We're going to get in trouble for that one. We are. So lucidors are traditionally divided along two lines the good guys and the bad guys. Or in American pro wrestling, the bad guys are called heels. Down there, they're called rudos, rude boys, or just basically villains. And then the good guys, the heroes are called technicos. I guess the spine of Lucia libre is that it's very populist. Yes. So, like, a technico will be, like, based on a superhero, a saint, an Aztec warrior, somebody who is all about fighting for the common man. Yes. The farmers, the poor people. We are the ones who will stick up for you. Right, exactly. And then the rudos, they often have the character of a corrupt cop or official, a drug dealer or gangster, which I imagine especially these days, if you are a rudo and you're portraying a drug dealer, you're probably on thin ice, and that might not be the best choice these days. No. And so there's this battle between the little person and then the larger authority that's trying to oppress them. And then the little person, the person that bites on behalf of the little person tends to win. That's right. Good conquers evil. Exactly. Unless you're a good villain, because that can be played up over the years as well. Sure. I think one of these guys, I can't remember, made his career as one of the great villains. That was Guerrero, I think. Okay. I believe Eddie Guerrero. Yes. Okay. We mentioned the masks, how important they are. The masks play such a huge part that they have certain matches called Lucius De aquistas matches with wagers. Did you see this? They are very special matches where they will wager generally one of three things either their mask, their hair, or their career. Wow. And it can be in any combination. It can be I bet my mask versus your hair. My hair versus your hair. My career versus your mask. I bet my hair, but that's about it. And at the end of this match, obviously, whoever loses either is unmasked, which means they're either done, or they adopt a new persona and leave that behind. I have heard that that's not the case. I heard that if you lose your mask, you can't wrestle masks any longer. You can wrestle, but you wrestle shamefully, as Jonathan Strickland explained it to me, and shamefully barefaced. Okay, well, I've seen you can adopt a new one. So I bet you someone out there knows for sure. Yes, we'll find out. Or if you're probably nearing retirement, you would bet your career. I doubt if you would do that. It's like a 20 year old. Right. Because it would make much sense. And you will literally have to retire at the end of the match, you will reveal your name, your hometown, and how long you've been wrestling, traditionally after you've been unmasked or retired by defeat. And that is the Luciste acquestus. And they don't do it very often. And it's pretty heated match, obviously. Yeah, I would imagine. Is there something at stake? It's probably very well watched, too. Yes. It's also characterized the lighter wrestlers are more popular, whereas in the United States, the more popular guy, I mean, they're all huge. Huge, right. Rift. But yeah, lucidors tend to be smaller and quicker and more agile than American wrestlers. There's a little more high flying acrobatics that's associated with lucha libre and stuff. It's like very fast paced, like one move after the other. That's right. And also I wanted to mention rudos, like the characters are sometimes Americans. Oh, yeah. And just to get the crowd riled up, like the American be just as total racist and classist. And apparently the crowd goes crazy for that, I'm sure. Against that. Yes. That's funny. So you mentioned the main league now is the CMLL there's also a rival league. And I don't keep up with American pro wrestling anymore. Is it two leagues? I know there's like www. We have a friend who moved to WWE, remember? Yeah, that's right. I don't know what the rival is anymore, though, at WCW View. I think it is. I'm pretty sure. Well, they have their international Wrestling Revolution group. And I'm sorry that's the the smaller independent leagues that are also scattered about the country. But the main rival league is the Estencia E Administration, or the AAA. Got you. So they have two big leagues and then some smaller independent like, those are the cool ones. I saw some videos and it looks like the old school American Day is when they're in front of 4000 people in a gym. Yeah, like just flying around. They still do that in Memphis. Do they? But it's not like 4000 people, it's like 40. Wow. Yeah. At the Pyramid. And then Strickland also told me about no, like West Memphis, Arkansas, like basically a covered alley. Got you. There's this group called Chikara out of Philadelphia and they basically do this absurdist Mexican wrestling. Chicken told me about this, where there's this guy named Ice Cream Jr. And his persona is like a clown with like a little clown hat sitting outside his head. His face is painted and his secret weapon is a bag, a sock filled with ice cream sprinkles that he'll throw it like his opponent and it just burns them like acid. There's this one great shot of it, of him throwing it on his opponent. The guy is writhing in pain and ice cream. Jr. Puts some more on the mat and he goes to drop the guy on it. But the guy gets to drop on him and throws Ice Cream Junior down. He starts writhing like on my back. It's really great to send me this. You have to see it. I'll send it right now. Okay. Yeah. I find that remarkable. Yeah, we should post that to our Facebook page. We always say we're going to do that, but it's the same thing. It's just like in this fluorescent light gym with like 50 or 100 people and it's called Chikara. Awesome. Yeah, but that kind of combines Mexican wrestling with Japanese style Mexican wrestling. Yeah, it's big over there, right? It is. And there's a couple of wrestlers that have kind of taken it to the next level. Ultimo Dragon and Tiger mask. Have you seen Tiger Mask? No. It's awesome. You know what? I think I have. It's a tiger mask, right? Yeah. And these guys are like the, I guess, japanese stars of Mexican wrestling in Japan. That's so crazy. Yeah, I love it. You mentioned Lucha Vivoo earlier. That is a variation of Lucha Libra. That's pretty popular right now because it combines wrestling with burlesque, strip t's and stand up comedy. And not just stand up comedy, like girls spinning three hula hoops at once. Like a variety of chefs stuff. Just anything you can think of that's just totally out there. And I think it's based in Los Angeles. They should do that in the middle of a roller derby ring. I'm surprised that they haven't. And if they haven't and they listen to this podcast, they start doing it and serve tons of beer. They suggest to best watch it. That you drink tequila shots. Yeah. That's how you best enjoy. Seriously. I was watching the tower to watch Lucia vavoon, and they were like, this is the rudos. This is what you do for him. Boom. And then this is the technicos, and you cheer for him. And then you want to drink tequila shots, but not so much that you throw up and get up on the stage, because that'll ruin it. Right? It's pretty cool. So Lucha Vavoom is going to be in Calgary? Edmonton. There is the tie that binds this one with chemtrails. In case you ever come across a question. It's all related. On January 27 and 28th at the Calgary high performance rodeo, they're headlining. If I live in Calgary, I would go to that. They should bring this through Atlanta. Well, normally they have it in La. At the Mayan Theater. Yeah. And Atlanta has a large Latino population and dudes like us that mix well with that crowd. Yeah. Like to do tequila shots, but not so much that we throw up. No, because that ruins it. Yeah. Let's talk about the wrestling itself. Okay. They have many more weight classes than their American counterparts because it was originally based on boxing classes, which is great because, like you said, the little light guys can fly around and jump and do these awesome aerial moves that you don't see as much anymore in the US. And one of those weights, I was like, I'm going to take this opportunity to look up what the heck Walter weight means. So I looked up welter, and welter itself means like, wallow. It has nothing to do with anything else. But if you look up the entomology of welter weight, they think that it's based on the English word welt, which means to beat severely. So I was like, okay, that's what welter weight. It's the weight class where the people beat severely one another. Wow. Yeah. Pretty cool, huh? \u00a3170, by the way, for the welter weight. Yeah. You would think the heavy weights would be welter weight then. Yeah. Because they inflict more bruises. I guess not. So, Chuck, there's different kinds of matches you can have. You have, like, single matches. Boring. Yeah. Those are not the most popular ones, but we need to go over the rules there for purpose. So we have to tell them there's four ways to win a single match. That's the pin for 3 seconds, knock somebody out of the ring for 20 seconds to make your opponent submit, which you don't tap in Mexican wrestling, you waive or you say referee. Oh, like, I'm about to die here. I want to quit. Right. Or you can be disqualified. The other person can be disqualified. Yeah. There's a few ways that can happen. If you take off someone's mask, that is a disqualification unless the storyline calls for it. No weapons. So like you're not going to see any chair hitting going on. Okay. That's definitely different. No grind shots. No. And you can't attack the referee. Why would you? Which makes sense. Although they do that some in American wrestler. Yeah. And there's that one classic clip that was at the beginning of Malcolm in the middle of the referee getting in front of a punch during that boxing, man, and just getting koed. Classic. Yeah. Also pile driver. You can't pile drive somebody, but like you said, unmasking. They'll sometimes do it anyway, even though you're going to get disqualified. But they customarily the person who's piled driven is carried out on a stretcher to just make sure all the kids know, don't do this at home. It's very bad. Which is pretty awesome. Yeah. They certainly don't do that in the States. No, don't try this at home unless you're really tough. Right. Like they inject steroids in the middle of the ring in the States, the referee can also stop the brawl for excess rudezas, which is excessive punishment or violence. Which is funny because it's saying like, if you excessively beat your opponent, we're going to go ahead and give you the match. Oh, you win. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. I know. Well, it's like the referee stop in a boxing match, I guess. Or like a baseball game. What is that rule? I don't know. There's some rule where if like, the team's beating the other team by twelve points. Like a mercy rule. Yeah, mercy rule. Yeah. If you're up by like eleven after a certain ending, they'll stop it. But it makes sense. Humiliating. Yeah. It's not like you're going to give the win to the team that lost. Yeah, of course. Same thing. Although these days you never know. Kids this country these days. Like you said, the tag team matches are really where it's at in Mexican wrestling. And the most popular of the tag team are the three on three, the trios matches. The goal there, if you're going to win, is to either pin the captain or to pin both of the other two guys. Right, correct. Yeah. Correct though. Yeah. And there's two referees usually in those, and there are also four on four, five on five, and it's a lot of action going on in the four on four. Those are called the Atomic Coast matches, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I like that. And then the five on five. The only way to win is to pin the team captain, apparently. Yeah. And another difference between that and American wrestling, when you have a tag team and American wrestling is you have to literally tag each other. Right. Whereas in Mexican wrestling, and Lucillebrate, if you're out of the ring, which either thrown out or you can crawl out, then your other partner can get right on in there, which really speeds things along and keeps it exciting. Yeah. As they say. And if you want to know a few moves or if you'd like to hear the names and descriptions of a few moves, we get you covered there. Basically, if you understand what the plancha is, you understand Mexican wrestling. Okay. Basically, the plancha is where your opponent is flat on his back in the ring, and you're up on the ropes, and you jump on them with your full body weight. Yeah. Then there's variations to the plancha. There's the Torneo, which is a plancha in which the wrestler who's jumping off of the ropes twists in mid air for visual effects. Sure. There's the Centron, which is a plancha in which the diving wrestler lands on his back on top of the other wrestler. Nice. And then that's pretty much it. I mean, there's a couple of others you want to take this well, if you're going to head, but someone, they're going to call that a tope. And these are just a few of the moves. I mean, there are tons and tons of moves, and they're done in various combinations according to your personal flair. And they're all plancha rooted, are they? No, not all of them. There's plenty of plans are rooted moves. I saw some cool leg twist where the guy would be on his back and get a dude, like, in a scissor hold with his legs and then do, like, this little breakdance spin move to flip the guy over. That sounds a lot like the hurricane rana. Yeah. What's that? Well, the rana is the position where the wrestler holds the opponent's shoulders down with his knees and then hooks his legs with his arms. Right. Yeah. And if you start that out with a flying head scissor, you're doing the hurricane rana. Awesome. As popularized by Hurricane Ramirez. Oh, that was his name. Makes sense. Yeah. Another difference in lucha libre and American pro wrestling is in American pro wrestling, aside from the Rock, in your occasional appearance by Hulk Hogan and Rocky three wrestlers are generally wrestlers, whereas in Mexico, they are national icons, and generally they're on TV, they're in movies, they're in comic books. They're all over the place. And this, thanks largely to El Santo. The King. Yeah, santo. That's not what it means. I'm just calling him the King. No. His name means the Saint of the Silver Mask. Yes. Santo Ellen mascarado de Plata. Yes. Saint of the Silver Mask. So Santo was a Technico, and he started he was one of the original Luchadors. Yeah. In the he was born in 1917, started wrestling in the by the 50s, who's popular enough that this guy named Jose Crews came along in 1952 and said, I want to make a comic book of you. And Santos said, all right, whatever. That's cool. And he made what became this fumeti style have you heard of fumeti comic books. No, you've seen them before. They're really unsettling and weird, but it's photographs collages. Right. So there'll be, like, a group of gangsters following Santo and you can see the edges of where the person cut them out and put them together, arranged them, and then drew, like, speech bubbles or whatever. And so the perspective is off. The backgrounds will be drawn, but the characters are photographs. Fumedi. It's Italian. I saw that. I didn't know what it was. You saw that when I Googled it earlier for the sky. That's what the style of comic book that Santo had. And it went for 35 years. His comic book, Lifetime, went for 35 years. And he was also in, like, 50 movies from I think the first one was called Evil Brain. Nice. That was in. His breakthrough was Santo versus the Zombies. Of course. And the last one was Fury of the Karate Experts from 1982. So he was in 52 movies, and two of them were cameos. Awesome. And he acted a lot of times alongside other pro wrestlers. Always masked, of course. In fact, he was never unmasked. That is not true. Yeah, I saw a picture of him. It's kind of disappointing. So not disappointing the way he looked. But Ed Grab, The Grabster, says that there are no photographs or there was one, and it was, like, not publicly available. Yeah, not true. Yeah. Welcome to the Internet. Grabston. Exactly. No, he unmasked himself. Yeah, later in life. He went on a show called Counterpunta. Okay. Which I think means counterpoint in 1984. And he unmasked himself on that show and then he died a week later. Really? Yeah. But he was buried in his mask, and so was one of his acting partners who was himself in 20 movies, the Blue Demon. So both of those guys were buried in their lucid mass. And seriously, aside from him unmasking himself a week before he died, that man spent his entire life pretty much in that mask. People didn't know what he looked like. He's a national hero. But consider that he was a wrestler and his wrestling persona made it out of the ring into real life, into the movies, into comic books. And, like, this guy wore this mask. That's crazy. He's handsome. I saw the picture of him. I have not seen it. Just type it in. You find it right now. I tried, and I didn't see one. Oh, yeah, it's there. Blue Demon, as you mentioned, start in a bunch of his own movies as well. There was Mill mascotis, and he was the first guy to do a lot of the big aerial moves. That's what he was known for. He was in a couple of films, I think, with the Blue Demon and Santo. And he was one of the ones that made his name in the United States as well. Yeah, I think he was the first crossover, or the first successful crossover yeah, I don't think we mentioned the WWE. Hope I get that right. One of the if not both have contracts with the lucha libra organizations because it's big money in both countries. There's a lot of latinos living in the United States, obviously, so they want to draw in that crowd, and so they try to do a little cross promotion when they can. Yeah, makes good sense. Probably the most successful crossover guy is ray mysterio. That's a great name. He basically brought the idea of lucia libre to professional wrestling in America, at least this generation that's watching now. And I think he's still wrestling. I don't know. Maybe we'll find out. Mystico is still wrestling. He just came over to the WWE in 2011. He had to change his name, though. Really? Yeah. He started out in the CML in 2006, and when he came over to the WWE, apparently CMLL doesn't have the same kind of contract with the WWE that the other one does, because they said, no, we own mystico and his mask. So you have to change your name and wear a new mask and be shamed forever, probably. And so he said, you know what? That's fine. I'll be Sunsara, which translates to without a face. It's like you're still writing the checks, right? Yeah. All right. Yeah. I'll be whatever then. And then you also mentioned eddie guerrero, and he was a very popular heel arudos. Oh, really? Who made a crossover into the WWE. Oh, yeah, I've seen pictures of that guy. But he died in 2005, supposedly of steroid use. Oh, really? Or it was exacerbated by steroid use. There are female pro wrestlers in Mexico, and they are called luchadores, obviously. And they have their own CML, has their own women's division, and AAA also recognizes a mixed tag team championship, which I imagine would be pretty cool. Yes. Men and women wrestling together. Right. But that's fine. And they have the mini Estralla or the minis, which is not only for little people, but just people under 5ft tall originally, although there are some now they're like 5455. What do you want to tell them what the minis are? Well, they're little people that wrestle well. There's commonly a mini version of a larger lucidor. Okay. So there'll be like just kind of sometimes they'll wrestle together, sometimes they're alter egos, but they'll be like a mini version of elucidor. Did you hear about archerito? He was one of the minis, and he did a r bit. His name was r two daphne before. Yeah. That's pretty cool. And then perhaps the biggest way that it differentiates from american wrestling is since the 1950s, they have openly supported gay wrestlers. Very flamboyant, cross dressing gay wrestlers. Yeah. They're called exoticos. Yeah. How about that? There's one that's really kind of large and in charge right now, named really? Named cassandra. And he is the queen of the ring. That's what he bills himself as he commonly. Wrestles in, like, a bathing suitor, bikini and pantyhose in drag to watch the interview with him. He's extremely flamboyant, and apparently he started out wrestling with a mask and then said, I realize I'm hiding behind this, and I don't feel like I need to hide. So he's one of all not only the most flamboyant of the exotic codes, the most openly gay of them all, he's also one of the rare Mexican wrestlers that wrestles without a mask. Yes. And he said that the fans get behind me. He said, at first I get some booze and some things being said to me, but it's been going on since the 1950s, the exotico pro wrestler, and apparently fans get behind it in a country and sport that's obviously very geared towards the macho. Right. It's pretty cool to know that they'll get behind these guys and prude for him. Oh, yeah. Cassandra is the star. Robert Lam of stuff to blow your mind told me not really. You know about Cassandra, right? Well, also, Cassandra was trained by Ray mysterio senior. Yeah. So he is like a real legit. Awesome lineage there. Yeah, the Mysterios have, like, this whole family dynasty. Yes. That's real big. So Ray Mysterio, who we mentioned, his uncle Ray Mysterio senior, was, like, one of the original Louis Doors. And then he also has, like, a brother, a nephew, a cousin that are all also very young. They're, like, successful luchadores, too. Pretty cool. Very cool. I'd love to go to I hope the Boom or something comes to Atlanta. I'm not so much into the WWE, but this stuff reminds me of the awesome childhood wrestling that I so enjoyed. Plus masks. Yeah. And if it doesn't come, Chuck, you can watch it on the Internet. And by the way, I want to correct himself. That was Eddie Guerrero, who was part of a family dynasty. Okay. Not Mysterio. No, but there is a Ray Mysterio senior. That part wasn't made up. I've got some of these. Lamb has, like, five of these masks, and El Cheapo, my band, was going to wear them for our Halloween party and playing them, and so he lent them to me, and I thought it was awesome, but my drummer was like, I don't want to wear a mask. What? Yeah. He didn't want to wear a mask. I know your drummer, and he needs to wear a mask. I meant to bring one in and then kind of dip behind the curtain before we started, and then just, like, sit down and surprise. I left mine at home too. Do you have one? Yeah, strickland gave me one. What is it with us, too? I don't know. Do they get together and wrinkles and masks? You should see them around Candy Sprinkles, though. They can't even be in the same room as I got to see the video. All right, well, that's it for Mexican wrestling, aka Lucia Libre. Indeed. Oh, we should probably mention Nacho Libre. I thought it was a good movie. What about you? I liked it, man. I mean, I love Jack Black, but I don't think it was his best. I like Jack Black the least. He was the least part of that movie that I liked. Yeah, but with that movie, keeping with the tradition, he played a man fighting for the rights of these orphans. Right. So it was very much true to the lucidor. And I'm so glad you brought that up because I really feel like we would have gotten a lot of list for mail, and we would have been remiss. How did we not brought up Super Mario, who is a Mexican wrestler that exists only outside the ring? There's a guy who in the 80s, was showing up at Evictions, things like that in protests, like cheap housing protests, as this Mexican wrestler named Superbario, even though he didn't wrestle, he's a big fat guy, and he was an avenger for the rights of tenants. Awesome. And he said, like, he was interviewed he ran for President of Mexico in 1988, and he was interviewed and said, like, in 1985, after this devastating earthquake that left a lot of people homeless in Mexico, he was in his apartment, and he was bathed suddenly in a yellow and red light. And when it dissipated, he said, quote, I was dressed like this. And he's wearing, like, a red and yellow outfit with, like, a cape and everything. Awesome. And he said that a voice told him, you are Super Mario, defender of tenants and scourge of greedy landlords. Awesome. So he spent at least a decade showing up at rallies and really having a real genuine impact for the greater good. I think I'd be way more into American pro wrestling if they had these causes that they were behind, like defending the poor and stuff like that. Sure, yeah. Instead of just I don't even know their names anymore. Rowdy. Roddy Piper. Is he still around? No, he was in Bay Live, though, so he's got to pass for me forever. Okay. I don't care what he does. He was in Baylive, and that's cool. He's old school. Yeah. All right, well, that's it about Roddy Piper. That's right. And like we said, we'll do a pro wrestling one someday. We'll try to figure it out. Okay. I thought about a tandem, but I thought you're going to lose some listeners if you do a Tuesday Thursday wrestling combo. If you want to know more about Mexican wrestling, you can type in Mexican wrestling in the search bar@housetofours.com. There's also Mexican wrestling masks for thumbs if you want to do Lucille thumb wrestling. Really? Yeah. I got to get some of them. You can probably find those just about anywhere in the Internet. Sure. But you want to type in Mexican wrestling in the search bar@houseoffworks.com. Which brings up Chuck. Josh. No, listen to me. Today we're going to do what we rarely do, which is just ask you to help support us. Not financially. It remains free. But do us a favor. Go to itunes. Leave a rating. We're not saying leave a good one. If you think we're mediocre, leave us two and a half stars. No, don't do that. Stay away from itunes if you're doing that. No, just go and leave a rating. And leave some comments. It helps our itunes rankings out, I believe. Yeah, we always feel like we have beggars bowls out when we're doing this. Right now, we almost never do. It beats a pledge drive. It definitely does, Chuck. And also, we would like to announce that our little videos that we've been running, that we've gotten some good feedback on our audio podcast. If you notice, they're not there anymore because we have a brand new video only podcast, stuff You Should Know. Search it on itunes, subscribe to it, and we have our little game show that we do that's fun. Yes. And our little short 1 minute Things we did for discovery and Science channels. Your interstitials. Yes. There's a bunch of video of us. I don't know why anybody would want to watch it. Hey, you never know. There's a lot of sick people out there. You can also search how stuff works or stuff you should know. Video podcast RSS if you don't use itunes. And there's a whole RSS page of all of the ones that are published, and it will be updated every time we publish this. Yeah. So back with listener mail next time, I promise. Yeah. So I guess until then, if you want to send us a good listener mail, we're wide open, man. I mean, we are wide open right now. The coffers are empty. Yeah, I mean, we get some, but it's mostly like, high, which is cool, but they're not necessarily like listener mail. Readable. Yeah, we want like knock our socks off. Knock our socks off. Exactly, Chuck. Knock our socks off on Twitter. S-Y-S Kpodcast on Facebook. Facebook? Comstuffyshanelle or via email at stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcasts stuff from the future. Join House Deport staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's 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. 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cf3e3a4a-0484-4796-8ade-ae67011c73f3 | Short Stuff: Greenbrier Bunker | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-greenbriar-bunker | The Greenbrier Bunker was a secret nuclear hideout for Congress, until it wasn't. Once it was exposed as a thing, it ceased to be a thing. Listen in to a fascinating short stuff today!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | The Greenbrier Bunker was a secret nuclear hideout for Congress, until it wasn't. Once it was exposed as a thing, it ceased to be a thing. Listen in to a fascinating short stuff today!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Wed, 30 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=89, tm_isdst=0) | 11756401 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. Again, this is short stuff. And this one is pretty cool because it's about a secret bunker hidden at a resort hotel, not something you come upon every day. No, I had never even heard of this until the other day, actually, and I'm not even sure how I heard about it, now that I think about it. But it seemed like the perfect short stuff, because what we're talking about is during the cold war, the United States government saying, you know what? If the bomb happens, we need our government to function. And in order for our government to function, we need the people of congress to be safe and not fried from radiation. And the only way to do that is to build a massive underground bunker for everyone to go and live. And that's just what they did. Yeah, but they didn't put it on a military base. They didn't put it underneath the capital building. They went to a resort in west Virginia called the green briar that had been around for a very long time already. It's a very well known resort. It's still around today. It's beautiful. And in fact, Dorothy Draper, probably the greatest interior designer of all time, macked out the greenbrier, I think, in the 30s or forty s and brought it back to life. It's an amazing place. But they chose the Greenbriers in part because no one would ever suspect that they built the bunker to house congress during a nuclear attack 4 hours away from Washington, DC. In west Virginia, beneath a resort that everybody loved, right. No one would think that would happen except for the people that built it, because when the construction crews showed up and they were like, all right, we're going to need three foot concrete walls here in these huge areas. We're going to need about 10 00, 10 00 bunk beds. They went, okay, what's going on here? And they said, don't worry about it. Just build what we tell you to build and stay quiet. Because obviously something like this had to be secret, and it was secret for many decades until, I don't know, was it a reporter or just a writer that basically wrote an article about it? Reporter. A guy named Ted gup, who sounds like the kind of person who just out something for fun. It sounds like someone who now they would use the word he gupped that thing up, right. Which means he wasted billions of taxpayer dollars with one single article because it was then useless. And everyone said, well, thanks, Gup. Now we don't have our super secret bunker anymore. It's very much bombable. Yeah, because this thing, although it's built to withstand a few hours from Washington, DC. Where the big bomb lands, it can't withstand like a direct hit. And no one would have bombed white sulfur springs, west Virginia, had it not been for you. Thanks gup. Yeah. Within three years of Ted GOP's article, the ultimate congressional hideaway, the Greenbrier resort was giving tours of it because it'd been decommissioned that quickly. And again, this thing was in ready operation at a moment's notice for 30 years. Over the course of those 30 years, the one 10 bunk beds were assigned to a person. And it wasn't like they assigned at once. As new Congress people came in, they got assigned bunk beds. If something happened, this place was ready to go at a moment's notice to accept all of Congress. And I say we take a break and then we'll come back and talk about some of the details behind this ingenious plan. Let's do it. So, Chuck, if you went to the Greenbrier between the, I guess 1962 and 1992, you might encounter somebody wearing a Foursight Associates uniform. And if you ask them, what Foresight associates did you say? Oh, well, we actually take care of all the TV sets here at the Greenbrier. And then the next thing you know, you would wake up in a crypt in Mexico wearing someone else's clothes. That would be that. Yes. And the last thought that you had in your head was, man, there's a lot of people taking care of these TV sets here. Right. Because it turns out that the Foresight associate TV technicians were actually the government employees who are secretly tasked with keeping the Greenbriar bunker at a state of operational readiness at all times. Yes. It was called when they built it, I saw 57 and 58. So somewhere in there it was called Project Greek Island. And again, the location was determined because it's close enough to DC. To where it's not super far if you had to get there in a hurry, but it's safe enough to be there, I think they could withstand radiation. For how many days could they survive on just the air in there? Three. But then the filtration system was so amazing that it could actually filter out radiation. So they were okay. That's right. It cost about $14 million, was completed in 62, right before the Cuban Missile Crisis. 720ft Underground. Two levels, 112,020 sqft. So roughly the size of a couple of football fields stacked on one another. Yeah, think about it. 720ft Underground. That is a long way. That's a skyscraper down. And what's nuts to me is it still couldn't withstand a direct hit from a nuclear bomb. That's scary. That really says a lot right there. So when you went to this place under a nuclear attack, if you were a member of Congress, you would be hustled off to the Greenbrier. The first thing that would happen once you entered the secure sealed off area is that you would be decontaminated. You'd be given new clothes or other clothes being incinerated, and you would find very quickly that entire swaths of the Green briar had also been ingeniously included in this. Even though it was open to the public. They were used as meeting rooms and stuff during normal times in the case of a nuclear emergency. When Congress took over the bunker, they got sealed off with the rest of this bunker, too. Yeah. So, like, there were literal companies would have a not a retreat well, I guess a retreat there. And they would go and listen to people lecture about their industry and unknowingly the whole time they're sitting on top of this underground bunker. It was pretty ingenious to not have it as a military base and to sort of hide it in plain sight in some ways. If you're wondering, like, well, how did you access it from the Greenbrier? It would, of course, be behind the door that says, Danger High Voltage. Keep out. Yeah. Danger. Danger High Voltage. Like out of an Austin Powers movie or something like that. Just put High Voltage, no one will open that door. Yes. I think it works. You're kind of a chump if you go through that door anyway, you know? Yeah, you'd be a real gup. Nice call back, dude. That was great. So what else is in there? You've got your decontamination room, you got your dormitories, which are 18 rooms with 60 beds in each. You got to have a cafeteria and a kitchen. Sure. They even had, like, media room set up with fake views of the capital in the background and stuff like that. So they had like a production facility, essentially, because they had to be able to broadcast out in case anything went wrong. Yeah. And they had three meeting rooms. One that could house the Senate, one that could house the House of Representatives, and one that could house joint congressional meetings where everybody was involved. They also had a pharmacy with tons of antidepressants. Apparently they had the good stuff. They had a little jail. And then this to me was pretty revealing. I think either MPR or the Atomic Heritage Foundation pointed out that they had in this little jail area, they had weapons, but that the weapons amounted to a couple of rifles, some pistols, some batons and helmets, like stuff you would have for riot gear. And I realized that wasn't meant to be used on Soviet forces trying to gain entry. That's to be used in case of some sort of crazy mutiny, like below ground by Congress. People who are losing their marbles. Just old grudges. They're finally going to take Pelosi down once and for all. Put her in a straight jacket because there were straight jackets. There were two boxes of straight jackets with this jail in case something happened. Like that. Yeah. So the whole thing was completed, I think you said, in time for the Cuban Missile Crisis, right? Yeah. That's really good. Really good timing. And again, when they did this, they did it under the auspices that the Greenbrier was building a new wing. And indeed, the Greenbriar did build a new wing, but there was some really weird parts of it, so it did raise some questions, but apparently the locals kept it to themselves, because it does not seem to have been one of those open secrets. Like, it seems to have been, like, a real secret secret, which is hats off to everybody who managed to keep that a secret all those years. Well, yeah, because, like we said, the construction crews were immediately suspicious, but a lot of people worked on that thing and clearly knew what was going on. And I guess it was just a different time where people cared about their country such that they knew it was important to keep it a secret for national security reasons. Yeah, hats off, government on keeping some secrets. How fast would this be tweeted out? Today there was a drywall person working on an underground bunker. Check it out. Supposedly, the Supreme Court was destined for the Grove Park Inn in the case of a nuclear emergency. That would find covers of the Greenbrier. Yeah. Where's that? Asheville. Okay. Really? Yes. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. It's in Asheville. So that's where they would go and bunker down to yeah. Wow. Pretty amazing stuff, Chuck. If there were one. 10 beds. This seems to indicate that they would have their families there, right? I guess, but I guess, yeah, it must be. And I think there's a train route from DC. To Greenbrier, so they would probably be time to be like, meet me at the Amtrak station. We got to go to your family. That's the only explanation I can find. Although staff maybe I could see Congress people choosing their staff over their family in a nuclear disaster. That's one $100. That's plenty of room for staff and families and maybe even an enemy or two. Sure. Again, though, thanks to the Atomic Heritage Foundation great article on this. As well as NPR, who we always love. Yes, and great thanks to you, too, Chuck. And you, sir. Thank you. Well, we thanked each other, everybody. That means short stuff is out. Bye. 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." | |
c42b0ec2-5460-11e8-b38c-b34a72be6431 | SYSK Selects: How Dissociative Identity Disorder Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-dissociative-identity-disorder-wo | Dissociative Identity Disorder was known as multiple personality disorder until a case of mass hysteria brought on by the movie-mad public and unscrupulous psychiatrists led to a stigma over the term. Now psychiatry has gotten serious about the condition. Learn more in this classic episode. | Dissociative Identity Disorder was known as multiple personality disorder until a case of mass hysteria brought on by the movie-mad public and unscrupulous psychiatrists led to a stigma over the term. Now psychiatry has gotten serious about the condition. Learn more in this classic episode. | Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=102, tm_isdst=0) | 41790590 | audio/mpeg | "Hi there, everybody. It's me, Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I've chosen our episode on Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. It's one of those very satisfying episodes where we get to go behind and undo all of the incorrect things. Everybody assumes that they know about it, which is fun for us, and I hope it's fun for you to listen and learn. So away with the show. 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 and there's Noel. Is Noel one of my altars? No, he's his own dude. Okay. Do you have altars? No. Okay. Do you? No, not that I know of. I think we've each seen a bit of an altar in each other, but that's just called us being jerked every now and then. Bad mood. Yeah. That's a little different. Yeah, it is. I was on a forum about a forum for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and from what I was reading, sometimes you feel crowded. Some people have felt like they have had alters their whole life as long as they've been around. Interesting, sometimes they don't. Like, one of the entries I saw was like, does your altar have to have a name? And it was like, I don't necessarily think of them as people. And another person responded and said that that's often like, an early stage of the process. And then over time, as they become more pronounced, they end up adopting names or it is super moody or some other bad behavior that you say is Disassociative Identity Disorder. And you give it a name. Well, you don't. Your therapist does. Yeah. Or you might. Yeah. So it's controversial, and we'll get to that. But I guess we should start off by saying that another name for this more popular name, even though it's been since 1994. D ID. The original name was Multiple Personality Disorder. Right. So it's split personality. Yeah. When I was reading this, at first I was like, it sounds an awful lot like split personality. Right. I was like, oh, it is. It is. They just renamed it, and we'll see pretty soon why. Which is kind of a good move because from what I can tell, it seems to be a real thing that underwent a period of intense exploitation and abuse, so much so that now there's a lot of people who doubt that it's a real thing. Right. But that there are still people out there who do suffer from it enough so that psychiatry has said we need to change the name and then just focus on these people that really have this. Now, did they change it because it had a stigma? Really? That was the only reason? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. There's this excellent article on IO nine, actually, about I think it's called The Myth of Dissociative Identity Disorder. The myth of multiple personality disorder. Thank you. They went old school. Yeah. And the lady who wrote it did a really good job of explaining the controversy around it and also the renewal of it as well, like how it became renewed. But yeah. It was because it was basically exploited and fictionalized by the psychiatric community. Yeah. A few notable people that will get to all that, though. Yeah. So, I mean, everybody has heard of multiple Personality Disorder thanks to that period of exploitation from the yeah. So you have probably a pretty good idea of the concept behind it, of the disorder to begin with. It's a single person has their normal, their original, what's called their host personality, and sometimes, especially under periods of acute psychosocial stress, may be confronted with stress or something they don't want to think about or talk about or whatever. Another one of their personalities will emerge. Yeah. And they're generally tied to a trauma and early life that you may not even know about until you have therapy that out of your subconscious. Yeah. Right. And they believe that for Dissociative Identity Disorder, when it does come about from the result of the trauma, it comes about as a coping mechanism to protect the mind, because the host personality simply can't handle dealing with it. But there is some aspect of that person which is characterized through another personality that can handle it, and so that personality will come out to handle those periods where the person is confronted with those memories. Yeah. And it can express itself in different ways depending on how severe your disorder is. But generally, if you've ever seen the United States of Terror, you ever seen that? No, I know of it, but I've never seen an episode. Emily was way into it. Yeah. We're talking about completely new people. But your behavior, your speech, you can be a different sex. You can have a different accent, different species. Yeah. You could be like a dog. Yeah. Technically, I think that's a little more rare, I would imagine. Yeah. And there is no timetable. It doesn't necessarily happen, like, right. After a trauma can come out years later. Right. And there's not an awareness necessarily. Well, that's a big one. Well, there's not an awareness of the host. Person doesn't have an awareness of the alters coming out. Sometimes they do. Sometimes. But the alters usually are aware of the other alters and the host. Right. And that was like it was in the United States of Tarah. Yeah. Sometimes the alters, which I don't know if we specifically said or not yet, but an altar is one of the other personalities within the host personality. Yeah. And there's usually at least two others. There has to be two a host and at least one other two total. Right. But then it can go people have reported up to 100 or beyond, and they can happen at the same time, too. Yeah. That's another thing. Is they can switch between them pretty quickly. And these periods where the alters emerge can take place over the course of days or weeks. Basically, if there's a period where the altars are really kind of coming out and fluidly changing, that's a period of severe stress that that person's undergoing. Yeah. Maybe calling back that previous trauma, maybe not. It might just be triggered by stress period. And you said also that sometimes a lot of times the altars are aware of each other. There's also been plenty of documented cases where the altars don't like each other. Yeah. Sometimes they don't like the host or they don't have much respect for the host, or like, one of the other alters. They don't like how they deal with the host or deal with life or something like that. Which is kind of neat, because that shows that these alters are aware that the effects or the actions of the other alter or the host affects them. Yeah. Somehow they understand that they're part of the hole. Well, you can be the host person, just the regular josh is a non drinker, and you could have an alcoholic altar yeah. That thinks the host is a square. And like, I can't wait to get my hands on a drink because Josh is like, he won't go near the stuff. Right. But now that I'm Randy, I'm going to buy that twelve pack of Meisterbrow. Yeah. I don't think I've ever had a sip of mycervow I had a very long night with it about 15 years ago. Okay, so you might have undergone something that's similar to Dissociative disorder, we should say. Also, when they renamed Dissociative disorder in 1994, they also took all of these components that used to make up multiple Personality disorder and split them. So now there's four associated disorders. There is Associative Identity Disorder, which is the most extreme that's the one with alters and different personalities coming out. And then there is Dissociative Amnesia, which is remember in our amnesia podcast? It's what brought this one about yeah. Where you just kind of forget a certain experience. Yeah. Like, I had this terrible car crash. I don't even remember it. Right. And it was dissociative of amnesia. That's that where it's like you don't remember the terrible thing that happened to you. Right. There's also a dissociative fugue, which is where you basically just leave your life. You walk away from your life and maybe you seem like you're kind of out of it or whatever. Maybe you're under the influence of a different personality. It's not just like, I'm not going to come home any longer. It's like you left your life in a different person. You're leading a different life. And it can last days, weeks, months, and then Chuck, the fourth one is Depersonalization Disorder. Right. Which is like you're watching your life as if you're viewing a movie. You're detached. Yeah. And I think these can work together because I know that if you have d ID, you definitely have moments of experiencing that one. Yeah. Even if you're just the host, you might feel like you're just watching yourself instead of being yourself. So dissociative identity disorder diagnosis almost has, like, split personality. It's fluid. It switches between the different disorders. And the one thing that they all have in common is that they all appear to be coping mechanisms to protect the mind from a trauma. They're basically saying, like, I'm checking out of my life, or I'm detaching myself from my life, or I'm just not going to remember that part of my life, or I can't handle my life and this other personality can. Yeah. And it's not always just those things. Some of the side symptoms can be hallucinations. A lot of times it leads to substance abuse or eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and mood swings, obviously, obvi and memory disturbances, either short or long term. Right. It's kind of one of the keys, probably. Yeah. And apparently a person suffering from dissociative identity sort of just kind of like you said, foggy is a really good descriptor of if not life, then their periods of this condition flaring up, I guess. Yeah. Just their sense of place and time is just completely disrupted. Yeah. It sounds awful. It is awful. Yeah, it is. Like I said, I haven't seen the United States of terror, but apparently it's a lot of comic effect out of yeah, of course. But if you have the societal identity disorder, you'd likely have a really hard struggle in life. Yeah. And it shows some of that, too. I mean, it's obviously for TV, so there is some comedy with some of the altars, but it also shows the toll that it takes on the family and stuff like that. Yeah. So this has been around for a little while, but we've understood its symptoms since at least the late 18th century. Yeah. Some early scientists and researchers did a pretty good job, considering how long ago it was. Nailing it. Well, it's a pretty extravagant yeah. Case. Yeah. Doctors, especially in the 18 hundreds and 1007 hundreds, were pretty excited about it. So demonic possession and weird things like that back in the day, many of those cases may have been things like these disorders. We just didn't know about it back then. So we just said someone was a hysteric or a witch. Right. And they killed them or locked them up in some room. But the first symptoms of did came around in 1791. That's a long time ago. Yeah. A guy named eberhardt gamellin. Yeah. Gamellin. Yeah. I think it's G-M-E-L-I-N-I would go silent g on that. Mellon why don't they just spell it right? That's just a guess. Yeah. Well, he was the first one to describe the conditions. He had a patient who is a middle class German woman who had an altar, who is a French aristocrat. So he hypnotized her, brought out the French aristocrat, the animal magnetized. Her or mesmerism. Yeah. And we did an episode on hypnosis, if you want to go check that out. Yeah, it's a very good one. But up until the late 1800, about 1880, they generally thought that what the deal was, was that humans had a background consciousness, and that was actually greater than our regular primary consciousness. And when that background consciousness got sick, then that's what brought out the gray. Right. That's what mental illness came from. Pretty much. Basically, it was another way of putting the conscious and the subconscious, because still today people believe the subconscious exists and that it's the one that's really running the show. Oh, really? Is that still the belief that it's greater? As far as I know, certainly among Freudians, but that's true. I don't think anyone's really discredited the idea of the subconscious. All right. Who knows? We're going to find up here or there. About the same time as that was going on, they started to tie it with childhood trauma, which is pretty spot on. And then a French patient named Louis Viv, viva Viv, he was 22 years old, and he had this is in the late 1800, had six personalities. Doctors just went crazy over this guy. Yeah. They didn't overlap with their memories. They thought that they were just hypnotic variations of each other. They didn't understand, though, at the time, that they were actually completely separate personalities. They thought it was just all parts of Lewis, which, if you really kind of follow the timeline of, we've come back to that understanding of it. Yeah, I guess you're right. That it's not like just different personalities. It's just different aspects of a single personality that are kind of given voice in a very literal different voice in a literal way. Right. Yeah, it's a good point. And then after that, actually, around the same time, Peter Jeanette, another French researcher, said, no, these are different personalities, and it comes from a trauma that they suffered. Right. So he was kind of hit it early on. Yeah. I guess he laid the groundwork for the understanding for the next century or so to come. Yeah. And then it wasn't until 19 five that somebody claimed to cure a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder, again, back then, known as multiple Personality Disorder, a guy named Morton Prince. Morty prince. Not Martin prince. Morton Prince, that's right. He basically said that using hypnosis, he was able to very easily coax out the altars, because this is something like very early on, dissociative Identity Disorder and hypnosis, where basically just went hand in hand, and alienists believe that they could use hypnosis to very easily draw out the altars, which they could yeah. Who am I talking to now, exactly? Or I want to talk to this personality and then start confronting those personalities and convincing them to integrate into the host personality. And then once you had full, successful integration. You had a reunited, whole host person who is just one personality. But the key is that they're using hypnosis, right? And hypnosis isn't real. We have a huge clue here to a mystery of what exactly is going on. But before anybody really kind of faces that and confronts it and starts to really. Truly treat dissociative identity disorder on its face or at its root. It treated it on its face. Psychiatry took a really it just went all in and doubled down on the most the sexiest. Craziest version of come up with ya. So, Chuck, psychiatry is about to say multiple personality disorder is exactly what it looks like. Some of these people are beyond looney. This guy over here has 100 personalities, and seven of them are dogs. Different dogs. Can you believe this? And these cases are going to start to grow by leaps and bounds in number, and all can be traced back to a single book, which is based on a single case history. Yeah. Well, a couple of books. Yeah, but to start, it was all about Eve. That's right. The Three Faces of Eve was a book written in 1957 by two psychiatrists, and it was about a woman whose real name was Chris Costner Sizemore, who may or may not be related to Kevin Costner. Neither I nor anybody on the Internet appears to know for sure. Oh, really? I looked and nobody all questions. I can't believe I didn't think to look that up. Yeah, costner. Sure. There's like two of them, kevin and who? Chris. Okay, so Chris Costner Sizemore went by the name of Eva White, or at least that's what they called her in the book. Although finally, I didn't look up to see whether or not she's related to Tom Size more just Kevin Costner. Yeah. Did I say Eva White? I meant Eve White. Yeah, I might have said eve. Either way, it's Eve White. And she was referred because she had headaches, amnesia, and she worked with these two psychiatrists, and a couple of altars emerged and they wrote a book. Well, they supposedly cured her and reintegrated them back into one host person, but they wrote a book really quickly that exploded on the scene, super popular, made them a ton of money. There was a big blockbuster movie. It took over well, not took over, but it made a huge splash in just people's consciousness about what this is for the first time. Like you said, it's kind of super sexy and interesting, and people were captivated by this new disease and this Eve woman who was really three women, and one right there was Eve Peggy, and I can't remember the other one, but one was like a good girl, the other one was like a bad girl or a tough girl. Yeah. And then the host was just kind of a combination of the two. Yeah. And she's still alive. She still is. Yeah. Wow. So this doctor, was it Sigpen? Yeah, dr. Sigpen, who was treating her? Corbett Sigpen, and a colleague, I believe his name is Henny Cleckley. Seriously and thickpen. Sygpen was the one who wrote, like, really went off the deep end with the book and then sold the lady's life rights without her approval to Hollywood. And they made this story or this movie, and like you said, it was the 20th Century Fox. Yeah. And it made a pretty big splash, both the book and the movie. And she came out and wrote a book called I'm Eve and said, dude, this guy is a total fraud. Yes, I do have multiple personalities. Right. But they didn't cure me. No. Yeah. This guy kept insisting I was cured. It didn't work. He shot me up with sodium penthol and just used the power of suggestion. And he's just a huckster, basically, he was after the story, but here I am. Left with my conditions, though. Yeah. And she had reportedly suffered, witnessed a bad accident and witnessed two deaths as a child, and that's where hers was born. So that set the stage for popular consciousness to kind of come to understand multiple personality disorder, which, again, that's what it was called at the time. And, I mean, it was all over the place. People were just aware of it, whereas they hadn't been before. And it was kind of like a one two punch. You had All About Eve in the 50s. Yeah. And then about 15 years later, you had Sibel. And Cybil was the one that blew this thing wide open. Sally Field it just happened, I guess, to arrive at a time when America was really ready to undergo or be party to psychological exploitation, like Big Time. Yes. And in 1973 is when Civil, the book came out, written by oh, let's see, flora Rita Schreiber, about her treatment with psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur. Yeah. And about the treatment of the real name was Shirley Mason. And they kept that a secret for many years. Sybil yeah. To protect her identity. But eventually the name came out. Right. Well, she died in the 90s. Yeah, she died in 98 of breast cancer. But she had 16 personalities. And like I said, Sally Field played her in the movie. It was a big hit. I remember my mom reading the book. It was all the rage in the 70s. Yeah, it was huge. And she was actually an artist, a painter, and taught painting, too, I think. But they found 103 paintings in her basement after she died, and she only signed the ones that she felt like the host had painted, like she wouldn't sign the ones that an altar had painted. So many of them are unsigned, but when you look at it, it's really like they're all different. Like, some are, like, realist, some are abstract, some are impressionistic, really, all over the map. And it's just, I don't know, kind of a testament to how real this can be. Is there a website that hosts all of them? I don't know. I think if you just look up hidden paintings of Sybil, you can probably buy them. That would be what? S-I-B-Y-L is how they spelled that. No S-Y-B-I-L. Yeah. So Sybil is the smash hit. It's based on the first wave that was brought about by All About Eve, and the public is just fully aware of multiple personality disorders. Like, these two are like the cream of the crop. There were tons of made for TV movies and Donahue episodes and all sorts of just chatter about multiple personality disorder. And all of a sudden, the cases go from about 200 in the medical literature to suddenly 8000 after the movie Civil comes out. And it seems like every psychiatrist has a patient with multiple personality disorder. And because of all the sensationalism that went along with it, there are fortunately a cadre of serious psychiatrists and psychologists who said, wait a minute, what's going on here? Like, movies aren't supposed to trigger outbreaks of disorders. Right. Some people explained it away by saying, well, these people may have didn't know they had a thing like this. They didn't have a name to associate with the movie, gave them the name so they could go to the doctor and speak to it and be treated. Right. That is one explanation. Yeah. The problem is the explanation that this was a real phenomenon and not like some sort of what do they call, I guess, outbreak of mass hysteria a little bit. And this is in no way to diminish anybody who's suffering mentally in any way. Yeah, of course. But I'm talking about the specific moment in history in the 70s in the west where there was an outbreak of multiple personality disorder cases. The idea that it was a real thing was definitely undermined by the Civil case itself. Contemporaneously some psychiatrists said this isn't a peer reviewed cases tree. We think this is basically all just made up. Well, the lid was blown off specifically by a single doctor in Sybil's case. Doctor Herbert Spiegel apparently treated sybil. Well, that's not a real name, but we'll call her Sybil. Yeah. While Wilbur was out of town and he was like, you know what? This doesn't add up. He said this case notes. Yeah. He said, it seems like she's really highly suggestible. It seems like you gave her sodium pinpol and she's addicted to that. And it seems like you might have not necessarily on purpose coached her into saying these things. Well, there was at least one instance where that fill in doctor who is treating Civil said that they were in a session and Civil said, which personality do you want me to be? Yes. Which is not something you say when you can't control your altars. No. And then secondly, there was, in the case notes. There was a reference to a note or a statement by Sybil to her doctor, Doctor Wilbur, that said, I do not even have AII am all of them. I've been lying in my pretense of them. And Dr. Wilbur noted that she wrote this up to avoidance behavior that Sibel was trying to avoid having to confront, reintegrating her personalities, and that's why she was saying that she was lying. So when all of this kind of came out and was added up and combined with this outbreak of multiple personality disorder cases in the late seventies, early 80s, it was pretty damning. But then when it became obvious that satanic ritual abuse, that moral panic that happened, was following right on the heels of this, I think the scientific community stepped back and said, okay, America is crazy. Well, not in the mental health problem kind of way. Like just crazy. Yeah, I think a lot of that came about because it started to become a legal defense and people started explaining away very bad behaviors on altars and claiming in court, like, it wasn't me that killed my wife, it was Tony. Man, it sounds like we're talking about the Lifetime Movie Network here. You know, dude, this Lifetime Movie Network is all over these stories. Yeah, I bet you there's quite a few of those movies out there, right? So all this is going on. It becomes very apparent that this isn't a real thing. And fortunately for the people who actually do suffer from this disorder, psychiatry said, all right, let's get rid of the multiple personality disorder moniker, and we're going to rename it Dissociative Identity Disorder. We're going to completely remove it from what just happened because that was pitiful. And we're going to get down to basics. We're going to go back to the way of addressing this. Of viewing this that the doctor who described Louis Vive came up with all the way back in 1888. That it's just variations of the host personality. Not truly separate personalities. And that if we treat the underlying cause or even just the comorbid symptoms like drug addiction. Alcoholism. Depression. The hallucinations. The mood swings. The anxiety. If we treat all this. Most likely the depression identity disorder is also going to be treated in kind. Yeah. I think another thing that lended itself to that too, where doctors started being sued in the 90s by people saying, wait a minute, you've got me on these drugs. You're hypnotizing me, you're saying you're coercing me into calling out these altars, so I'm going to sue you. Yeah, I'm glad you said that because it is worth revisiting. I don't think we really laid this at the feet of psychiatrists enough. There were people who saw this movie who were feeling this way, who maybe felt like they had more than one personality yeah. And went to and I think everyone feels that way a little bit sometimes, right. But if you're a highly suggestible person, and you see this movie and you start thinking like, wow, maybe that's what I have. And they inject you with sodium pinothal. Right. You go to a medical professional. That medical professional isn't supposed to be like, yeah, you have that. And this one's named Tim is a very aggressive personality. I can see Tim coming out now. And then all of a sudden, the person's like Tim. Yes. That person's life has been altered probably for the negative because of, at the very least, a dubious medical expert. Yeah. So of course they were sued, and they should have been sued. It was a really dark spot in the history of psychiatry, which has a lot of dark spots on its history. Frankly, this is one of them. But like I said, again, there were a group of psychiatrists who said, no, there's something real here. We've just been looking at it the wrong way. We allowed it to become sensationalized. We need to learn that lesson, but at the same time, we need to identify the people who really are suffering from this and figure out how to help them. Yeah. Okay, Chuck, so now we're at they've renamed multiple Personality disorder and now it's Dissociative Identity Disorder. So let's talk about how it's treated, how it manifests, what it is. So I guess the modern understanding, from what I can tell, seems to be that the Associative Identity Disorder is a person who has well, let's talk about personality, what identity is. Okay. Okay. What if your identity is basically a script that you've been equipped with, that's been developed and refined and nuanced, but also very much brutalized and solidified over the years, so that when you are faced with anything in life, you're going to react in a prescribed, predictable way? Okay. That's your identity. Now, what if your identity is such that it doesn't handle stress very well? That's true, but you're still confronted with stress. But handling stress isn't part of that script that makes up your identity. Well, in the case of a very extreme case, it's possible that a person will subsume their normal personality and draw out some aspect that isn't predictable, that isn't prescribed, but it's still part of themselves and put that front and center to deal with that stress. And it might cuss out the person, like a psychiatrist who is confronting them with the stress. It may be very protective of that personality, but the point is it's still part of that single person. It's just a different aspect showing yeah. When you take it to its extreme conclusion, what you're looking at then are two different personalities, split personalities or multiple personalities. Right. That's apparently what dissociative identity disorder is. So are you saying you don't believe that when someone comes out in a British accent and says, my name is Rob, that's not real? I don't think the word real is a good word. Okay. Because I think to that person, It's real. And that's reality right there. Right? I mean, like if a person is experiencing a different personality and it happens to be a British guy named Rob, right? That's their reality. Right. Then I don't think these people who have Dissociative Identity Disorder are faking. Right. I don't think it's made up. I don't think they're necessarily playing along. I think that's what happened in the 80s. Everybody was just kind of playing along. Right. But I think if you actually have Dissociative Identity Disorder, this is your experience, this is reality to you. You do feel detached from your life. You do have missing time, like you do experience this. So yes, it's real for you. It's more how the psychiatric community or the mental health community has to view Dissociative Identity Disorder in order to treat it right. That they aren't separate personalities because you can basically let's tan them out to saying you're possessed by a demon. That's a whole other person in there with you, and that's just not the case. And if you view it like that, you're not going to be able to treat it right. Did you find anyone famous with it? No. Did you? Herschel Walker. No. Really? Yeah. You knew about that, right? No. Famous former Georgia Bulldog running back and NFL star Hershel Walker. He suffers from did, and he wrote a book called Breaking Free. And he has no memory of winning the Heisman Trophy? Oh, no. He has no memory of putting a gun to his wife's head, something that's happened in his life. No memory of any of these things. And he says he has as many as twelve altars. And his wife, I don't know if they're still together. I don't think so. But his wife for many years thinks it all makes sense now. When she finally came out with this, and he just came out with a few years ago, wow. She's like, well, this totally makes sense because I saw very different people through the course of our marriage out of nowhere, that made no sense. And she was like, it was not a mood swing. And he's famous for not just being a football player. Like he was into ballet, he went to FBI school, he was an Olympic bob slutter. What? He's done all these things. He's a mixed martial artist now, and he thinks that these alters are basically why he has so many varying interests in life. Well, yeah, that is really fascinating, for sure. So what do you think about it? What's your take on dissociative identity disorder? Well, I'm not sure I'd see the difference between like, that's what a mental disorder is someone believing something about themselves. I guess I don't see the difference between someone thinking they have these different personalities. Like a personality isn't a tangible thing anyway. Like you can't touch it. Right. So if someone believes they have four different personalities, then they may as well have four different personalities. I get you what you're saying. I guess it's all part of that person. But if it's a disorder, that means it's causing a problem, right? Exactly. I think the fact that when I see cases of what looks like real d ID like Hershel Walker, no memory of certain things. Right. It's certainly more powerful than that's Bad Chuck coming out because I don't deal with stress well. We'll call him Tony. Right. But if I blacked out and didn't remember my actions for several days, and those actions included putting a gun to my wife's head, then that's a whole different thing because I'm certainly moody. We all know bad Chuck. We all know Tony. Tony nice. All right, well, I guess that's it about dissociative identity disorder. If you want to learn more about it, type those words in the search bar athowstoforce.com, and I'll bring up this article. And since I said search bar, it's time for listen or mail. I'm going to call this real world advice for Tony. Guys, name's Tony. Oh, no way. Yeah. Total accident. Hey, guys. I recently returned to the States from living in the Republic of Korea, mostly teaching English there for the last four years. Returned home to get a job different from that. And now that I'm at home, I can't figure out what to do. To give you context, I've been actively interviewing with all sorts of companies, organizations and firms positions in marketing, sales, business development, finance, consulting. Anyway, I find most of those roles to be too boring. I also feel pressured and burdened because I studied engineering at Columbia University and feel a burden to be successful, quote, unquote. I am very much stuck in a rut, looking for a job, not excited by my prospects, and asking, what do I want to do? I don't really want to go back to school because I can't afford to pay for a master's degree, especially if I'm not certain or pretty certain that that advanced degree will improve my situation. So I'm emailing you guys because I'm an Advertiser. And I think we share similar perspectives on things. And you have great careers that are thrilling and inspiring true death. So I'm not quite saying I want to be you guys or I want your jobs, but I see both as people that are really interesting salts of the earth folk who can relate to my situation more so than my investment management consulting, lawyering, med school friends. So Tony DeFreitas wants to know what he should do. Man, that's a tough one. I've actually been thinking about this dude email for a couple of days now. Oh, yeah? Okay. I mean, like, he's asking for help. Sure. So give it to him. Well, my first bit of advice would be to narrow down your scope a little bit. If you studied engineering and you're looking at marketing, sales, business development, finance, consulting, I think you're casting your net a little too wide. Yeah, so my first bit of advice is to narrow that down, and my second bit of advice is to narrow it down based on I often tell people, like, what do you love and what would you love to do? Ideally, right, what they call blue sky territory here in the corporate world, it sounds like also to me, you're asking a lot of people, but you're spending a lot of time just keeping it at the 40,000 foot level. Maybe you sit for a little while with a legal pen and a pen and be quiet and gather your thoughts and then brainstorm after that. Just even for like a half hour, 20 minutes, something like that. If it's for your future that you're thinking about, you could probably come up with a half hour to dedicate just to that. But just turn everything off and really focus inward and say, what do you want to do? And then go for that. And don't feel obligated to use your degree. Most people who go to college don't use the degree that they got. It's more like they went through college to show they can go through college. Yeah. And he didn't list engineer anywhere in what he was looking into, even though that's what his degree is in. Yeah. Here's the other thing, too. There are very few career choices or life paths that go absolutely nowhere, and you shouldn't be afraid to take steps that aren't necessarily the prescribed way to go. Yeah. And don't be worried about locking yourself in for life, necessarily. Right. Try something out that you love and it may bear fruit. Yeah. And if it doesn't work, you can always just go get a guaranteed job or something afterward. Yeah. And something that interests you now isn't necessarily going to interest you five years from now. So, yeah, I think you're worrying too much, Tony. Or, Tony, if this was a very sly way of trying to get the word out with your resume and you're out there and you want a Columbia University grad engineering degree, who's interested in sales and business development and finance, let us know. Interested in anything? See Captaining whatever. So spend some time, be quiet with your thoughts. Try and decide what you love, and if you could make a career out of that, and if we hear anything, then we'll let you know. It sounds like you're up for adventure because you lived in Korea for garden seed. Yeah. We give him a lot of advice here. This is plenty. Take some of that and do something with it. Tony, let us know how it goes, please. If you have made any kind of life choice or decision based on something Chuck and I had said, we want to know how that went. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comsteno. You can send us an email to stuff, podcast@howstuffworks.com, and as always, hang out with us at our home on the web. Stuffyouw.com. Stuff you shouldn't is a production of Iheartradios how Stuff works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. 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How Police Dogs Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-police-dogs-work | Police dogs have been used since the 19th century - one WWI German defector became a major movie star. But in the US the post-9/11 era has seen a K9 unit boom and questions and concerns have increased as well. | Police dogs have been used since the 19th century - one WWI German defector became a major movie star. But in the US the post-9/11 era has seen a K9 unit boom and questions and concerns have increased as well. | Tue, 08 Sep 2015 12:27:39 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=12, tm_min=27, tm_sec=39, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=251, tm_isdst=0) | 34738331 | 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 Jerry. And this is stuff you should know in the longrunning, never ending law enforcement suite. Another addition to that. Boy, it's got to be close to done, huh? I think that every time. In fact, I had to check. I was like, I could have sworn we had done this one. No, I guess we just did service dogs. We did service dogs for service dogs in general. Do we do service dogs or guide dogs? I don't remember. That was great. One always love talking about dogs. Yes. In fact, we should just do one on dogs. Very interesting. We haven't yeah, it's pretty fascinating, the history and the breeds and how that all works. Yeah. This is about specific dogs more often than not. German shepherds and Belgian malwise. Don't forget about the beagle brigade. Oh, yeah. Those are so cute. The cutest little service brigade on the planet. Love little beagles until they start howling. But other than that, they're very cute. That's right. Do they howl more than most dogs? Beagles? No, but when they do, they can howl. Okay. They're like a hound. They're a member of the hounds. Yeah. Mine two howl at the sirens that go by. Yeah. Because it's like a howling machine today. Yeah. I love it, though. I think it's great. Got you. Because it's over before you know it. No, I just like it. You don't have a beagle, do you? No. But they howl. Yes. Most dogs howl. It's not like a beagle trait. I thought it was beagles and hounds and bats of hounds bloodhound. I grew up with a bath of hound. It's pretty great at your house. Yeah, that was bo. He was awesome. He used to trip on his ears and he stepped on them. Those poor dogs. Yeah. That's back when I knew better and got like, I want this breed of a dog. Let's go buy one right now. You rescue the mutt from the kennel. That's how you should get a dog. All right, I'm off my soapbox. So, like I was saying, Malinois, German shepherds, labs, police dogs and little beagles. Mainly German shepherds, though. Yeah. From what I've seen. Well, apparently the Belgian ones are pretty I'm pretty sure I'm saying it right. Malinois well, that's where it all started, in Belgium. Yeah. Let's start with the history of police dogs, man. Because while they are pretty ubiquitous here in the United States these days, you always see, like, a car that says canine unit or whatever. They like to release the dogs a lot these days on protests, which is pretty disheartening. Sure. That's actually fairly recent, at least in the United States. Europe has been doing this for a long time. Yeah. The first recorded police dogs were in France in the 14th century. They guarded duck installations. Oh, yeah. And then in 1888, london. The London Metropolitan Police Force first used bloodhounds to work the Jack the Ripper case. Really? Man, a lot of stuff came out of that case. Yeah, a lot of things like forensics that we're using today still and shouldn't be came out of that case. And they still couldn't catch him? No, never figured it out. Did you ever see that? What was the guy from Night Rider's name? I can't the Hoff. What's his full name? Hasselhoff. Yeah, David Hasselhoff. He goes by the Hoff, though. Yeah, he did. It one where the Tower Bridge or the London Bridge was rebuilt in Arizona. What's that famous lake in Arizona? The resort lake Habasu. Yes. They rebuilt the London Bridge at Lake Havasu and Jack the Ripper's ghost came with it and started killing everybody. Was that a TV movie? I think it was made for TV. It certainly has the production value made for TV movie. And Hasselhoff is the police detective with the bad attitude is the only guy with the chops to solve this case. Yeah, and everybody thinks it's crazy because he's like, It's Jack the Rippers Ghost. I saw it when I was a kid, and I think it's on, like, Amazon Prime, so it's coming for free. I don't remember what it's called, but it's on there. Man, I got to seek that one out. That's crazy. And that was back in his Night Rider heyday, I guess, yeah, he was clearly riding high. Pre baywatch even, I guess. Yeah, I forgot. He's on Baywatch, wasn't he? He made his name all over the place here on stage. Screen, yeah. Now he's the stage in Germany. So Belgium in Gent. G-H-E-N-T Belgium. They first started using about ten years later than London in 1899. And they actually had a program set up. Yes, like the first real police dog program. And it was a big success. And in October of 19 seven, new York Police Department chief, I guess, George Wakefield, went to Gantt in Belgium and came back with five dogs. They just followed them home, started using them in New York City in 19 eight. Yeah. And then New Jersey followed suit very quickly, and so did Detroit. The thing is, all of these police canine units were disbanded within a few years because they didn't know how to train the dogs properly. Yeah, I think the thing I saw said, from 1951 to 1954, there were no police dogs in the United States. And then later in the 1950s, they started coming back. In the 1970s, they became really widespread as far as many municipalities having a canine unit. Yes. And initially it was like, oh, I need a police dog. You have a German shepherd, and leave it to me in your will. That was like a police dog arrangement for a while. And finally, law enforcement agencies around the country. Apparently, 2001 set off a huge boom in demand for police dogs that's one of the big reasons why they're so ubiquitous today, although they've been in use a lot longer than that. But in any small town now, you're going to find like at least one canine unit post 911 bombs. Right. But at some point they figured out the ones that they're doing in Europe. Let's just import them from there because they know what they're doing in Belgium, in Holland, and other areas where they have these long standing police training programs where you can buy a certified dog and then you actually teach the trainer how to deal with that dog rather than the trainer training the dog because the dog already comes trained and ready to go. Well, there's still a lot more training you have to do once you get them over here. But from what I read, it's like $8500 to buy the certified dog and then another ten grand to train them in the United States. Oh, really? Yeah. But they pay for themselves. Well, they do because they're usually paid for with drug money that has been seized sometimes by drugs that have been sniffed out by police dogs. So the police dogs are generating income to buy other place dogs? Among other things, yeah. And fat dog houses. Great treats like the frozen ice cream treats that dogs love so much. I bet canines get those. Why do they use dogs? One good reason is because their sense of smell is about 50 times more sensitive than a humans, which you don't need any more reason than that, right? Because they can smell. I think this is the Grabster wrote this one. Right. He actually interviewed a canine team, the human part of that team in New York, and he said that his dog Breaston found a shipment of marijuana in heat. Sealed mylar bags inside plastic lined crates sealed with foam sealant inside a closed storage garage with a cold. Yeah, half asleep. So that will tell you a little bit about the sensitivity of a dog's nose. It's pretty amazing they don't get confused. You can bury your drugs and coffee or wrap them in perfume and the dog will still go, no, I know it's in there. Nice try. Now let me bite your crotch. And the reason they noses are so since they had something like 200 million olfactory receptors crazy. Where we have something like 5 million yeah, we're dummy it's in the smell department. Right. So dogs are also used not just for sniffing stuff out, whether it be drugs or bombs or whatever. They're also used as patrol dogs, which basically means that they're attack dogs at the ready. And apparently just the very presence of a dog can keep a physical conversation from taking place or escalating. Oh, yeah. I've seen it on Cops. When they get that dog out, you most often see the dude go, okay, where do you want me? Because they've got that dog barking and I don't know, it's weird that being beaten down by a human isn't enough, but that dog is scary. Yeah, well, you can't really reason with the dog. You can't be like, enough. What am I saying? I don't know if you can reason the top just beating you down either. So with the dog, actually, they fall into this spectrum of escalation of violence that's allowable among law enforcement, they actually come after the baton, but before the cop draws is gone. Right. So baton doesn't work, you can release the dog, the dog doesn't work, you can pull your gun, and then if that doesn't work, you can pull the trigger. That's the continuum of violence. Is that what it's called, seriously? A continuum of force? I'm sorry. Okay. Big difference. Yeah. Let's just call it violence. They're not lullabying people to sleep and putting them in the police car. You know what I mean? Like we said, it's usually German shepherds. Sometimes they use labs. Now, labrador retrievers, what is that called again? You said it once before. The Belgianois. And of course, the Beagles, which we'll talk about here in a bit. They are all well suited to police doggery work, and they can get them all over the place, like you said, sometimes they're donated. But by and large, if you want a really crack police dog, you still need to go to Europe. It's worth the money. Yeah. Apparently, because if there are issues later on in court about the dog, apparently the first thing defense attorneys will say is, your papers, please. Yeah. Like they want to see this dog's background. As far as the Supreme Court is concerned, which we'll talk about later, as of 2013, that's all they need to say. And the reason they get these dogs from Europe is because their standards are just way more strict. And they, like you said, basically like, let's just take this dog and train them. Like, this dog has been bred from this lineage. Right. I don't like that light patch on that dog's ear. Kill it. Don't say that. Well, they don't breed it. Yes. Kill its genetic line. Right. As far as Richard Dawkins is concerned, they might as well be saying kill it. Neuter it. Well, and that's a big thing as they leave these male dogs, they're usually male dogs and leave them unneutered because that will keep that aggressive streak intact. Right. Which is the cop. It's sort of the same thing. You want the best of the best, right? Yeah. I mean, ideally, yes. This is all, like, in ideals and hypotheticals, it all makes utter sense. And I think that's how it works out most of the time. Yeah. There's not any cop can go be a canine copy. You're required to be at the very top of your class, very strong, energetic personality, very outgoing, willing to work very long hours, it turns out. I did not realize this. Yeah, well, we'll talk about that in a minute. But they say 60 hours a week, and that's just working. The dog lives with you. It's your dog. 24/7, dude. Yeah. They have such a tight bond. You are that dog's handler for its whole career. Yeah. And I think 99% of the time, these cops keep these dogs after they're retired as well. I would guess so, yeah. It'd be hard to be like, all right, go live with someone else. Yeah. Good luck in your retirement. All right, let's take a break here, and we'll talk a little bit about dog basic training right after this. So, Chuck, the first thing that all police dogs go through is obedience training. It's kind of basic and simple, but it's also probably the most important training they go through. Sure. Especially when they're patrol dogs, because they have to listen to their handler or else things can go really bad really fast. Yeah. Because their handler is going to tell them when enough is enough. And if the dog isn't understanding this and doesn't have that basic obedience, then you can get in big trouble. Yes. As a police force and as a canine unit. Yeah. Lawsuits. Arrests. Well, probably not arrests. Ed point? Can you ed point? No, you can't. Okay, well, I guess you can in a way. The dog catcher arrests dogs. I thought that was an apt analogy. Yeah. So Ed dispels a myth here, actually, where I guess a lot of the dogs that come over from Europe take commands in their native language. Right. Got you. Which makes total sense. But apparently there is a myth that the reason why is because they don't want people besides the handler accidentally or purposefully setting the dog off to attack by saying the word not true. No. Apparently it's easier for the dog to retain the training it had and for the handler to just learn a few words in a foreign language. Yeah, it makes total sense. You're not going to get a German Shepherd that's fully trained and say, all right, now forget all that, because I want to say sit and not zitsen. So Zetzen is sit in Germany. My friend Clay has a German Shepherd he bought from Germany, and he gives commands in German, which is pretty interesting. Yeah. You hear a lot of plots around his dog. I grew up with German shepherds. A couple of them plots is more efficient because it's one syllable and lay down as two. Yeah. Makes sense. Germans are efficient. What else? They can get into specialty training. Well, they need to have endurance and be super agile and be physically fit dogs. But then they go through specialty training, like whether it's drugs or bombs. I know arson is a big one. Now, to have them seek out accelerants, they can even track people again, how they do it, but I don't understand how they actually do it. Well, when I've seen it on Cops, it's been like they have a piece of clothing from the guy, and then there's like, he's in this attic in this house somewhere. Go find him. So they have to have something to send the dog. Yes, I think so. Okay, that's what I didn't get. I mean, if it's just some guy who ran, then the dog wouldn't really be of any use, right? No, just a description of the perp wouldn't help. Right. So this training, actually the secondary training or specialty training is actually really simple and kind of clever and fun. It is. So the first thing the dog learns to do is to love a towel more than anything else on the planet. It becomes a toy, a towel that's been washed to remove any kind of scent so the towel doesn't have its own scent, and the dog learns to love it by playing tug of war with it, right? Oh, yeah. Dogs love the tug of war. And then in very short order, the cop gets his hands on little baggy of pot and rolls it up with the towel, and they keep playing tug of war. And now the dog's like, hey, my favorite toy smells a lot like pot. Right? Okay, now the next step is for the cop to hide the towel filled with pots, and the dog finds it, and then they play tug of war. Eventually, the dog will learn that anytime it smells pot, it thinks its toy is hiding, and it goes after it and starts digging in the place where that it smells pot. And hence, the dog has just sniffed out pot, which means that drug sniffing police dogs are playing. Yeah, which I didn't realize until pretty awesome to think about when you see a dog clawing at the trunk of that guy's car, he's like, My toys in there, my toys in there. And then they will replace that pot with all manner of drugs to cross train the dog. So they can basically stuff that suitcase that Hunter Thompson steals police convention into a towel and train it all at once. They can also do, like, explosive components, too. Sure. For bombs, and then accelerates in the case of arson. Arson sniffing dogs are a big thing now. That's all the rage. They're so hot right now. And there's two ways it can alert. The aggressive Alert is what we were just talking about is when they think there's a toy and they're just clawing and pawn and trying to dig it out of your suitcase or wherever. And then there's the Passive Alert, and that is when you don't want a dog clawing all up in your junk and you need a little more delicate situation, which is the case with the beagle brigade. Yeah, they just come and they sit next to the person. That's how they alert. That's the cutest alert. Passive Alert. Yeah. Maybe they even, like, kind of cut their head toward the person. The beagle brigade works with the USDA and they sniff out illegal produce. So you might have seen them at the airport here, too. They were like little desks. Yeah, but not bulletproof vests. No, but, Cadence, dogs like patrol dogs do. You? Sure. In fact, I think Ed mentioned a fundraiser. They had to get bulletproof vests for the dogs at this one, and they like people just flooded them with money. Right. Because it's not cheap. Now, I have no idea how much bulletproof vest is for K Nine unit, do you? You just know the one that you have, how much that cost? No, I don't know. My guess is a bulletproof fest is probably a couple of grand. Okay. I'm just throwing that out there. That's what I'd pay. Sure. Well, my friend, you would be taken for a ride, because I can find a canine tactical mole vest for $199. That's a dubious and apparently, Miami Heat star Ray Allen has a side business where he supplies canine protection and safety products. And this is the segment called Josh Reads His Phone on the Air. You've done that before. Don't even play holier than now. Have I? Yeah, you were looking up the name of the impossible the other day while I was yapping. Yeah. That's, like, the only time I've ever done that. So let's talk about a day in the life of a dog, a canine dog. I didn't know this before. They even go on patrol from 04:00 p.m.. To midnight, they're going to be going to high schools and going down the hallways, sniffing at lockers. Yeah. They're going to be sniffing businesses. If you need a business sniff, you can call them and say, hey, I'd like to pay. I guess you can pay, right? Just request it. I would guess a request. The cops are like, it's an investment and a bust. Right. Good point. Some days you have to go to court, and then the dog has to go to court as well. And then eventually, they will actually work their shift. And this is why they work such long hours, because they're busy during the day, and then they go to work at night when they need to be banging the streets. And you're so tough. My tough talk. Yeah. And when they're on the streets, what they're doing is just like any other cop, basically. You do a lot of sitting around and waiting on calls to come in. Then when that call comes in, you might be sniffing out a car, or you might be chasing a purp. Yes. You could be doing both. Yeah. The dog, that is. And when you are sniffing a car, if you're a dog, the Supreme Court ruled that a dog alert is enough for probable cause for a police search like that in and of itself. So if the dog alerts, it's trainer handler, I should say, who's the only person on that scene who can read the dog's behavior, necessarily, then that officer has a right. To search that car. Yeah. And that's very delicate matter because there's a lot of claims of false signals that a cop will make the dog react just so they can basically the canine dog is a prop used to get searched whenever they want. Yeah, some people say that those are yeah, and I guess we'll talk about it later. The false positives. Yeah. Well, that'll be quiet for now. We can talk about it right now. Well, false positives are the thing that you are most concerned with, with police dogs, because they usually do not miss drugs, the presence of drugs when they are present. Right. The police dog, when it's brought around to, like, a car or something like that, it knows the score. It knows that it's supposed to be looking for its toy, so it's going to start sniffing around. The thing is, it's thinking about sniffing its toy or sniffing for its toy, and that's this whole thing. It's entirely possible that it's going to detect the presence of its toy, meaning drugs are there when it's not there, and then it'll give an alert and then a full search will begin, which is not a problem when that actually results in the discovery of drugs. But that apparently happens, generously speaking, only like 46% of the time they find drugs when a police dog says there's drugs there, which means that 54% of the time, police dog is saying that there's drugs there when there aren't, which means a lot of innocent people get their property searched. Yeah. And there's a Chapel Hill, North Carolina, law professor named Richard Myers, who in 2006 wrote an article on the George Mason Law Review where he basically said the controlled testing to get numbers on these dogs is terrible. And he did some math based on something called the Bayesian Probability Formula, where he said he thinks it could be as high as 85% failure rate or false positive rate. Yeah. Supposedly in Florida, there were some dogs that were being used on a stretch of highway where they put up roadblocks a lot that were like 96% or wrong 96% of the time in the something like that. Yeah. And I think they said one of the big issues is when they're doing that, like random, not like, hey, I pulled someone over, but, hey, I'm at the border and there's 300 cars in this line. Sniff them, all right? Because the idea is that most of those cars are going to be free of drugs. Right. But the dogs like looking for drugs. This whole thing is looking for its toy. The context is different for the dog than the average person who's just trying to get through the border. Right, yeah. Very slippery slope. It is. And then it gets even more slippery when people when juries convict based on evidence from dogs. So, for example, they're is a guy named I think his name is Paul Yell, who was convicted of intentionally burning down his own house, killing one of his kids inside, because a police dog detected accelerants, while a lab went behind the dog, where the dog said, there's an accelerant here, and tested the area, and in zero of those six did it find the presence of accelerants. The jury still convicted him because the dog said that the guy had used accelerants, even though the lab couldn't verify those results. Right. And there was another guy in a state trooper in Florida in the 80s named John Preston, who had a dog named Harass Too. And it turned out this guy helped put away, like, more than 100 people, and he was basically like a framer for hire. You could bring them along and basically let him know what you were looking for, and he would say that his dog had found whatever evidence you needed. And at least two people were exonerated of murder who were convicted in part by evidence detected by this dog, Harassed Too, who was handled by Preston. There's two really good documentaries. One is a killing in Canova Beach. Remember when Paulazon was on our podcast? Yeah. For the Innocence Project. It's a documentary about that. And then there's another one called an innocent man. It's about a guy named Michael Morton. Both of them feature this guy, John Preston. He's this notorious, infamous dog handler. Even among dog handlers, he's despised because he gave the idea of canine units just a really bad name, because everybody was like, well, if this guy's doing it, how many other people are doing it? Right? And then all of a sudden, you can't use canines anymore. Right. All right, well, we'll take one more break and come back and talk some about well, what are we going to talk about? Let's talk about dogs. All right, so here's a little stat for you on a drug sweep, a canine, they're very efficient. A canine unit. The dog can cover ten times quicker to search an area than a human cop could and be way more apt to find the drugs than a cop might. Which, again, it makes sense, because if you can't disguise the shipment of drugs very well from a dog's nose, then you're in trouble, first of all. But also, most people are trying to disguise it from humans, right. Which means you're trying to make it so it doesn't look like drugs. Right. But even if you go to the trouble of disguising the scent, it's still probably not going to work for a well trained dog. Police dogs are considered they're kind of treated like regular cops as far as protections and the law goes. Like, if you shoot and kill a police dog, they treat it as if you have shot and killed a police officer. Yeah. A guy in Pittsburgh recently got three and a half to seven years for stabbing a police dog to death. Wow. So I guess it's not just like it because if you killed a cop, you'd probably go to the chair. Right. You wouldn't get three to seven years. Right. In Tennessee, they recently passed a law called Erin's Law in honor of a police dog that's mentioned in here that went down during a bank robbery. He was killed. The bank he kept going after this bank robber that was shooting at him, and apparently it's credited for distracting the robber enough for the human cops to get to safety. And eventually the SWAT team killed the bank robber, but the dog was killed in the process. But that was in 98. And it wasn't until this year, 2015, that Tennessee passed a law called Erin's Law that makes it a felony to kill a police dog and intentionally kill a police dog. Wow. I'm surprised it's just not a felony everywhere. Yeah, it is kind of surprising. And then in terms of being treated like regular cops, as far as the use of force, the justification is the same with the dog. And it says in this article that in court, typically, use of force is justified if the suspect is armed, if they have not yet been searched by officers, or if they are fleeing a serious crime scene. Right. That's when you can release the hounds. Yeah. And so, like we said, usually just the certificates of training are enough for a court to be like, okay, it's fine. That dog probably didn't overstep its bounds, despite what the guy who is now suing the police department because he got bit by this police dog is saying, because he's a trained dog, a trained European police dog, and the track record doesn't have to come into account. That's enough for most courts to say no, excessive force was not used. Yeah, I think we're going to see a lot more stuff about this in the future. False triggers and forensic investigation as a whole is under a microscope like never before. And very appropriately, there's a lot of stuff that's still just based on hunches that's being passed off as science and courtrooms and people are being convicted on, even DNA can be very easily misused, but it's not done properly. Yeah. So I think it should be agreed. So, Chuck, there is a very famous police dog that you may have heard of. Yeah. Rinthen. That's right. It was a German dog who fought for the Kaiser in World War One, but then the guys who were the unit he was a member of abandoned him. So an American said, hey, pooch, come over here and rent and follow him, and ended up becoming a movie star in the United States. How about that? Did you know that? I did not know that. I mean, I knew about Renting Ten, but I had no idea that he was a service dog. Yeah. Pretty neat. So there are actually there's a group called the Connecticut Police Work Dog Association, and they are involved in. Honoring and tracking police dogs who have died in the line of duty. And a surprising and very disturbing number of police dogs die in the lion of duty because they're left in hot cars and forgotten about what? Yes. Since 19 40, 20 00, police dogs have died in the line of duty. Well and then since 2000. And 729 have died from being left in sweltering cars. Holy cow. Yes. The reason why is because there are special compartments for them to ride in. Yeah. You can't put them in there that aren't necessarily air conditioned. Oh, wow. Yeah. They need to outfit those 29 navigators since then. Yeah. That should not happen since 2007. That shouldn't happen once. Yeah. Because it's easily preventable. It sure is. You got anything else? I got nothing else. And this one is chock full of stacks, sets, and random lots of stuff. I was surprised when I first saw police dogs. I was like, okay. And it was a very much more complex and interesting issue than I initially assumed it would be. I agree. If you see a police dog, do not go up and pet it. It's working. Especially if you have drugs on your person. That's right. If you want to know more about police dogs, you can type those words into the search bar@housetoforce.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this meat pigeon. Hey, guys. I've been hooked on your podcast. Since the first episode I listened to, I've been hooked on me pigeons, even though never thought I'd have anything worth writing in about. But when I saw Tuesday's episode about pigeons, it seemed too coincidental not to. This past weekend, I received a random text from my boss asking if I wanted a pigeon. It's not as odd as you would think because I work in a pet store and I'm known for being an animal lover. Animal loving. Vegan with an affinity for birds. As it turns out. In Sumpter. South Carolina. Where my boss is a bit pigeon processing plant where they raise utility pigeons for meat and research. My boss very easily caught a lucky escape as he bathed in the sprinkler. Unaware that he's being stalked by a resident cat. So after a few days of rooming with William, the dub I took home when it was abandoned at my work, the pigeon now has a coupe to call his own, replacing his temporary name of meat pigeon is a proper name ramsay. I guess William was her boss. Yeah. I'm a little confused. Yeah. The introduction of the name Ramses makes me think you're probably right. Unless your boss is named Ramsay's. No, the name he gave himself is when he became manager. It's a tribute to Ramsay's III in pigeon history, but has consequently led to my husband and I frequently singing nacho libre quotes to Paul Ramsay's. I don't remember Ramsay's in nacho libre, do you? I didn't see that you didn't. No. Cute. The next step is to seek out some pigeon companionship for Ramsays. I know. Thank you so much for the greatest podcast ever. I'm hoping there will be a Southeast or Newcastle. Columbia, South Carolina, maybe. You might just have to drive to Atlanta. And that is from Brie Bagnall in Columbia. And she sent in pictures of Ramsay's in the coop. And he is one cute pigeon. Yeah, there are cute there are some cute pigeons out there. I learned. As long as they're not carrier pigeons, they're usually fairly cute. If you want to get in touch with us and tell us your amazing story about whatever, you can tweet to us at sisk podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetofworks.com, and as always, join us at our home on the web, stepbysto.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com." | ||
d6a68a88-3620-11ea-822e-5ff8c43b8bf7 | Short Stuff: Pimento Cheese! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-pimento-cheese | Pimento cheese was originally nothing like it is now: It was mass produced, it was made from cream cheese and it was conceived in New York. Today it’s something much better, thanks to the South! | Pimento cheese was originally nothing like it is now: It was mass produced, it was made from cream cheese and it was conceived in New York. Today it’s something much better, thanks to the South! | Wed, 02 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=337, tm_isdst=0) | 13881304 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, and Jerry's here, sitting in on behalf of producer Dave, who actually produces these, so I guess she's maybe encroaching on Dave's territory. I don't know. I don't want to put my foot in that horn. It's nest. But anyway, short stuff, like I was saying about Tim Ian dochys. Yeah. I don't know why I said that with Italian, because it's Spanish. That was close. It's nearby. But the fact is, Chuck, you've just hit upon an artifact of culinary history that there used to be an extra eye in pimento, and everyone said, I don't like this here. I don't like the way it looks. I don't like how it sounds. I'm getting rid of it, and by God, we did. And I don't like you. What do I got to do with it? I'm just a poor pimento farmer. I've just been saying pimento. That's what I don't like. Yeah. So this is about pimento cheese, the delicious one of my favorite things that you can eat here in the south that most people, I think, associate with the south. Yeah, for sure. But it's not actually from the south, is it? No, it started in New York, they think, as a matter of fact what? Yes. What? Indeed, Chuck, around World War One, and even more what than that, pimeno cheese bore almost no resemblance whatsoever to what we think of as pimeno cheese today. It had the pimenos, those pimento peppers from Spain that are much milder than your average hot chili pepper, but they'll also have a little bit of a kick to them, and they're worth putting in. Mixed together with cream cheese, mustard, and some chives. That was the original pimento cheese, and it does not sound delicious. I don't think it sounds very good. But apparently America around World War I was just absolutely nuts for it. Not just World War One. Apparently, from about the 1920s up to the 1940s, that form of pimento cheese was all the rage. Yeah. It was easily tinned. It was easily shipped. I think soldiers, it was a big part of their rations in the war. So it's a little slice of home. Okay. I could see it like that. And a little green can, and I think, depending on what kind of mustard if it was I'm not the biggest mustard guy, but there are some kinds of Coleman's, some kinds of brown mustard. I will eat in other things, but not just on its own. Have you had Coleman yellow fancy yellow mustard? Yeah, I'm not into yellow mustard at all. Okay. This is more brown. I know what you're saying. Totally get it. Give Coleman a chance. In what? It doesn't matter. You know how Duke's is just somehow different in all the best ways as far as mayonnaise goes, coleman's is just that way. With yellow mustard, it's like, oh, this is what yellow mustard is supposed to taste. Like, you know what I mean? I'll have to see. I mean, I historically have not had a yellow mustard I've ever liked at all, and I generally don't like mustard at all, but I occasionally will like it in a dish. Okay, you're telling me to try something. I really kind of hate thinking that I will like it because you like it. I'm just trying to turn you on to something I think is going to change your life. That's all I'm saying. I just don't like mustard. I'll try Coleman's, and maybe it doesn't taste like mustard. Just get yourself a little just a little bowl, not a big bowl. And then put a bunch of Coleman's mustard in it. Get yourself a spoon. Oh, God. Give it a half an hour. That makes me want to roll back here and then see what you think. So cream cheese, as, pimento cheese, those sweet little red pimento peppers. In the late 18 hundreds, they started coming to America from Spain, and people liked them. They were colorful. They were mild. They weren't very spicy at all. And Americans of that era thought that it was a very palatable thing to them. Yeah. And cream cheese was pretty new around the same time, too. So people said, let's see what happens when we put these together. And they said, oh, this is really good. And so that version of pimento cheese sandwiches started popping up and, like, good Housekeeping Cookbooks and things like that. And so food companies started mass producing. They made mass produced versions like the soldiers got in World War One. That stuff was flying off the shelves. And so if you were having friends over for finger food or something like that, you would probably serve pimento cheese sandwiches, but it would be a pimento spread that you would buy at the store and spread onto bread, and then there you go. And that is nothing like what pimento cheese is, as we think of today. And the whole reason that it made this transition was because the south is wacky. And I think, Chuck, we should take a message break and then come back and talk about how the wacky south took from entertainment and made it many times better. That's right. I'm going to go have a spoonful of mustard and vomit and be right back. All right. So pima and cheese is all the rage. All of a sudden, they dropped that eye and the recipes in America. So people finally understood it here in the US. They started mass producing it, and it was in grocery stores. And then the south steps up and says, even here in Georgia, as a matter of fact, and said, you know what? I think we can grow these little peppers right here. Can we have some seeds? Spain. Yeah. In fact, Griffin, Georgia became the pimeno Capital of the United States. That's right. They got the seeds from the Spanish consulate in the early 19 hundreds. And by the time 1916 rolls around, they're harvesting this stuff, they're making it rain with pimentos, and people are going crazy. So Griffin, Georgia, was the pimento capital during that first cream cheese pimento cheese boom between the 1920s and the 1940s. But the thing is, in the south, either there wasn't easy access to cream cheese, or people were just like, I don't like this Yankee cream cheese stuff. Let's try something. I'm guessing it was that, too. So they took what was a mass produced cheese spread and decided to decoct it into their own thing. The south did, and they kind of took the idea of pimento cheese and turned it into something totally different. They got rid of the cheese, the cream cheese. They did away with the mustard. They didn't have anything to do with chives. And instead they said, let's keep the pimentos. So we can still call it pimento cheese, but let's change absolutely everything else. And it's kind of chuck akin to saying, like, this deviled chicken spread that's mass produced that you make a sandwich out of. Let's figure out a way to alter that and call it chicken spread still. But then that will become the new chicken spread, and the other chicken spread will be lost to history, basically. What's a chicken spread? You've never had chicken spread, eh? It is a salty delight, Chuck. Is it like tuna fish salad or something? Or chicken salad? Yes. No, it's actually basically whipped chicken with mild chunks in it. So it's as salty as the day is long. And you just put it on some bread and you got a little sandwich. Don't add anything else to it. You just chicken spread on bread or toast, plain bread or toast and eat, and you'll prune up from all the salt to suddenly invade your body. But it's really tasty, if not really, really bad for you. I think I know what you're talking about, because when I worked at Golden Pantry in Athens in college, there would be, like roadworkers would come in during the middle of the day and get, like, potted chicken, tin chicken and saltings for their lunch. Is that what it was? Yeah. Or Vienna sausage would be on the same aisle with it. I've had those. Okay. Yeah. If you just look slightly to the left of the Vienna sausage, you're going to find the devil chicken spread, blow the dust off of it. It's so good, though. I mean, it's tasty. It's not good is the wrong word. It's just a tasty, terrible snack. All right, so here in the south, like you said, they said, let's change it up all together. They said, we don't like that cream cheese. We don't eat bagels down here in the south. Let's find something else that's white and delicious and abundant, and that thing is mayonnaise. They replaced the cream cheese with mayonnaise. That was step one. Added other cheese. You still have cheese. Sure. I think just because they felt guilty about not adding cheese, just having mayonnaise and pimentos, that wouldn't be a dish. But they added shredded cheese, usually cheddar, and apparently it's your preference up to your preference whether you use sharp or mild cheddar. But that's the other big ingredients. So you've got pimenos, mayonnaise, shredded cheese. You basically have pimento cheese with just those three ingredients. Yeah. And pimento cheese has become one of those things where every family has their own recipe. If you're into pimento cheese, and like you said, there are some small variations. You can add some little spices here and there. You can add some non cheddar. So you can add a few different kinds of cheese if you want. Proportions may change a little bit. It's basically the same thing. I've seen people add bacon and jalapenos, and my favorite is the Palmetto cheese. But I started have you ever had the Palmetto cheese? Oh, yeah. I did some research, though, and I kind of fell off them. Well, I did that same research, and I kind of stopped halfway through because I was like, I don't really know if I want to know anymore. Sure. And I think I mentioned this last time we talked about Palmetto, which is when I started to do research. But Queen Charlotte from Charlotte, North Carolina, and they're a stuff you should know. Listener. They sent us some, if you'll remember, and it is just absolutely amazing stuff. It's really cheese. If you can get your hands on Queen Charlotte pimento cheese, you got pretty much the best you can get. But they sent us cheese. You're hoarding the cheese. This was years ago, and I offered it to you, and I think you turned it down. I would never just forward something that somebody sent to us. You're crazy. I don't remember. Have some of this mustard. Right. They said, this mustard and then some other stuff you don't care about. I'll have to try that. Queen Charlotte you should. Yeah, of course. I would not have just hoarded something somebody sent to us. Come on. All right. So the great thing about pimento cheese, too, is you can just make it yourself at home. Sure. Yeah. Those three things. Yeah. So that's what I would suggest trying. You could also go to the Masters, which are very well known for pimento cheese. Right, yeah. They just had the new fall classic. So if you go to the Masters, even if you've never been to the Masters like me, you know that they have a pimento cheese sandwich there that's like as important as the golf that's being played, and they sell them for a dollar 50. But apparently there was a bit of a scandal because they used a guy named Nick Rangos who made their pimento cheese from the mid 1950s all the way until 1998. And the Augusta National people said, you know what? We're going to switch over to somebody else. Why would they do that? I don't know. They're all about tradition. But get this. The caterer they switched to is named the company is called Wife Saver, which, if I have ever encountered a company that's owned by a man who's not married, it's whoever named Wife Saver caterers. But he couldn't get the recipe from Nick Rangos. Nick Rango said, you know what? You're going to drop me. This secret recipe is going to stay secret. And in fact, he carried the secret recipe to his grave. But Wife Saver figured out how to make it and figured out that there is indeed a secret ingredient to that recipe. And they're keeping that recipe secret too. So no one knows how to make the pimeno cheese at Augusta National, except for John Wife's Favor. And also, if you're from a different part of the country, you've never had it. It's generally eaten cold, like you spread on a cracker. You can eat just a pimento cheese sandwich between two pieces of bread, or you can use it as your cheese. If you have, like, a turkey sandwich or something and you want to use pimenta cheese instead of sliced cheese, that's delicious. It's also good with cheeseburgers. Is the cheese on a cheeseburger? Yeah, you can eat it hot or warm. It's generally served cold. But it is pretty good on the cheeseburger. It is good. It tastes totally different hot than it does cold. I mean, not like, oh, this is the hot version of pimento cheese. It tastes like a different thing almost. Oh, you think? I think so. It really brings out the heat and the pimento to me. I don't find pimentos to have any heat. I need to branch out. I need to grow some pimentos. I'm curious to do that. Go down to Griffin and be like, hey, give me some pimenos. Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. That's it for short stuff, everybody. Pimento cheese away. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts to my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-06-15-sysk-camp-x.mp3 | What was Camp X? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-was-camp-x | In the early days of World War II, there was a secret training program in Canada that taught Allied saboteurs everything from espionage and bridge blowing to karate chops to the neck of an enemy. It was called Camp X and was so secret that not even the Ca | In the early days of World War II, there was a secret training program in Canada that taught Allied saboteurs everything from espionage and bridge blowing to karate chops to the neck of an enemy. It was called Camp X and was so secret that not even the Ca | Thu, 15 Jun 2017 18:51:45 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=18, tm_min=51, tm_sec=45, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=166, tm_isdst=0) | 47900280 | audio/mpeg | "Josh, my friend. Yeah. If you are a listener of ours and you live in Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, Austin, Brooklyn, minneapolis, Kansas, or right here in Atlanta, you can come see us on tour starting in August and finishing up in November. Is that right? Yeah, that's right, man. It's our 2017 North America Monsters of Podcasting tour. I like the sound of that. Eddie Van Halen is opening. Yeah, he is. But not really. No, not really. But you can find out all the information and all the deeds@sysklive.com our Squarespace Live touring home on the web, and we hope to see everyone out there. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's, Jerry. Rolling stuff you should know. The podcast. That's right. And buddy, I am happy to be doing another Ramster article. Getting him back in the fold has been a true boon for this organization. So much so, Chuck, I think that we should see if Noel can whip us up a little Grabster theme music to play when we do a Grabster article. What do you think? Yeah, okay. We'll see. Grabster is in the metal. Maybe it can be metal themed. Yeah, but knolls into the mogue. Yeah, maybe it'll be a weird mashup of that. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about this. And this is one for those of you who don't know, we're talking about Ed Grabinowski, one of our favorite writers here, who hadn't been doing a lot of writing for us, and we specifically petitioned to get Ed. Right. And again, and not even just that, can we send Ed ideas specifically for the show that we think are great because we know he will do right by them. And this is one of those because someone wrote in wish I had the email, but someone wrote in suggesting Camp X and I had never heard of it. Yeah, the little research. And I was like, oh, man, this is a Grabbing article if I've ever heard one. I was going to ask you where you heard of this, because I hadn't heard of it either. Listen or mail or Facebook. It's pretty awesome, whoever sent that suggestion. And hats off to you. Thanks for it. Yes. So, Campbell's, for those of you who haven't heard of it, hopefully we're not the only ones, right? Only ones who haven't heard of it. Right. It's pretty well known, I think, among general circles. I think enthusiasts and war historians probably know more about it, maybe reenactors. Yeah, sure, why not? Well, aside from those people, if you haven't heard of campaign, don't feel bad because it was meant to be that way. It was a secret camp. It was basically a camp to train good guy terrorists in World War II. Good guy terrorists. Saboteurs. Saboteurs. I like that word. Propagandists morse code operators, assassins. Basically the guys who went over as secret agents and just messed up stuff in Europe and I believe Africa as well. North Africa for the allies during World War II. Yes. And if there's one thing I learned through this article is even though I am a liberal peacenik, if I would have been alive during that generation and had to go to war, I would totally have wanted to have been a Saboteur. Oh yeah, like all the movie, like The Great Escape and Victory and all these great World War Two movies I watch growing up, I was never about the frontline battles and some of those movies are okay. But man, you show me a movie about dudes sneaking around the dead of night to blow up a bridge and I'm all over that. Have you seen Fox fire? The Clint Eastwood movie where he has to go steal a plane? Was it firefox or fox? Fire. Fox Fire. Was it Firefox? I think it was Fox fire. And we're just being misled by the web browser. Yeah, I do too. I saw that. It was a special plane, wasn't it? Yeah. And he had to go steal it. Yeah. And just bridge over the river. Kai Like, I watched all Dirty Dozen, all those movies that were about small groups of soldiers infiltrating quietly wreaking havoc from the inside. Man. I love that big red one. Oh, yeah, that was my first R rated movie. The Guns and Average. Yeah. Remember poor Mark hamill's testicles? Get blown off in Big Red One by a grenade? Well, I thought you were going to say Mark Hamill's. Poor testicles. Either way, they got blown off and Lee Marvin was like, you don't need these anymore, and just like tosses them away. Yeah, I remember. Like I said, it was my first R rated movie. I remember being in the movie theater at Toko Hills here in Atlanta and seeing those testicles being tossed down to him and I was horrified. So anyway, I got weird. Camp usually does. Camp X was a place where those people in those movies that you love may have been trained. It was quite literally a secret agent training camp in World War II. And like the kind where now you look back, it sounds like something from a James Bond novel or something like that. It actually is kind of the thing that inspired later fiction like James Bond. Sure. Like this is where it really happened. And it was in this little place in the middle of nowhere along Lake Ontario in Ontario, Canada, about 30 miles over the lake from the United States. Should we get back in the way back machine? We're going to go to Camp X. Maybe. Well, keep your head down because they use live fire. All right, here we go. All right, here we are. It's and the war is raging, but the United States is not yet involved officially. Well, because we were the United States, we were kind of way over where we sit and positioned on the planet Earth, and all the fighting was going on over there. So we were sort of isolated from that. And although President Roosevelt was like, man, we technically should be going over there and helping out Britain, battle the Nazis because they're not good guys and we should probably join up. But there is pressure for us to remain over here and not get involved just yet. Well, there's a huge isolationist movement that joined with the peace movement that was basically like, no, we remember World War I and how horrible that was. We need to stay out of this. Let that be a European war. That's right. Did you know there were actually elements from friendly countries there? Like Raul Dahl, the guy who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Ian Fleming, the guy who went on to write the James Bond novels. They were working as agents for the British government here in the US. Working to kind of propagandize against that isolationist movement to get the US. To enter the war and help Britain out. Yeah. And in fact, you mentioned Bond earlier. We might as well go ahead and say there were rumors that Ian Fleming did actually go to campaigns to train, even though those were, I think, completely unsubstantiated. Is that right? He probably visited and said hi because he was friends with one of the people in charge there. He definitely was in America at the time it was operating, so he probably went by there. But he didn't train there, as far as anyone knows. All right, so World War II is going on, even though they didn't call it that at the time, which is something they got right in the new Wonder Woman movie, by the way. Man, that was one of the best superhero movies I've seen in a long time. It was great in pretty much every way. So World War II was raging. Roosevelt wants to get involved, but can't really officially do it. But he does know that, hey, even though we're not officially involved, we probably need to kind of get unofficially involved and at least start gathering intelligence and start getting information going and kind of just do our pre war due diligence, I guess you could say. Yes, at the very least. There are probably a lot of agents, not just from friendly nations, working in the United States. So we should at least have an intelligence service that can battle those guys if not assist with the war. Right, but that's a tough thing to get going from scratch, as that points out. But there was a country, Great Britain, who was very experienced in this field from all their years traveling the world is one way you could say it, but the friendliest way you can say it. Yeah. And they were really experienced with this, and they had great intelligence operations. And they said, you know what? We'll come in and we'll help you out, we'll get you going. Yeah, they did in the US said, okay, but don't tell anybody because we're neutral. Right? And they went, sure, sure. So to facilitate this, I think at the time they weren't necessarily sure where this was going, but they wanted to form a partnership. So the British Security Coordination, which was an office of the Special Operations Executive, which is itself a branch of Mi Six, right. They set up an office, a secret office at Rockefeller Center in New York. How awesome is that? It is. Even on the plaque on the wall said that it was British passport control, completely undercover British office that was meant to act as the liaison between the British secret operations and America's super secret operations that was so super secret it shouldn't have even existed. And that office would later become Lord Michael's office. Right. At least in my mind. Who are you? Lauren. Michael's impression. No. That's pretty good. So you've got 30 Rock, you've got an outpost set up. They're kind of getting things going, and it was headed up at that time. Did you say? William Stevenson? No, not yet. He was a Canadian who actually served Britain as a fighter pilot in World War I, and he was the head of the BSc at the time. And he is roundly considered to have been the inspiration for James Bond. He was the real deal. He drank martinis at lunch. Yeah. And killed people with his bare hands. And he was the real deal. So he was the one who set up, originally Camp X, and I think he had his fingers in a lot of other pots. And Ian Fleming actually did work directly beneath him, as did Rob Dahl. Well, there you have it. Aren't you just fascinated by the fact that the guy who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a secret agent working in America in the 40s? It's great. And you know what? He wrote those children's books, but he also had an entire bookshelf full of kind of body raunchy, adult books that he had written. It was great. Everyone just thinks of him as a kid author, but he was much more. Well, it's like with Anthony Burgess, who wrote A Clockwork Orange, also wrote children's books too. Well, that's disturbing. So Canada at this time well, and it still is, as that points out, commonwealth or part of the Commonwealth, and they wanted to support Britain, but they also wanted to go to war as Canada and assert themselves and say, but we're Canada. We're going as Canada. So the Brits are like, all right, everybody calls them out. Fine, whatever. Let's just chill out here, all right? How about we set up a secret camp in Canada to facilitate the training of Canadian and American secret agents? How about that? Yeah. And they said, how secret? And they said so secret that Prime Minister Mackenzie King is not aware. And then they just dropped their t and said, You've got us. And his monocle popped out. So, yeah, the prime minister didn't even know about this thing until it was well underway, because I think they were afraid he would say no. Right. Yeah. But do you know how mad I would be as Prime Minister, finding out after the fact? Sure. I'd be like, Guys, come on, it's me. McKenzie, you know me. Big Mac. Don't you know me? So Stevenson said, let's pull the trigger on this. They got a businessman from Vancouver named AJ. Taylor I love this. To buy 260 acres. They call them 105 ha. Yes. In Canada. In Canada. By this land near Oshawa, Ontario for twelve grand under the name the Rural Realty Company Comma Ltd. Period. Yeah. Which is British for inc. Oh, is it? Yeah. Okay. It means the same thing. Yeah, that's what I figured. So this land, one of the reasons it was selected was it was extremely remote. There were towns around it, but you could barely consider them towns. They were so small and sparsely populated then. This place was in the middle of nowhere, near these middle and nowhere towns, but it also had varied terrain. Like, there's a swamp. The part that butted up against Lake Ontario was cliff like, and it actually kind of resembled some of the cliffs of France that would later be scaled during DDay. Sure. There was open plains and fields, there were woods, basically everything you would need to train somebody to do some damage in Europe. Yes. There was a pretty simple farmhouse, there was some storage facilities, and then they added, of course, barracks, built some classrooms, and eventually we'll talk about the radio station there. But they built a building to house this radio equipment that would be pretty key. Kiss 104 FM the Sound of Oshawa All right. So they get this place up and going, right? And again, the whole reason it's in Canada is because America is officially neutral. And it's not supposed to be training secret agents under the guidance of the British. It's just not supposed to be happening. And irony of irony is that Camp X, which is not its official name, it had a number of different official names, which really kind of gets across just what a secret installation it was. It didn't have one official name, but Campbecks opened on December 6, 1941. Wow. The next day, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. December 7, 1941. And right after that, the US. Entered the war. And this guy who runs this website and has written a couple of books on Campex, I think it's the Campxofficial site.com, maybe he points out that had the Japanese attacks Pearl Harbor six months earlier, campex never would have existed because they would have just built it in the US. Exactly as the US. Entered the war. And in fact, there were plenty of other secret agent camps that were built in the US. But they kept campaign going not just to train Americans, but also to train Canadians as well. Yeah. And so the people, like you said, no one officially called it Camp Ex. That name came from what few local people were near there just because it was so mysterious. They called it Camp X, or they called it, quote, the secret military camp. Right. The people that were actually there, training called at the farm because of kind of the fields and the orchards everywhere. And the official designation was Sts Special Training School 103. Right. And then the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had their own name for it, too, which was S 25 one one. Man, this is getting good. The Canadian military called the project J. Really? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. But don't you think that kind of, like, get across that this is so secret that no one really knew what to call it? It shall not be named. It's like what's his face? Lovecraftian Camp. Right. Should we take a break? I think so. All right. We'll be back, and we'll talk about what training was like. And I'll give you a hint rigorous. All right, Chuck. So the training there, if you went there and there's actually a discrepancy here between the campaign site and what Ed is saying. What the Camp Ex official site is saying is that when you go there, you're basically going into what amounts to basic secret agent training. Sure. And you're trained in all these different ways. And then if you don't wash out, which is supposedly a tremendous percentage, a very high percentage of the people who went in didn't make it through. But if you made it through this training, which was between three and ten weeks, depending on who you ask, you would then go on to Britain, to different finishing schools, depending on what you excel at during this generalized basic secret agent training. Right. And then once you finishing school, the British secret services would design a secret mission based exclusively for you or your talents, and then drop you behind enemy lines and you go do some crazy stuff. That's pretty amazing, right? Yeah. So they would say, Chap, you've got a real knack for the bang bang. So they would send them to bridge blowing up school. Exactly. And then you go below up the bridge, over the River Kwai. Man. All right. So regardless, everyone went through some of the same basic things, or maybe everyone at campaign, maybe it's so secret, nobody knows for sure. That's kind of the way it is. But everyone would learn things like kind of some basic I guess what I call it basic training. But some basic things of Saboteur 101. Like how to read a map in a foreign language. How to draw a map to lead someone to where you need to be. How to take a guy out with your bare hands. How to fire a gun in the dark. How to put together a gun in the dark and fire it in the dark using something that I'd never heard of called instinctive gun fighting. Yeah. So that's where rather than saying, like, freeze, bad guy, and getting down on one knee and closing one eye and looking down the sides and you're pretty much yeah. Like the streets of San Francisco or something, right? Yeah. You're running and shooting. You're not even using the site. You just are using, basically your hand as your guide, and you're shooting people at a distance of at least 20ft. And like you said, oftentimes in the dark. And this may all come as part of the training after you've been dropped off in an abandoned farmhouse and told to find a bag of gun parts and put it together in the dark and come out shooting. What was that deal? Like, seven days cop shows where they would hold their wrist? Gun hand. You wanted to steady your shooting hand. I know, but I don't think that was I mean, you steady it, I got to shoot a pistol. I don't know if it was ever like that, officially. Maybe it's to keep the recoil from throwing your aim off. Well, I mean, I think it's for all that, but I don't know if that was ever the proper way, is what I'm saying. It seemed like specifically a TV thing. Yeah. Like Aaron's Spelling was like, try this. Hold your wrist. Yeah. Do that from now on. Carl Maldon I mean, this training there by all accounts, you sent an article from a guy who was actually there. It sounded like some of the most hardcore training you could go through. Yeah. This guy named Andrew andy Duravich. He was a Canadian Hungarian guy who was actually in his 30s when he went through campaign training and he wrote a book about his experience. And he was a great source of a lot of this information of what it was like to go train there. But he was the guy who was saying that there was not only, like, daytime maneuvers, there are night time maneuvers as well. And while you were there, you were basically training the entire time. If you had a class on where to kick somebody in the testicles in one building and then you had another building and outbuilding where you went to go learn how to mess with plastic explosives, you didn't walk from one building to the next building. They gave you an assignment to get to the other building without being seen by this guy who was trying to find you. I think it was fully immersive. Yeah, it was very well put, chuck fully immersive. And apparently the whole thing started off the moment you got there with a welcome reception. Yeah. This particular group that Andy he went by, Andy Daniels that he was with, like you said, were Hungarians. So they kind of had a little Hungarian spread of food and they made him feel welcome, had Hungarian wine, and they all got kind of drunk, and they all just thought, this is just like a nice thing they were doing. But that was even part of the training because you had to be trained to be able to go undercover and drink with the enemy and still keep your wits. Right. I read, actually another account by Andy Dervich that after he went through Camp X and was trained on a secret mission, he was approached by some of the German intelligence officer who was working undercover, I think in Cairo, and they were trying to drink each other under the table to get them to one another to reveal information. And he said he ended up winning that battle. Some of the German intelligence officers comrades came and got him because he drank him literally under the table. What are some of the things they would do? They would say? Oh, I don't know. Go to the edge of a cliff and say, all right, you have to jump off of that into the water, swim back to shore and climb back up from a rope. And they get through doing all this, and they get to the top, and then they say, do it again. Right. Like when they're at their most exhausted, they would push these men, and they were only men being trained women did play a part, which we'll get to, but yeah, they would push them to their breaking point and then keep pushing them because they were doing things so important and so covert. It was survival training. Yeah. And I think the impression I have also is that they were basically going on the concept of muscle memory, where if you do something enough times, it becomes second nature to you. So they were drilling them and everything they taught them so that you just did it automatically in any condition. Yeah. You said they always use live ammo. They also requested a very large see through bulletproof screen so they could just stand there and fire bullets at these dudes. I didn't get the point of this other than it was probably cool. Oh, no, I think the point is to desensitize you to having a gun pointed and shot at your face. Okay. So you know what that feels like, right? But do you need to know what that feels like? Because if you're standing there and somebody shoots you in the face, you're probably going to be desensitized forever by that. I think at the point I don't know where that came from. Have you ever had a gun pointed in your face? Well, sure, plenty of times, but it was never fired. I think the point is just to make them steal their nerves like made of steel. I got it. And the dude who wrote the campaign official site book, he basically said the reason why they were using live fire was like, you knew that they weren't going to shoot you. But there was a possibility that you could still drive by accident and that it lent itself to the seriousness of your training. But it also kind of made you mad. Oh, yeah. They were trying to push your buttons and seeing how much you would keep your head. That was kind of along the lines. Also getting you super drunk to see if you would talk how boastful you were when you were super drunk or something like that. So they were messing with you psychologically as much as training you physically too. Yeah. And it wasn't just training and how to karate chop the dude, or how to sneak up behind someone and just gingerly strangle them to the ground. Although they did all that for sure. Yes. They also did fake well, kind of barely fake expeditions. They would go out and steal a train, and it's not set up. Like, they would steal a train in Canada. Right. And in one case, they stole the train, got on board, everyone's like, do you know how to drive this thing? And everyone said, no. They said, well, let's get it going. Anyway. They got it going. We're going down the track. Realize it. Didn't know how to switch it, saw an oncoming train and all bailed off the train. Luckily, they did not collide. They just kind of slowly came to a stop and kind of bumped one another, which is yeah, that was pretty funny. Pure providence. But it really could have gone another way. Yeah. But they wouldn't blow up a bridge, but they would set it up with fake explosives as if they were going to blow it up. Right. And occasionally doing all this stuff, they would run afoul of the law and get arrested. And then it's sort of like exactly what you would think, like Mission Impossible or something. Pretty soon, someone comes along behind you that says to the officer, they're part of the war effort. You don't need to ask any questions. They're coming with me. Just forget everything that happened tonight. Yeah. Do you want your family to survive? Well, then you didn't see anything. Well, that was where they used their special insider code, is that correct? Well, there was one guy who was arrested. He was caught by police. I'm not quite sure what he was doing, but he had basically undertaken a self appointed mission and had been caught by the real cops. And he said, just get in touch with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and tell them I said, S 25 one one. Remember, that was the Mountie's code for that camp, for Camp X. And apparently within a very short time, a Mountie official showed up, whisked the guy off and said, this didn't happen to the local police. Yeah. Well, we also got to keep in mind this was a local cop in Ontario in the 1940s. Right. So he was probably like, oh, no problem. He wanted no trouble. Right. So there were some pretty interesting people that came through Camp X, both as trainees and instructors. Yeah. One guy, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Brooker, he served as a commodore of campaigns. He wasn't the first one, but apparently he was the one who had the largest legacy there. And he was a strict military disciplinarian, but he also was totally cool with unorthodox training methods. Yeah, like breaking into a classroom, shooting guns. Right. And then well, not himself. Maybe he did. Maybe he played along, sending dudes in there with guns to shoot bullets, live rounds, and then dash out and then come back in and say, all right, well, describe all of these guys, what they look like, what were they wearing, what do they smell like? Yeah. Not just survive, but now you need to learn how to keep your head during a shootout. Yeah. And then he would leave, and they would get back to learning how to kick a man in the testicle. Well, speaking of such, major Dan, fair Baron, jerry thought that was funny. He did, actually. It's because Jerry didn't have testicles. Nothing funny about it. No, I can't catch her in the testicles. And I got racked the other day for the first time. Oh, man. I don't know. 30 years. That's the worst feeling. There's nothing else like it, either. I know. I was trying to tell Emily. I was like, it's such a specific pain that you can't describe it. It's indescribable. Well, yeah, it's definitely a unique thing that you have to experience it yourself. Yeah. Luckily for her, that will never happen. Well, I'm sorry that happened to you. That's okay. Blame my daughter. I was going to ask. Yeah, that's how it happens. So, fair Baron, he was a policeman in Shanghai, which that probably means in the 1940s. You're a tough dude, I would say. Yeah. And he was in charge not too long at campex of close combat training, but apparently he kind of set the standard for brutality in battle, because his I guess what do you want to call it, his credo or whatever was this? Nothing is out of bounds. Kick a guy in the testicles, throw a chair at him, hot coffee in his face, whatever you have to do to disable and kill this guy as quickly as possible. What you should do, and quietly if you can, like maybe throwing a chair was not your first step. Yeah. Don't kill them with a tambourine if you can. Right. And apparently this guy's thing was, again kicking him in these testicles, and then you go for, like an orifice, right? You jam your fingers in their ears or their eyes or something like that, or up their nose to just further distract them on top of the pain of being kicked in the testicles. And then you just had them where you wanted them, which was by the throat. Yeah. He never heard of the. Words, fighting dirty. Reading that part about Fairburn, though, in particular, really drove on me that these guys were like, they were killing people. People were dying. They were trained to kill people. With the hindsight of history and just being 70 years removed from this stuff and the fact that it's just so fascinating, I don't care. Like you said, you're a huge peace, Nick. It's still super fascinating to learn about, but you realize every once in a while just how removed from reality you are when you're reading about it today. And that, yeah, these guys are being trained to kill, and then went on to kill other people. Yeah. It was Nazi, so really? But they were still killing human beings, and really, that part drove it home to me. Yeah. It sounds like I think this is the coolest thing ever, so I know what you're talking about. But they were Nazis, so I don't feel too bad. Another guy was Bill Donovan. He led a lot of efforts to create the espionage organization in the US. And help establish campex to begin with. And even though he never worked for the CIA, he was one of the biggest voices, kind of lobbying to establish it. Right. He worked for the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, which I believe came it grew out of the office of the Coordinator of Information, which is set up to liaise with the British security coordinator. Right. Yeah. But once the US. Entered the war, they set up the Office of Strategic Services, and then that became the CIA. And while Bill Donovan is just a legend, like, even though he didn't work for the CIA, he's very much considered the father of the CIA. He was America's first spook. Yeah. And actually, a lot of the graduates, they either went on to further train people, or a lot of them did go on to work for the CIA afterward. Yeah. But Gustave was think of my favorite dude. I read up on him, and he supposedly was the best that they ever had at campex. Yeah. He was French Canadian, as Grabster puts it. He was an exemplary student of sabotage and resistance coordination. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. Which means he was a tough guy. Right. So he parachuted behind German lines in France, landed on a rock, and injured his spine, and was like, I just got to walk it off, and continued on. I think that was one of the first things that happened to him. Yeah. And this is always covert, like you said, the behind in lines. And he would recruit locals and kind of assemble his own little force tin from Navarrone, or organize the French resistance and take these farmers, and all of a sudden, they're blowing up bridges under his command. Right. Do you remember in the DB. Cooper episode. Barbara Dayton. Yes. Who was born Robert Dayton during World War II. That's what Robert Dayton was doing, but I think in like Burma. Oh, really? Yeah, he was, like, parachuting behind enemy lines and finding out who was mad at the japanese and assembling guerrilla armies, training them. That's what this dude was doing. But I think he was doing it in Europe. In France. Yeah. Well, sadly, he was captured, and he was such a tough guy. He never broke. He was tortured for years, sent to a concentration camp. He never broke, never talked for years. Yeah. And the nazis were so I mean, they wanted to keep him alive because they knew he had the information, and finally the nazis gave up and executed him, which is very sad into his story, but he, unusually, was executed by firing squad, which apparently the nazis didn't really do much. They used piano wire and gas, and apparently the firing squad was a sign of their respect for him. Oh, really? As a soldier to take him out quickly. I guess so. That was another thing that jarred me, too. I was like, oh, wow, this guy did that. He blew up railroads, he assembled guerrilla armies, and then he was captured and executed. I was like, oh, yeah, that really happened, too. Shot. I think if you went from camp x to the theater of war to die. Well, yeah, apparently there was one guy reading about I'm not sure if he was trained at camp x or not, but he was a radar specialist, and he was sent behind German lines, I think, in France again, as well, to basically try to infiltrate radar station and check out what radar information the Germans had. And the special operations guys who went in with him were under orders to kill that guy rather than allow him to be captured, to kill their own guy. And supposedly this guy was aware of it and had a cyanide pill and everything, but this is just one guy. I guess if you were at camp x when you went on your mission, they told you you're probably not going to come back. Yeah. You want to take a break? Yeah. All right. Let's do it. And we'll finish up with a little bit on hydra radio and the eventual fate of camp xar. All right, charles, you ready to round this out? Yeah. Earlier, we kind of teased that there were some women that did play a part in camp x, and while they were not trained as saba tours, they were a part of the war effort. Specifically, these canadian women who ran, well, at least helped run a radio station house at camp x. I wonder if they would be considered saboteussas rather than saboteurs, you know, like a masseur and a masseuse. I'm right, man. We had someone write in and tell us masseus is offensive. Oh, really? Yeah. Massage therapist or nothing. Okay. Sorry. Massage therapist? We certainly weren't trying to degrade the profession in any way. I should go ahead and apologize to the Saboteus out there as well. So, as we mentioned, there was a radio station, Hydra Radio, and communications were gathering intelligence. Sending intelligence was a big part of the war for the Allies. Well, for both sides, obviously. But you couldn't just build a radio station because equipment was scarce, everything was scarce during the war. So they kind of cobbled together from private companies and citizens themselves, a radio station. Right. And apparently some of the Canadians that they requisitioned parts to create this radio station, which was codenamed Hydra because of all the antenna that came out top of it. They nicknamed it Hydra, and I guess that became its code name. It was a serious state of the art radio station that they put together. But they actually had the people whose radio equipment they requisitioned some work at campaign at the Project Hydra radio station. You know, there's some hams in there for sure. For sure. They kept it clean. They did. But this is where the women played a part. This Canadian women basically helped operate Hydra and I think kind of headed it up. And they could not stay there because the barracks weren't equipped for men and women to both stay there. So they stayed with local families nearby. They were picked up and dropped off for work each day and weren't really a part of the rest of the camp, but really provided a valuable service for communications for Capex during the war. Yes. It kind of reminded me of the hidden figures story. Yeah, for sure. They operated the Rocky machine. Yeah, I looked at that. Did you see the picture of that thing? Yeah. It basically should have been like danger. Will Robinson yes, it was huge and clunky, but it encoded and decoded automatically transmissions that were coming in and out of the Hydro radio station. And they weren't decoding, like captured or intercepted Axis radio transmissions. But they could take them and bounce them over to Beetley Park. Man, that's tough to say. Is it beetley or bletchley? Bletchley park. I got that part right. Yeah, for decoding. And apparently they would also relay transmissions from Washington, from Roosevelt, for Winston Churchill to read. There's an unknown secret bedroom at Bletchley Park where Winston Churchill would sleep, and he would read transmissions in real time from Roosevelt. And they were basically strategizing the war through this. And these transmissions were going through the Hydra radio station. So it played a hugely important role in World War II. That's awesome. So the war finished, and actually before the war was even finished, Capex closed. It didn't even see through to the end of the war. Closed in April 1944, basically, because, as Ed puts it, their work was done. It kind of satisfied its mission. Those people needed elsewhere, so they closed up shop. They don't know how many people, how many men went through there, it says, because it was also secret. And they kind of destroyed a lot of the records, but it varies from a few hundred to a few thousand, depending on who you're going to ask. Apparently it was kind of in vogue to lie about having trained there. How are you going to disprove that sucker? Camp. The buildings are still there, though. Like, Camp Ex remained, and over the years it was used for various things. It was used in the Cold War. They tried to kind of repurpose it, which is not a bad idea. No, actually they used it to interrogate a defector in the Cold War. Apparently right after World War II, there was a cypher clerk, a cryptologist named Igor Guizenko Guzenko added an extra syllable, I think, and he left the Soviet Union and headed to Canada, and he had a lot of info with them. So the Canadians and the Americans both interrogated them at Camp X, the abandoned CampX building, because it was so secure. Yeah, they went on. The Canadian military took over Hydra, and they continued to use that during the Cold War. It continued through World War II as Japan kind of hung in there, and then eventually in the Cold War. But then by 1969, of course, all that advanced equipment was no longer advanced, and so it was decommissioned and sold off. Yeah. Kind of ignoble end to this thing that had played such a huge role. Did you say that they bulldozed it? Well, no, that was just the Hydra station. In the end, they bulldoze what was left of the buildings because they Writely said there might be some unexploded munitions there, and that's dangerous, so let's just bulldoze it into Lake Ontario because it's the 1970s. Can you see some dude in the hard hat just walking away, like dusting off his hands? Like, Job well done. Can't see it anymore, so it's fine. There's a saying in the construction business, can't see it from my house. Yeah, like if you messed something up. Oh, that's hilarious. That is so construction guy, isn't it? Yeah. They also have another saying, which is, I'm not going to show up when I say I'm going going to, and I'm going to charge way more than I said I would. That was a little clumsy, but accurate. Can you imagine, though, this stuff, I guess, in theory, is still sitting at the bottom of Lake Ontario somewhere. Yeah, it would be kind of neat to go explore that. I'm really surprised no one has. I bet you someone has. Yeah, maybe there's a park there now. There's a plaque that commemorates it's called Intrepid Park. So William Stevenson, the guy who probably inspired James Bond, apparently after the war, he got into ham radio himself and he used this self proclaimed codename, Intrepid. So it's called Intrepid park after him. And there's a plaque that says, some crazy stuff went on here, especially like the boulder they show at the end of Red Dawn. Yeah. Except this is in Canada and Red Dawn, but apparently in Michigan. Or not michigan was in Colorado. I always thought it was Michigan'cause of the Wolverines thing. Oh. I think I always thought it was, like, Oregon or something. No, I'm pretty sure it was Colorado. Yeah. There you have it. They got Jed's dad's car. Wait, it wasn't Jed. Who's the guy who betrayed them all? Darryl. They're in Daryl's dad's car. Man, I was so mad at Darryl. I know, but didn't you just feel for them, too, at the same time? I was torn. It was really horrible. Yeah. Well, if you want to know more about Darryl from Red Dawn or campaign or anything like that, you should type those words in the search bar. Howstep works.com? Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this the subject line that the author himself called it. Wild, inaccuracies and champagne episode, but I love you anyways. Dearest Josh and Chuck. Hi, guys. Love your show and all that stuff. Is a champagne professional, though, and former Somalia. You can just imagine my thrill about the champagne episode. In fact, the house I work for, Renault, was the very first established champagne house to ever sell the stuff in. 1729. Yeah, I knew that the champagne, like experts, would find some faults. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, though. No, not too bad. He even said that we got most of it right. I think this was a she. Was it? I think so. Yeah. It is. Lacey. So sorry. Lacey. I guess Lacey could be a guy. That would be a strange name for a guy, though. Maybe so. I know that, Chuck, because I responded to Lacey and said so. You call us out on all this and you're the brand ambassador for Renault, and you don't offer us free champagne. You probably have some coming, right? Yes, we got some coming. I got some champagne coming. Well, you can have it all, buddy. Awesome. So first and foremost, guys, you got a lot of it correct. Chuck, your accent is pretty good. You basically nailed reams. Josh, I'm so glad you loved the bubbly as much as I do. That counts for a lot. Chuck, serious disappointment here, because you have always been my favorite. Best laugh ever. Yes, it's Josh now. It is true. Chuck, you have a pretty great laugh. This is an emotional roller coaster, I got to tell you. The most glaring and hilarious of all mistakes, though, is the whole champagne. Grapes. By the way, they're seven, not three, must get crushed by feet. Champagne does not get pressed by feet. Not at all. And actually, she's wrong there. That is not true, because I looked it up and there are still some houses that crush some champagne by feet. That's what I'm saying. I was spending my time focused on getting free champagne rather than correcting it, but I remember seeing that, too. It's not like we just made that up, right? She said she double checked with her chef Deka, and he said, that's so ridiculous. Press machine is mandatory. I don't know what accent that was. Like Balkan. Below is a link from the official champagne website. For more info, you can also look at Prescott on YouTube. Also essentially knowing riddles by hand these days. Talk about carpal tunnel syndrome. Most houses large and small use a gyro palette. Only a few tiny producers hand roll a few covets or large formats. Finally, I doubt you can find a decent champagne for under 20. Or sorry, for 20 or under. I'd say it starts at 40. Whatever. Otherwise, it was a pretty darn good and entertaining episode. As always. Thanks for spreading mostly accurate information about my favorite subject, xoxo, Lacey. Well, thanks for that, Lacey. And we're looking forward to the champagne, aren't we, Chuck? Yeah, that's Lacey Burke in New York. And like you said, it's a brand ambassador for Masal Runar. And also heard back, I forgot I shouted out my buddy Robbie and his launch vin and Pearson Meyer wines. He was like, did you shout me out? Because I'm getting some orders. Oh, that's awesome. I was like, oh, yeah, I love to hear that. And he said we did a pretty good job, too. So for these very specific, very complex industries, if we get 90% right, I feel like we've done our jobs. I want to say somebody else combined the champagne episode and the food feds episode and wrote in to say, you guys should try champagne jello shots. That's Jello shot. I might try. Okay, now we've got it. This is going to start you on the champagne train. Great. If you want to get in touch with us, especially if you want to send us free champagne, free wine, something like that, you can tweet to us. We're at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstyshow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start looking listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
c5480512-5460-11e8-b38c-ff3f9ba9a14a | Selects: How Snake Handlers Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-snake-handlers-work | Snake handling ranges from professional snake milkers for antivenin to religious handlers who tend to get bitten and sometimes die from it. Either way, it can be a dangerous business. Learn all about snake handling in this classic episode. | Snake handling ranges from professional snake milkers for antivenin to religious handlers who tend to get bitten and sometimes die from it. Either way, it can be a dangerous business. Learn all about snake handling in this classic episode. | Sat, 08 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=128, tm_isdst=0) | 52361592 | 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 Hulucom for plan details. Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I've chosen how snake handlers work. It's a really, truly fascinating episode that you might have overlooked, and yet we talk a lot about Christian snake handling, but we also talk about people who handle snakes for fun or because it's their job. There's a lot of people who handle snakes weirdly. So kick back and enjoy this episode from May of 2016, how Snake Handlers Work. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles of you Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And my hair is now a fourth character. Chuck laughed at my hair, everybody. Well, if my beard can be the fourth character, your hair could be the fifth. Oh, really? Yeah, we need actually, Jerry's got great hair. She does have nice hair stylish. Salt and pepper. Amy Goodman level tasteful. Salt and pepper. I'm not sure what that means. Amy Goodman from Democracy Now. It's very tasteful salt and pepper hair. Oh, really? Maybe that's the thing. It is clearly between Jerry and Amy Goodman. It's the thing that beats shoe polish. Black trickling down your forehead. Yes. But do what makes you happy. Well, sure. If you don't, whatever makes you feel good. Yeah, I should get some of that beer blackener and combined into my beard and come in with, like, that jet black beard. Clyde Drexler will show up at your house, urge you on. Clyde Drexler? Isn't he in the ads? Yeah. Really? Former Portland trailblazer. Great. Yes. I'm pretty sure it's Clyde Drexler. Oh, wow. I think I'm going to have to check this out. It's him. And who was the one? I think Keith Hernandez. I was going to say the one that Cramer spit on or that got spit on? Cramer. Yeah, Keith Hernandez. I think it's Keith Hernandez and Clyde Drexler in the Just for Men commercial. Got you. Well, there's our free package of Just for Men coming our way now, which we should say thanks again to Crown Royal, man. You say you like Crown Royal? They send you some. You say you drink it and they send you more. I know. It's pretty awesome. I'm brushing my teeth with this stuff now. My lifestyle has improved for the better. Pretty neat. Thank you, dudes. So I was just discussing before we recorded. I said it's going to be hard to record a show on snake handling. And I'm talking about the religious aspect of it without sort of like I fear for their safety. And I want to say you people are crazy. A lot of people do. But we have a long standing tradition of, like, to each their own. I hate seeing people die from doing something completely preventable. Yeah, you definitely do. Handling rentalsnakes and kissing them on the face. From what I've seen of this and from what I've researched, I've not actually seen somebody handle snakes in person. No, but from what I've researched, the people who handle snakes are doing it through total and complete faith. And even if you did judge them, I think it kind of rolls off their back quite a bit. It's not so much judgment. It's just like it's judgment. No, it's not. I'm telling you what is it my opinion, and I'm judging your opinion. Oh, that's what you meant by its judgment? No. Okay, now it's not judgment. I hate seeing people get hurt and die. Have you ever seen somebody handle snakes? No. You had a religious upbringing? Well, yeah. This is rare, though. Yeah, it is. Appalachian foothill stuff. Yeah, I know, but I mean Atlanta. We're in Georgia. I didn't know if you ever took, like, a field trip or something like that. You have no idea how church works for you? I thought there were a lot of field trips. No, I got you. In fact, you don't go to other churches. You're not supposed to do that. Oh, really? Yeah. You stay at your own church. You don't go on field trips to other churches. Aren't there like, interfaith banquets and stuff like that? Yeah, we had a field day right. With all the churches in the county right now. I suppose other churches get together with some get together with other churches, but that wasn't my experience. It's typically found on in your experience, you just keep it in house. Although we would go to the big youth conferences with all sorts of youth groups together. That's a field trip. Yeah, just kids thrown in the big gymnasiums, struggling to fight their hormonal urges. You believe what right, so no, I've never done it. I didn't ask if you've done it. I never witnessed it. I've never been anywhere near it. Okay. Although I have a strange feeling, Chuck, that it's possible we've both been near it just from living in Georgia all these years without knowing, because yeah. People who handle snakes religiously, it's actually called holiness serpent handling. Is that correct? Yes. They say serpent instead of snake. Yeah. And it has to be a venomous snake to be considered a serpent. Yes, but for holiness serpent handling until 2014, they kept a pretty tight lid on it for many decades. The handlers. Yes. The people who practiced this as part of their religious beliefs. Yeah. And I think still, even most of them are pretty media shy. You'll see the occasional interview when someone dies. Yeah. They'll go knocking on the doors and they'll give an interview to explain, like, why they do what they do. But of course, there was that TV show which really you're clearly not media shy if you're doing a reality show. No, it was called Snake Salvation and sorry, not 2014, but 2013. It was on Nat Geo, and it was all about snake handling for religious reasons. And one of the main guys on the show ended up dying. He didn't die on the show, but he died the next year from a rattlesnake bite oh, after it went off the air. Yes. It was only on for one season, but his name was Pastor Jamie Coots, and he and another guy named, I believe, Steven amblet, they are holiness serpent handlers who believe in kind of bringing it out of the shadows and into the Christian mainstream. Good luck. Yeah. If you're at all interested in that concept, you should read Even Onto Death. It was in the Chattanooga Free Press. It's a pretty good examination of that whole movement. And those guys in particular. I guess we should talk a little bit about other kinds of snake hanging first, though. Yeah. Because when you see snake hanging, I'm sure when people saw the title of this episode, they just assumed we were talking strictly about religious snake handling. Like other people handle snakes as well, like professional non religious settings. Yeah, it's true. They're called herpetologists, or some of them are. These are actually people who study snakes and amphibians reptiles. And we talked about them on our snake show. And I think we dispelled a lot of rumors not rumors, but myths on the snake show which come into play when handling snakes, namely that they aren't out to kill you. But we'll get to that later. But people display snakes. Well, there's a few different categories of people who handle snakes. There are people who display them. Like, you drive through Florida, you might see, like, a Snake and Gator Farm, right, where they do snake shows. And there's a really famous guy we'll talk about a little more in depth named Bill Host, who is like the man when it comes to that. Let's see. Yeah. And then there are people there are snake milkers, of course. There are veterinarians who care for your snakes. Yeah. Which, I mean, they have to handle snakes. There's also rescue and recovery people sure. Who come snake in my basement. Right. A guy will show up, and most likely he's professionally trained. At the very least, you would hope that he has a tremendous amount of experience in handling snakes. Yeah. And they will show up and you'll say, how much does it cost to get the snake out of my basement? And they'll say, how much you got? Exactly. I'd like to see your last three bank account statements, please. And in those cases, you'll probably see what's called an extension tool. If you've ever seen those tongs or those long, they call it a snake hook, sort of a long metal, not a prod, because you're not proud. Senior adults use it to grab cans off of the high shelves in their home. A grabber? Yeah, it's like that, sort of. I haven't seen them that actually flex and grab, do they? Yeah. If you get some money, you're going to spend it on that. The ones I've seen are just have a flat. It's a long pole, and then it has, like an L shape at a right angle flat piece coming off that they pin the snake with. Right. I've read this thing about handling snakes safely for, like, just normal people or people who are starting out in the rescue and recovery business. Sure. And you can use just about anything. The key is extension. You want to put distance between you and the snake. And I want to say, as a legal disclaimer, I'm not at all advising anybody to handle a snake. No. But what I read was that you want to put as much distance as possible. So if you have a garden tool and a long one, use that. But you also would want to use, let's say you have a hoe. You would want to turn your hoe upside down and use just the wooden end to manipulate the snake. Because you don't want to hurt the snake, you just want to get rid of it. Right? Yeah. I relocated a snake from my backyard a couple of years ago. What did you use? I used my hands. Oh, my God. It wasn't big, but it wasn't small. So how did you describe this interaction? I was cutting the grass and I saw the snake. It was about a foot long. Did you positively identify it as non lethal or non venomous? Yeah, it was definitely not well, actually, it had the markings where it could have been a copperhead. Okay. It wasn't just like a green snake. Right. So you took a shot of whiskey and approached it. I approached it, and I did use an implement to pin it, but I can't remember what I use. It was something blunt and soft. It wasn't an accident head, because, like you said, it wasn't a standard block that you dropped on. Like, what did I use? I can't remember. Let's just say like a wooden paddle. Okay. It might have been a piece of wood, actually. I got you. And then I did, like I saw on the TV shows, I grabbed it right behind its head, got a good hold of it and picked it up. Not bad. And it wrapped around my wrist, and I went and then I ran across the street like PW herman in the wood. Didn't throw it. I laid it down in the woods. Yeah, you shot put it into the woods, and it was great. I think it was a successful catch and release. It sounds like it. You weren't bitten. Yeah. I'm 99% sure I didn't hurt the snake. Good. Yeah. That sounds pretty successful. Yeah. What I was reading in this one article was that most snakes, if you just approach them calmly, I guess smoothly is a good way to put it. Sure. Don't lunge at the snake. Right. And also, don't be like, oh, my God, oh, my God. Right. Just kind of come at the snake and pick it up like it's just a stick in your yard. It's probably not going to strike you. Supposedly, according to this website, of which I have no affiliation whatsoever. Yeah. And I'm not my story. Please do not take that as a that was probably pretty dumb for me to do that. Yeah. And even if it's non, I don't want to get bitten by a snake. I don't care if it's venomous or not. One of my biggest fears is seeing a snake attach its mouth to my body. Right. It frightens me. Well, I have to say also, this site, put pretty plainly, do not ever touch a snake that you haven't positively identified as non venomous, because you could have easily been bitten and lost your hand or died or whatever. Well, no, I could have gotten to the hospital pretty quickly. Okay. Yeah. I mean, if you're antivenom works, apparently, 100% of the time. Yeah. If it's gotten to in a timely manner. Yes. And for the pedants out there, we will say antivenom and antivenom, because both are acceptable. Yes, they are. All right, so, Chuck, let's take a break right here. Sounds good. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US. Based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff that's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. What if you were a 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. Did I say how far a snake can strike? No. Do you know? This is what I've got from the same place that said, just go smoothly and casually up to a snake and introduce yourself. It says that any snake greater than 4ft can typically strike about one third to one half the distance of its body length. That's a good rule of thumb. Yeah. A snake between one and 3ft can strike about one half to two thirds its body length, and then a snake under foot can usually strike about its whole body length. Okay. I would take all those numbers and double them. That's probably a good idea. Just to be safe. Yes, of course. I'm the guy who picked up maybe a copperhead. Right. Man, that is scary stuff. You do the same thing. You don't want to pay a guy. Probably I would do with this site. What this site was saying was made a lot of sense to me, is, like, take a garbage can, tip it over on its side, take a shovel, use the wooden end of it, the handle, and just trying to get it into the can, turn it over, put, like, something on top of the can, and then call somebody. Or you could take the can, like the woods or something like that. That's probably what I should have done. In retrospect, I was feeling brave. Those shots of whiskey. I've watched enough nature TV. I know how this is done. So the last thing that I think we didn't mention is snake milkers. Oh, yeah. Which snake venom is very valuable. 1 gram. What you do is you freeze dry it into a powder after you get the liquid, and you sell it to research labs. Big money. Yeah. 1 gram of freeze dried venom from an exotic snake can go up to five grand, but it might take 100 milkings to get that much. Yeah. So do the math. Yeah. Is it worth it? Yes. Especially if you love hanging out with snakes. And it's a legit job. You can make $2,500 a month or more as a snake milker easily, depending on how many snakes you have. That's right. So there are a lot of people that handle snakes, but all of them well, I should say all of the people who professionally handle snakes have a rule of thumb, which is don't get hurt. Don't be stupid. Sure. Because there are two ways that snakes can typically get you venomous. Snakes, obviously, inject venom, and that's why people milk snakes, is to get that venom so that they can create antivenom, so that your life can be saved if you end up getting bit by a snake. Right. Yes. And venom is pretty nasty stuff. I think we did one on, like, what's the most poisonous animal in the world? That sounds familiar. Yeah. And we talked a lot about venom, but it's worth revisiting. Basically, depending on the venom that you're injected with, it can cause tissue damage wherever it's spread. And by tissue damage, I mean just completely wipe out your tissue. And if that is blood vessels, your blood vessels bleed and you start bleeding internally. If it's your liver or your heart, those things start bleeding internally and end up shutting down. You can have multi system multi organ failure, paralysis, respiratory distress, all sorts of horrible stuff. Yeah. If it's on a limb or digit, you might lose that even if you get the antivenom time. Exactly. Because it's so thoroughly destroys the tissue. Right? That's right. And it causes a lot of pain, too, because reading about the Texas coral snake, it actually has this molecule that opens the gates to your pain receptors and just hold them open so that you're just feeling excruciating, unremitting pain. So it's bad stuff. Yeah. So you don't want to get bitten by sick. You also don't want to mess around with constrictors either, because they will mess you up as well. They will, I guess, wrap around you and then suffocate you, break your back, stop your heart. It's big enough. Sure. Bad news. Bad news. So snakes can be dangerous is the point. Yes. But again, not to feed into that anti snake propaganda. I'm not trying to start a whacking day. No. So getting back to the milkers oh, yes, sorry. They are what's called free handlers. You would think, like, they should just wear anti snake gloves, but you need to really feel the snake. I read an interview with the guy that milk snakes for a living, and he's like, no, you got to feel with your skin. The snakes are really fast, and you have to react and adjust to every little movement they make. And even wearing a glove, even a thin glove, I think glove wouldn't help anyway. But a chainmail glove or kevlar glove, you wouldn't be able to feel what's going on anyway. Right. Plus, they accidentally crushed the snake's head. They're not exactly made of kevlar themselves. That's true. So when you're milking a snake, when you're free handling it, you basically want to hold it the way you did behind the head. Right? Yeah. Where the jaws meet. Using your thumb and forefinger. Yes, that is correct. And that does two things. It keeps the head from turning on you, and it puts your fingers and your thumb on those venom glands, which is what? They just kind of massage it. You can also use electrical stimulation, but the traditional way is to just get a little squeeze, and it will melt those little clans. Right. But first, before you start squeezing, you want to basically take the fangs, the front fangs. Oh, yeah. You're not, like, spraying around the room into your hand. I miss that part. You put their fangs through a membrane that's pulled over a jar, and then the venom just pumps out of the fangs into the jar. Yeah. It's really neat looking. It is. It's pretty remarkable looking. It is, man. Agreed. And they recommend that if you are milking, if you're a professional milker, you should have a little buddy with you. Oh, yeah. In case something goes wrong. It's not a solo job, really. Anytime you're handling a snake, there should be more than one person. I agree. Yeah. Well, I didn't I should have called Emily outside, but she wouldn't let me pick up the snake. I had to keep it quiet. I think I walked up to him. Look at this. Yeah. I'm not mistaken. And they say for constrictors, they have a little handy chart as well for at least one person for every 5ft of snake, unless it's an anaconda or reticulated python. In that case, you want every 3ft of snake. Right. Because human, those are very heavy snakes. Yeah. Females can get up to, like, \u00a3200, which is 90. Saw the Jackass bit the other day, again, where I think it might have been in the sequel, where python or anaconda and one of those pits of little red balls that kids jump in, and Johnny Knoxville and the gang get in there, and this thing bites. This huge thing bites Johnny Knoxville, like, two or three times. Wow. Anything's got the head the size of a baseball. It sounds like a jackass bit. Hey. To Lance Bangs. Yeah. Speaking of jackass, right? Yeah, he was one of the filmmakers behind that, and we had dinner with him in Portland. Very pleasant dinner. So hello, Lance, if you're out there listening. I can't believe that they did that. Anyway, and he kept getting back in. He kept getting bit. He's bleeding, and he keeps getting back in. I don't know why this isn't ringing a bell. I'm sure I've seen Jackass, too, a bunch of times. Plus, Chuck, you also want somebody around anytime you're handling a snake, whether it's a python or a venomous snake or any snake, really, because you want somebody to call 911 if something goes wrong. You want somebody to be able to drive you to the hospital if something goes wrong or if a python is trying to get around you. They can keep the tail from fully wrapping around. There's a lot of stuff that an extra person can do, and things go really horribly awry when that doesn't happen. There was actually a very famous case not too many years ago of a Venezuelan zookeeper. I think it was Venezuela, wasn't it? I don't remember who was, I think, a grad student working as a zookeeper, and he or she went into, I guess, a python's cage, a ten foot Burmese python cage alone during the night shift. Boy. And they found before probably just to get something or to give it some food. Just something. I'm sure it was something mundane. Totally. Not worth losing your life over. Yeah. And they found the person the next morning, like, half swallowed by the python. Oh, my Lord. So you always want somebody around. Yeah. Well, should we get into the religious snake handling? Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, you said it, dude. It's called holiness surface handling. And actually, you might think, like, oh, they've done this for millennia, or at least since the 17, 1800. No, we have a definitive start date in Tennessee, the Dolly Pond Church of God in Birchwood, there was a preacher named George Hensley, and the legend is that he was having a faith crisis and was reading Mark from the Bible. 1618 thou shalt take up serpents, and if they drank any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. That was a good Appalachian preacher. And so he supposedly turned and saw a snake there and said, I'm going to take this quite literally. The Bible says to take up snakes, so I'm going to pick it up. And he picked it up and the snake didn't bite him. And he said, well, there goes my crisis of faith. That's right. And apparently George Hensley didn't start out a preacher, he started out an alcoholic who had trouble keeping work. And once this happened to him, he found his religious calling and became a preacher in the Pentecostal tradition. And he actually helped establish this separate group that's kind of within the Pentecostal religion. But the Church of God of signs following is essentially the sect that he helped found. Yeah. These are subsets of subsets of Christianity. Yeah. And so Hensley's whole philosophy was, you read the Bible plainly, is how he put it. Which means if it says you pick up snakes, you pick up snakes. Right. That's God's command to you. Right. If it says you can drink any deadly thing and it will not harm you, you're supposed to do that. Right. All churches are independent, so you decide whether women can wear pants or not at your church. And it was about as simple as that. And it actually took off and became very popular throughout Appalachia from the 1910s till about the 1940s. There was, I think, thousands of people who went to these Church of God with signs following churches. Yeah. And Hensley, for his own record, said that he survived more than 400 bites until 1955. He was in Florida in an abandoned I don't know if it was abandoned, but it was a blacksmith shop and he was doing a demonstration and I guess holding a little religious service. Right. And he got beaten and refused treatment, because that's part of the deal, is they leave it up to you, like, coots I saw an interview with him and he said, if someone gets bitten, I call the paramedics, I have them come down, and then I say, well, now you have a choice. You can either do this god commands and refuse treatment and he'll heal you if you should be healed. And if it's your time to die, it's your time to die. Or you can say, I'd like treatment, please. Yeah. But in the tradition of a true believer, hinsley said, no, I don't want treatment. And he died the next morning. Yeah, but he survived a bunch of other bites, like you said. Yes, 400. He says, although live by the snake, die by the snake is probably a pretty good motto. Sure. A lot of people think that holiness serpent handlers are either worship the snakes because they do keep them in cages on the altar during services, or that they're doing this as a show of faith, to basically show, look at how much I believe in God. Right. Apparently, this is definitively not the case when holiness serpent handlers pick up snakes. And this still goes on. Yeah. Like, there are still churches throughout Appalachia, apparently, from Ohio to Florida, where hundreds, if not a few thousand people do this, go to these services. When they do it, they don't do it at every service, necessarily. Right. But when they do do it, it's because they believe they have just been commanded by God to show their obedience to God by picking up a serpent and handling it. And when they do it, apparently they just enter into immediate religious ecstasy. Yeah. It's like they kind of jump up and down and maybe speak in tongues and sort of a trance like state, I guess. We haven't even really described it. I assume most people have seen this at some point. Look up a YouTube video. They're not holding the snake by the back of the head. No. They are literally just sometimes there are five and six snakes and they're just holding them, and they're kissing them on the face. They're rubbing them on their face. They wear them like crowns. Yeah. They'll throw them over their shoulders. The big difference between religious snake handlers and professional snake handlers is that religious snake handlers go to zero degree to establish any kind of safety precautions. Right. That's entirely antithetical to the point. Yeah. They don't have anti venom shots standing by in a medical kit. No, they don't. No. There's 100 things that are different, but sure. Right. I know what you mean. And so this whole thing was very popular among the Appalachians for a good 2030 years. And in the 40s, there was a rash of people who died after being bitten, and all of a sudden, the outside world started to look in and say, what are you guys doing? Yeah. And the authorities were like, well, we don't think you should be able to do that. We started to try to pass laws, but none of them there actually are laws that indirectly prevent people from doing this. There's actually some that directly prevent them, I guess, in every Appalachian state except for West Virginia, but they're very rarely enforced because of religious liberties. Right? Yeah. Religious freedoms. Yeah. There have been some raids, notably, actually, Coots Place. Sounds like a sitcom. Hanging with Mr. Coote. Coots Church was rated as a part of a series of stings in 2008 under the code name Twice Shy. Really? Yeah. You're kidding me. They did. There in one church, they confiscated 125 snakes and made ten arrest. And then at Coots Church, I think they got about 75 snakes and arrested a few others, including him. But I don't think they stay in jail very long. I can't imagine what the penalty is. Well, the grand juries typically refuse to indict them. Oh, really? They just say they might be charged with them, they might be hauled to jail, but there's no indictment that's handed down, so they don't go to trial. But they confiscate the snakes, at least. Yeah, usually, because in Tennessee, for example, it's illegal to keep venomous snakes, and the snakes that they're using are very venomous. They're deadly cottonmouths, rattlesnakes, all sorts of very deadly venomous snakes. So they're breaking the law just by having the snakes. But again, they're typically left alone as far as the courts are concerned. And the reason why you're saying at the beginning of this episode that it's hard to not just be like, stop? Yeah. I think the reason why I don't have that much trouble with this, I came to see it differently after doing research on it. Okay. They have mores involved with this stuff. Moray eels? No, I thought they handled those, too, because that would require, like, an aquarium, and nobody wants that. Sure. They have just kind of rules around the whole thing where you don't go handle a serpent unless you feel like you have been commanded by God to go do that right then. And you're imbued with the Holy Spirit, which is protecting you right then. Right. There's no pressure whatsoever to go do that. There's actually discouragement to do it for any kind of show of faith or anything like that. And then children are banned from doing it. They're not allowed to handle the snakes. You were fine with it? Yes. In the same way that you're free to walk into traffic if you want. I find it even less harmful than that, because you're endangering the other driver's life. If you're walking into traffic, somebody might steer into somebody else to get around you. This is you and a snake. Yeah. I do have issues with how the snakes are treated. Well, that's one of my other big problems, so we'll get into that. We got to take a break. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US. Based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff. That's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an 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 demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comitoimation. 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. Listening is host Vertoon de Thurston connects with leaders and doers out there tackling some of today's biggest challenges, like climate change, education, access, global health. You'll hear from organizations like the Trevor Project, doctors Without Borders, and the University of Kentucky, who are using their platforms to maximize their impact. You'll also be introduced to action leaders like youth activist Juan Acosta and advocate Amy Allison, who are inspiring change in their day to day lives. So join them as they discuss new ways of collaborating and taking action. Listen to the second season of the iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org original podcast, Force Multiplier on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, Chuck, we're back. What's the problem? What's your beef? Well, over the years let's get into some numbers. In about 100 years, they estimate about 100 people have died from doing it. And if you look at the numbers and the number of people handling snakes, you'd think there'd be a lot more people dying from snake bites. Pretty surprising, especially considering that most of them do refuse medical treatment after being bitten. They still recover, correct. That is unusual. It's remarkable. It is. NPR did a story on this in 2013, and some snake experts herpetologists started coming out of the woodwork, specifically the Kentucky reptiles, who has been sort of investigating this on their own for years. And they said, you know what? There's a lot of things going on here. That is sort of a rigging of the stacking of the deck. Stacking of the deck in the human's favor. For one, these snakes are mistreated, which is one reason I have a problem with it. By all accounts, from their investigations, they saw crowded cages, they were dirty. There was no fecal matter in the cage, which looked like they weren't being fed. They asked Coots about that, and he said, well, my rat connection went away, my mouse and rat hook up disappeared on me. And he says, Besides, they won't eat anyway, I think was his quote, which I don't understand what that means. Snakes eat. They want to eat. That sounds like something someone says when they're pulling their collar away from them. And he said they asked him, how long have snakes lived? And he said, on average, three or four months. The reptiles do in Kentucky said snakes should live ten to 20 years. Oh, wow. He said they live, on average, three or four months. Yeah. They're being mistreated. So because of this mistreatment, these hungry snakes, there's a lot of things that happen once you have a hungry snake, and one is they are less likely to strike if they're unhealthy. Yeah. What else? When they do strike, they're less likely to inject venom. So it's likely to be a dry strike? Yeah. 25%, I think, are dry strikes, but that's just under normal circumstances. Oh, really? If it's a malnourished and less fed or underwatered snake, it's probably even higher incidence of dry strikes than that. Okay. The venom apparently isn't as potent if it's an unhealthy snake. In 2013, they rated a church in Tennessee, I think that's Andrew Hamilton like you were talking about. Yes, I think I may have said his first name incorrectly before, but yeah, that's who I was talking about. And they confiscated 53 snakes that most of them died within months. They were all unhealthy. And so basically, you've got these malnourished snakes that even when they do get bitten, they're maybe even not getting any venom or less potent venom, right? Yeah. It's rigged in a certain way. Plus, also, this article points out there's a Julia Laden joint. She points out that it's also possible that those of us here on the outside, maybe even the holiness serpent handlers, overestimate just how aggressive snakes actually are by nature. Yes. Like you were saying, if you're handling them gently, they're not going to strike you, especially if they don't feel threatened if there's like, oh, this is just a religious person. Right. They're in the throes of religious ecstasy. I'll just ride it out. I've been wanting to be gently shaped for a while, so let's see where this goes. Plus, a lot of these snakes are raised in captivity, and snake experts will tell you if you raise a snake in captivity, it's less likely to strike at you because they don't fear you as they should. Right. Plus, snakes don't typically speaking from an evolutionary standpoint, it doesn't make any sense for a snake to be like, yeah, I'm going to strike you thing that is way bigger than I am, that I don't prey upon naturally. I'm going to deliver all of my venom. Right. Because the venom, they need it to actually eat. They need it for prey. Right. Yeah. And the snake would not know this, but natural selection would have figured it out by now that if a snake is striking something like a hippo that's coming at it and delivers all of its venom right. That hippo still going to stomp the snake before the venom actually has any effect on it. Yes. And you've lost all your venom. Right. You can regenerate it, but it's not like immediate. Right. So in an evolutionary natural selection standpoint, it doesn't really make sense for a snake to strike and deliver a full venom bite. Correct. Right. Yeah. So you had all this stuff together, and suddenly the mystery of snake handling still it becomes a little clearer. It makes a little more sense how people are surviving, but it's still remarkable that more people don't die, considering how often these snakes are handled. Yeah. And if you look at interviews with Coote on the YouTube, he'll pick up his chunk of rotted finger that he keeps and show you. He'll say, look, my wife had to cut it off at the midnuckle with Rose Pruners. That was a different guy. That was Bill Hoss? No, coots it happened to him, too. Oh, really? Rose Pruners again? Yeah, like, he literally held up his finger and showed it to the lady on CNN. She was like, yeah, like, you kept that thing. Yeah. Well, Bill hospital wife cut his off with Rose pruners. I think digits falling off as the snake handler is pretty common. I don't think it's like no, that was that one guy. There you go. I'm against it because they are mistreating snakes. Yeah, I have that. That's my issue with it, too. Other than that, I'm like, if you want to do it, it's your thing. Yeah. It's just one of those rare instances where you are, again, aside from the treatment of the snake, you're not harming anybody but yourself. There's almost no other instance that's just like that. You know what I mean? Right. I guess I'm getting to be a libertarian. So let's talk about Bill Hoffman, because that guy deserves maybe even his own podcast one day. Yeah. This dude is something else. Where do you start with him? Well, as a kid, he had a dream he was always obsessed with snakes. And he had a dream to one day have a snake house open to the public where he could educate people. And he was an educator. He wasn't a religious snake handler. We should point that out up front. He was a self trained scientist. Yeah, for sure. That's a good way to say it. Yeah. Thank you. So little kid has a dream and he grows up and makes that dream a reality and really believed in his heart and through experimentation that snake venom could be very beneficial to a human. Yeah. He was actually after the Miami Serpentarium, which is his famous place that he opened was in full swing. By the late 70s, he was in clinical trials using snake venom to help cure things like Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis with a doctor. And the FDA actually came in and shut them down because they were basically doing human experimentation that was unsanctioned. But they were seeing results, from what I understand. Yeah. Apparently he was seeing results with his polio work earlier when Jonasal invented the vaccine. And he was like, oh, man, it's great that it's cured, but I wish it could have been me and the snakes. So this dude started self immunizing in 1948. He injected one part cape cobra venom with 1000 part sailing solution into his forearm and started gradually increasing the amount of venom he would inject into his own body. Right. Within a couple of decades, he was injecting, every day a cocktail of 32 different snakes and reptiles venom, which is a process called okay. Mythrididism was this famous I can't remember he was an ancient king, and he developed a tolerance to poison because he was so afraid of being poisoned. Oh, so he would drink a little bit. Right. Nice. So now anybody who does it, it's Mythrididism, and that's what he was doing. So he actually did this for such a long time that his blood itself became antivenon and it actually saved 21 people's lives. Yeah. He would draw pints of blood from his body to keep on hand, and he literally, several times flew all around the world with his blood to give it to people to save them. Yeah. And apparently in, I think, 1989, he was bit by a Pakistani pit viper and he didn't have any anti venom. And the White House used back channels to get their hands on some from Iran. Heard about that and saved his life. Yeah. Pretty neat stuff. He has a famous quote, I could become a poster boy for the benefits of venom. If I live to be 100, I'll really make the point. And he lived to be 100, 100 years old with snake venom pumping through his blood all day long. Yeah. And there's a really neat discussion about this guy in a larger article called The Matridities of Fondue Lock. I can't remember the guy who wrote it. It's a really great article. I'll tweet it out or something. But it has some stuff about Bill Host in it. But it's also about this other dude named Tim Freed who in the article. He takes four venomous snake bites in 48 hours, although the whole thing is about whether or not he can live through five. But he's been doing the same thing. Wow. Yeah. So the serpentarium in Miami closed in 1984 because I saw that the accident was in 1977. So I'm not sure why it took seven years to close. But a six year old boy had crocodiles and other stuff right at the place. Six year old boy fell into the crock pit and was mauled. And it really obviously disturbed Bill because he wasn't a bad guy. He tore him up and he shot this crocodile nine times of the Luger pistol, and I guess seven years later decided to close it. Apparently the dad didn't blame Bill, which is remarkable for the accident, which I just thought was strange. If he took safety precautions and the kid went around him, then yeah, maybe so. It's not that dude's fault either way. It's horrible and tragic. And he ended up closing the serpentarium as a result of it, although I didn't realize it was seven years later, too. But he kept his milking operation going. That's right. And his own self injection routine. And he did. He flew to Venezuela once into the Amazon to deliver some of his own blood to save a boy's life, and he was made an honorary citizen of Venezuela as a result. That is so cool. Yeah, pretty amazing. He claims to have never been sick a day in his life. Never had the cold, never had the flu, didn't take aspirin. And this article that you sent says he was unusually youthful looking. I don't know. I looked at pictures. I don't know if he looked 100, but right. I don't know about unusually youthful looking. Maybe. So he had a glow about him. Yeah, glow from venom. I'm going to start shooting that stuff, I guess. Oh, yeah. No, I'm going to stay away from it and just be fascinated by the whole concept. All right. Is there anything else? I got nothing else. I don't either. If you want to know more about snake handling, you can type those words in the search bar, how Stuff Works.com. And since I said that, it's time for oh, you know what it's time for? Facebook questions. All right, so what we do here is when listener males have dried up a little bit, we put it out to the people on Facebook to send in questions, and we'll answer over the next two episodes, as many as we can that aren't dumb. It's sort of a rapid fire thing starting no, I'm like Billy on the street. Who? Billy on the street. Billy Eithner. No. Great TV show. Yeah. I haven't seen it, but I am aware of it. It's wonderful. Let's start with Greg Storkin. Good old Greg Storkin. Yes. He says if you woke up to find that you would replace the character in a movie, you know. Well, what movie and character would it be and how would you handle the circumstances differently? This is a really good question. I feel like Josh has probably had an answer to this for years. For The Shining. Wink emoticon. Do you spell out wink emoticon, or did it just print out like that? I don't know. I'm not sure. I know he spelled it out. I had my answer easy. John Rambo. And what would you do differently? Would you just immediately surrender? I would have in the very beginning of First Blood when he drives them across the bridge and says, Keep going that way. I would have just kept going that way, instead of turning around and going back into town. Nice VN. Yeah. John Rambo. It'd be a boring movie. Well, it'd be very short. Yeah, it'd be a short film. John Rambo. Hitchhiker. That's a good one. Yeah. What about you? I'll have to think about that. All right. Hey, Stork. And we'll see you in Denver, buddy. All right. Smile. Emoticon. This is from Jamie Whitaker. Josh always refers to his favorite book. Josh, you want to say it 1491. That's right. Yeah. But I'm usually driving, and I never take it down. I can't remember. So he says it's 18 something. It's not right. 1491. That's right. Chuck, what is your number one recommendation? I don't know if I have a favorite book, but I always recommend the book Middle Sex just because it's one of the great books that I read. Jeffrey eugenie. Oh, yeah. Eugenie. I think that's right. He wrote he's written a lot of great books, but Middle Sex is wonderful. Great all around book. Yes. Okay. Nice one, man. Let's see. Trey McLam has a great question. How different would our health be if we could sleep every day until we wake up naturally, as if alarm clocks were never invented? I would guess we'd all be a lot more mellow. We get less done, sure, but we'd be more mellow. Like our five day weekend. Remember that episode? I do. I think that kind of dovetailed with that quite a bit. Just kind of doing what you do. Here's your answer. Good one. I don't know about that. It was a good question. Terrible answer. Sam Horn, you've been dropping hints of late about live shows overseas. Would love to see you in the UK. We have loads of stuff you should know. Terrible. Sam, we're hoping to come to the UK this summer. We're working on it. Hard. We're working on it. It may or may not pan out because planning shows overseas can be challenging. Yes. You have to take a citizenship test. Do you know that? I didn't know that. Weird. So we're trying. And listen up for updates on that front. Okay, let's see. Jessica Riddell says, I listened to your color podcast, Color with a U, and Chuck mentioned he might have a color deficiency. I'd like to hear a podcast about color blindness and color deficiencies, please. Smile. Moticon. I think people are putting this and it's typing it out when you print it, it's got to be maybe what's the question? That wasn't a question. No. Okay. Donna. Good one, Chuck. Well, they say Josh, Diego, Leo, how's the property squatting coming along? That was me. I haven't heard anything from a few years, and I haven't heard anything about Hippie Rob. I'm still squatting, everybody. It's working out great. And as far as we know we don't own the property yet, but we think the county might and I don't think we're in any danger of losing it nice. Anytime soon. It's not your next door neighbor. Back neighbor, behind neighbor, whatever. No. Yes. The county. I don't know if you'll ever be able to own it then, even through adverse possession. Maybe not, but I don't think there's anything they can do with it. It's such a small strip. So I think we're good. Are they going to start parking like a tar truck back there? County land. What about Hippie Rob? Any updates there? Josh hippie Rob will forever live forever in the ether. Great. Claire. Dolby I'd say dalby, too? Normally, if you could revisit an episode and do it differentlybetter which one? The sun. Not a bad idea. The sun. I would definitely like another crack. Yeah. Every once in a while I can't think of them. We've done, like, 800 plus episodes. Every once in a while, I will leave here and I say, every time I feel that way, I'll be like, that one just wasn't as good as it could have been. And it's always something that's, like, really important. The topic is really important to me, so I'll overthink it. Yeah. And it always pans out fine, but I can't think of any that I would just like to go back and do over again. Yeah. My thought of you just kind of let even if I'm a little disappointed, it is what it is. Yeah. That's a philosophy, I guess it is. Yeah. It's a boring philosophy. Dan Floyd are we ever going to get a How Jerry Works episode? No, Jerry doesn't want people to know how she works. She operates in stealth and secret the CIA and she may or may not exist. Larry Tiffany says, what evidence would we see if the flood epic of Noah's ark were indeed true? Well, Larry, we've got something for you, buddy. It's a whole episode on Noah's Ark and the flood. That's a pretty good one, if I remember correctly. I have no recollection. That's a good one. Okay, how about one more each? Luke Viscering, have you ever been told the topic is off limits? No, Luke, we have not. We are very lucky and that we are free to program our own content and all the various bosses and company owners we've had over the years always steered clear of that, which we're very thankful for. Yeah, we self regulate. One more. Josh Robinson asks Josh and Chuck, why do you hate the 90s? Why do you hate my childhood? Yeah, I think the 90s were like, okay, I don't think they produce that much great stuff. Everything just had this kind of superficialness to it. It felt like, well, I love the was my 20s in my college that's beloved very much to me, and things were great in the 90s in a lot of ways. Are you nostalgizing right now? No, I thought we had a band on there. No, I love the 90s. Great music, great culture. See, I think the music thing is where I have the issue. I wouldn't say it was great, great music. There was some good music. I don't dispute that. But I think there's a lot of really bad music that's every generation not necessarily. I knew you're going to say that, and I was prepared to respond. And it is as follows. Look at the 80s, right? Okay. A lot of bad music. A lot of great music. But there was a lot more good listenable music. Like, think of all the one hit wonders in the 80s. There were a lot of singles that were pretty good. And listenable, even at the time, not just in retrospect. In the 90s, there was a lot of stuff on the radio was awful. Yeah, like nirvana and stuff like that. No, I mean, again, there was some good stuff, too. There were plenty of good bands, but for the most part, it felt like there was just a lot of really bad stuff, too. I'll go back to the spin doctors. Again, I think that is the emblem of the 90s, spin doctors. They were huge for a little while, and then I think that also carried into the early 2000s with a lot of the terribleness, too. Interesting. And I know the 80s were super vapid, very shallow, but almost to a cartoonish degree. The 90s were unaware of its superficiality. It felt like it was trying really hard to not be superficial, but it was failing at it. I think. I reject the notion that a lot of one hit wonders equals good. Not good, better. I got three words for you walking on sunshine. That was Katrina in the waves. What was wrong with that? Well, maybe we just have different tastes. Maybe so. All right, let's end this now. And don't it feel good? Yeah. Yes, it does. Chuck so that was Facebook questions, part one. Part one. I was never do that again. If you want to get in touch with us, you can join us on facebook. Comstuffyshonow. We're also on Twitter at syskpodcast. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffyhnnow.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast 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." | |
20f45224-121b-11eb-85ed-cb48d637b24f | Short Stuff: Palindromes | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-palindromes | Chuck loves palindromes. So much that his very name is one. Oh wait... | Chuck loves palindromes. So much that his very name is one. Oh wait... | Wed, 14 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=104, tm_isdst=0) | 12549682 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck, and I said hello with a silent H at the end, which means I just said something in palindrome. I love palindromes. As it turns out, I do, too. I think it's pretty neat. The one that gets me is when somebody's like this number is a palindrome. I just wrote it out. Yes. I don't get that. That doesn't count. Maybe if it's a date or something that you don't have any control over, then yeah, be a palindrome. But just anybody who's into numbers that are palling drones, be quiet, once and for all. Yes, I'm glad you said that, because this article, even from Housetuffworks.com, says some numbers for palindromes, like 18008 one. Right. Just like I just wrote out any number. Exactly 54 we're talking about. We're not going to give another breath to that stupidness. Instead, we're going to talk about real palindromes, which is a word, a phrase, a poem, even, as we'll see that can be said the same forwards or backwards. And apparently it comes from a little bit of Greek who like the pallendromes. Yes, the word palan means back or again, and dromos means running or moving. So it's a word or phrase that's running back on itself. And I'm even going to go so far for me, is to say, I only like palindromes that are literal the letters backwards and forwards. Like they make the case in here, like some phrases, like night after night, I'm like. No. Well, we'll talk about that in a second. Okay. Okay. I prefer that as well. I like the letters back and forth and that's that. But I will say my eyes were open to that by this article. Fair enough. So the first palindrome, like I said, the Greeks liked it. Actually, it turns out the Romans did. But the Romans model a lot of their society, if not all of it, on the ancient Greeks, so it's possible they ripped them off and that the Romans just happened to be the first ones to mention it. But the first palindrome comes from 70 Ce. And it's in Latin. Chuck do you want to take a crack at it? Sator orppo tenet opera rotas? You just turned me into a tree. Very different. It doesn't matter what it's saying in Latin. We Americans say all latin. We're in a Harry Potter movie. Yeah, like Evil Dead. Klatu Varata. That's a day of the earth stood still. Yes, it is. It's the Evil Dead, my friend. And they stole it from The Day the Earth Stood Still, because that is the I don't remember what it was. Katie vrata. Nikki yeah. That's from The Day the Earth Stood Still. I promise. Well, then they ganked it in Evil Dead, which is better. I think it's more an homage, probably. So, okay. But to hear it come out of Bruce Campbell's mouth, sure, that's the money shot. They really went off the rails on those movies. Yeah, they're making another one, I think. When? I don't know, like a Bruce Campbell one. Like a sequel to army of Darkness. Oh, boy. That's going to be great. Yeah. Can't wait. Okay, so what did that palindrome you said mean? It means the sewer arrapo holds the wheel with effort or the sewer Arapo leads with his hand. The plow. Nothing that matters at all to any of us alive today. But I'm sure back in the day, the Romans were like, that one really spoke to me, you know what I mean? But it goes to show that, like, word play has been around for almost as long as words. Yeah, totally. And Chuck, it wasn't just the ancient Romans who were into it. That love of it has survived. And I say we pick up with the modern day after taking a short break. What do you think? Let's do it. Okay. All right. We're back. And by modern day, of course, I mean the 1630. Yeah. The first mention of palindromes in English is in Camden's Remains by John Philippa from 1636. Palindromes are those where the syllables are saying backward and forward. So Albata at alba c numiimunis. Very nice. Which means secluded but pure. Give me my fee and I warrant you free. Okay. Which is great that you have a palindrome that also rhymes because that's not necessarily part and parcel with it. Philippe was just showing off, but you'll note that he's an English speaker and he wrote an English speaking book, Camden's Remains, but it was still in Latin, hence the whole class Chuck's reading of it. That's right. It's not until 17 six that we find the first written English palindrome in an English dictionary called the New World of Words or Universal English Dictionary. And this is as follows. Lewd did I live, and evil did I dwell. That's a good one. Yeah, there's a couple of problems with it. One, they had to drop off the second L and dwell to make it the reverse of lewd. And then there's also the whole and in the middle of it, which is not part of a palindrome. It's not a palindrome itself, and it kind of screws up the whole palindrome. But because it was the beginning of the 18th century, everybody kind of chose to overlook the ann part. That's right. Then we can skip the part about numbers being palindromes, because that's just rage inducing. Well, no, the date makes sense. So 120 21 is a palindrome. January 2021 was a palindrome day. It's worth mentioning. We'll take that. But give me your eye opening with the thing, like night after night, which just sort of makes me mad, too. So there's a really neat poem that I hadn't heard of until I ran across it in this article by James A. Linden called Doppelganger, and it is itself a palindrome, like, where you can actually read it from you could go to the very end and read it, or you can go to the beginning and read it and it's going to be the same. So you don't read the actual words like the word itself backwards, but you read the order of the words backwards and forwards, and the whole thing hinges on the phrase night after night, which is pretty it's a pretty awesome poem, to tell you the truth. Let me just read you the middle part where it hinges, and I think you'll be properly blown away. Okay. Okay. I puzzled over it, hiding alone, watching the woman as she neared the gate. He came and I saw him crouching. Night after night. Night after night he came and I saw him crouching, watching the woman as she neared the gate. I puzzled over it, hiding alone. And it's just like the poem starts out, and then it gets to night after night and then goes back. It swings on a hinge. It's really neat. I like it, too. It's not one of your perfect proper palindromes or anything, but it's still pretty cool. So here's my thing is I started kind of diving into this online and found out that there a is a documentary called The Palindromists. Okay. Which I didn't watch, but I did watch the trailer, which was fun enough and kind of gave me enough insight in two minutes. That sounds like a crew that Hodgeman would hang out with. Yeah, probably so. But it covered, in part, the Palindrome Championships, which is basically where they get Palindrome enthusiasts together at a hotel ballroom, and they say you have three constraints. They didn't mention the constraints in the trailer. You have 90 minutes to write out original Palindromes, and then the live audience votes and Weird Al is in it. He's a palindromist. Danika McKeller. Winnie from Wonder Years is one. You know, she wrote like a science or no, a math book. Really? A textbook. Yeah. Well, do you know what she also wrote? What? Tons of UFO snot. What is that? It's ballindrome. Oh, that's a good one. Okay. Weird owl wrote this one. Uzi rat and a sanitary zoo. That's a good idea, I think. January Win so far. My deal with these is once I started kind of seeing this community is not only do I love a palindrome, but I like an original one that someone can invent. That kind of makes sense. And it's not just a collection of words like de geese, see God. Yeah, that makes sense. It does. Here was another one from the documentary Gerda. Boston's IQ is not so bad. Read. That's a good one. Wow. Whose is that? Just a contestant. No one famous. Lloyd Bentsen? Sure. Okay. Let's see. How about I got another one. Go deliver a dare, vile dog. That's a good one. It doesn't make sense, but it's pretty great. Well, and by make sense, it just a sentence and not just a collection of words. What about don't nod, it's perfect. Or taco cat. The classic taco cat. Taco cat is good. Or there's another one with the cat, too. Was it a car or a cat I saw? That's a good one. I've got another one from that trailer. Mr. Owl ate my metal worm. Okay, what else? And then go hang a salami. I'm a lasagna hog. Whose is that? That was a guy named John AGY. But just the sheer joy. These are sort of like crossword puzzle enthusiasts, like just people who really get into words, and I just couldn't get enough of it. I'm going to try and find the whole documentary. I did see in February 2002, there was a computer scientist named Peter Norvig who used a computer program to break the record for the, quote, longest palindrome sentence, which was 17,000 plus words. It's just a computer program putting together a bunch of words. Oh, yeah, that doesn't count. And I see. But they said that he's the world record holder, and I was like, Come on, man, maybe in the future. But John AJ. By the way, is a children's book author. A beloved one, according to the Penguin Random House website. Very cool. I also found the longest word is a Finnish palindrome, which has, I think, 19 letters. S A come on. Sapua kibikal. PS. You just converted me back into a boy. It's a dealer and lie, apparently. Like, okay, lie seller. Yeah, I think so. Okay, one last thing. Yummy always talks about this guy that she dated that used to mess with people, and whenever palindromes came up, he'd say, yeah, my favorite one is penis sniper. And just wait for them to go over it in their head. They'd be like, wait, this is not a palling doom. But you're sitting there thinking penis sniper. Exactly. Yeah. I think this last one was pretty funny to me just because it was well, two of them to me are very funny because they're so basic. One is Stella. One no wallets. That's good. It's a big wallet competition. Sure. And then this guy is like, clearly a citrus street vendor. No lemon, no melon. I like that one, too. The word melon itself has a nice round feeling to it. I love the word melon. Yeah, and lemon, too, just because it's evocative of that beautiful color, too. Yeah, that might be my favorite one now. No lemon, no melon. Yeah, but I like how you say it as well. No lemon, no melon. That's right. Only pineapple. So we could probably stay here for the next 2 hours doing this. Should we just cut this short? Well, we'll stop recording and then you and I just continue to do it on our own. All right, well, to the rest of you, see you guys later. Because 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." | |
How Stem Cells Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-stem-cells-work | Since scientists realized there is a type of cell that can grow into any other type, they have worked to use them to heal human conditions like Parkinson's and immune disorders. But because stem cells often come from embryos they remain controversial. | Since scientists realized there is a type of cell that can grow into any other type, they have worked to use them to heal human conditions like Parkinson's and immune disorders. But because stem cells often come from embryos they remain controversial. | Tue, 09 Sep 2014 14:36:14 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=14, tm_min=36, tm_sec=14, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=252, tm_isdst=0) | 34054967 | 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. That makes the stuff you should know featuring Jerry. Hey, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Charles. How are you? I'm good. A little wackier than usual by maybe like three or 4%. Yeah, we're both a little wacky today. Usually we depend on the other to not be wacky. This episode is going to suck. No, it won't suck. Great. How are you being optimistic? I see. This is good. I learned a lot about this topic. Yes. Thank you for not blowing the big secret. That's right. We're talking about stem cells today. It's out there. Yes. We can't take it back. No. Did you know much about stem cells before you research this little bit, keep up with the news a little bit on it, but I hadn't done a ton of research. It's really fascinating. Yeah, it really is. What's funny is what I knew about it before, what I assumed, which is just this very primitive idea of taking a cell and making it turn into some other cell that you want and then injecting it into the affected area. It's actually what stem cell therapy is. Yeah. That's the goal of it at this point. Pretty much, yeah. One of them. Yeah. So basically it's the caveman street. That's what stem cells are. Is that what it is? Yeah. I thought that was warm soup. Warm soup. All right. So after that okay. After warm soup was invented, they turned their attention to stem cells. Warm soup, then cold beer. Stem cells. Yeah. That may have come first. Sure. You remember from the beer episode, the idea that bread was created to make beer easier to make? Yeah. That's such an awesome idea. I love it. That's a T shirt right there. Yeah, it's a little clunky. I think we need to work on it. Bread before beer. Oh, well, there you go. Yeah. You thought I was going to put the whole thing yeah, it kind of keeps going on to the back of the shirt. Right. Oh, wow. You are in a weird mood today, aren't you? I know. I don't know what that was. Okay, let's take this seriously. Yes. So there are plenty of diseases out there, Chuck, that affect cells. Sure. Like Parkinson's, the neurons that produce dopamine, the neurotransmitter dopamine, which helps control movements. Those cells die, and as a result, you lack dopamine. And as a result of that, you can't control your movements. And then you have the characteristic tremors of Parkinson's. True. Heart failure is apparently the result of well, your heart failing. Yeah. But the heart failure comes from your heart cells dying off. It's all cellular death for the most part. Well, a lot of it is. Right. There's a lot of disease out there. Type one diabetes, I believe. You're not producing insulin like you're supposed to. Yeah. In the pancreas. Yeah. So the reason why cell death in the pancreas. So there's this whole idea that if you can just figure out how to reintroduce these cells, then the caveman's dream will be realized because you'll have a healthy pancreas and therefore no more type one diabetes. You'll be producing dopamine again, no more Parkinson's, and possibly no more Alzheimer's either. Yeah, no more a lot of stuff. Yeah. And it all comes down to the fact that we are losing cells in an unnatural way and therefore by replacing those cells, we could conceivably cure these diseases. Yeah. I guess we shouldn't say no more, but we should say reversible, because you would still get Parkinson's, but then you'd be able to reverse the effects. Right. We're not talking about eradicating. Oh, yeah. You know what I'm saying? That's a good point. Yeah. We're talking about curing these things once you already have them. I just saved us some pedantic emails. So the whole point of all this, the whole idea beneath it, was discovered in 1981 when some researchers figured out that there are cells in mice that are what are called undifferentiated, meaning they're not really any kind of cell. Like, they don't carry oxygen in the blood, they're not capable of it, they're not capable of transmitting neurotransmitters. They didn't really seem to do anything. But then further and further research revealed, like, oh my God, these cells can do anything. Yeah. They're like a little child. Like, what kind of cell do you want to be when you grow up? Right. And those are stem cells. And then I think 1998, they finally isolated them in humans because the big problem with stem cells is they look and seem just like all the other cells that they're around until you figure out how to isolate them, which is something they're actually still working on. That's right. And we'll get to how they can mark these things, which is pretty neat in a bit. But there are not nearly as many stem cells as one of the main differences. Yes. Depending on where you look. Yes. For the adult, and we'll get on to the different types as well. But for adults themselves, it's about one for every 100,000 regular cells. Yeah. And again, like in the blood, that's the case. In the bone, you might find one for every 10,000. But the point is, there's not nearly as many stem cells because you don't need as many. The analogy that I guess they made in this article is that stem cells are kind of like the body's repair kit. Yeah. The thing is, they don't necessarily do all the repairs that we need. Like, you can still get Parkinson's and there's not a stem cell that automatically activates and cures your Parkinson's. If so, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. That's right. So the goal of stem cell therapy is to figure out how to take these stem cells and make them do what you want them to do. Yeah. Manipulating these cells to turn into helpful cells. Right. Regular cells can only replicate to be another kind of that cell. But stem cells, they have different levels of what's called potency, which is an ability to change ranging from toti potent, which can develop into anything. Like it can turn into a car if it wants to. That's not true. It's like the Wonder Twins. Yeah. It can turn to anything so long as it's water based. That's right. And then you have other levels of potency, too. Pluripotent, multipotent, and we'll cover all this in detail as we go because each one has a different potency level. Right. But I think that was descending order from capability. Right. Like totipotent is anything. Pluripotent is almost anything. Right. Then multipotein is a few things. Yeah, a few things, sure. And we have these stem cells, like we said, around the body in different places. And like you said, their job is to basically hang out in their call. It like their host organ or their host tissue. Yeah. Like, we're all in the liver. We're liver cells. Right. So you need a few liver cells here. I do. I'm going to divide it. I'm going to divide into some more, and then, bam, no more cirrhosis. Or at least it's staved off for another year. Yeah. With the bone marrow in particular, there's a type of stem cell called stromal stem cell. And that one creates all sorts of different types of blood cells, because your blood cells, that's how they regenerate through stem cells. They don't self regenerate, and they only last about 28 days. Now, is that why you can use cells from bone marrow to treat other diseases like leukemia, other blood diseases? Exactly. Okay. And that is a procedure. It's actually a stem cell therapy that predated our awareness that stem cells even existed. Yeah. We just didn't call it a stem cell at the time. Yeah. It was a bone marrow transplant. That's what people still call it. Now, we understand that what you're actually doing is transplanting that marrow. That includes some bone marrow stem cells. It's kind of the key yeah. Into another person. And then those stromal stem cells will start to regenerate and help the person who has accepted this donation. That's right. So that happened even before we understood what stem cells were. But since 1998, all of this research has really been focused on, okay, how can we make this a little more guided and laser focused rather than accidentally transplanting stem cells from one person's bone marrow to another? Right. And so what they started to investigate and found, Chuck, was that there's something called embryonic stem cells. And these were the first ones that were like, this is awesome. Yeah. And like you said, they were isolated in humans in 98 due to private funding, which is important designation, because we'll get to all the controversies in federal funding coming up. Soon. But they are embryonic. They are in the embryo, the fetus or the umbilical cord blood. Right. Which is why a lot of times mothers will save their umbilical cord or not themselves. They don't give it to them, they tuck it in their thirst. You wrap it up in a cleaner here you go. Because that could come in handy later on. Yeah, and it depends on when it's harvested. But they are the ones that are pluripotent, depending, as I said, on when you get them. They can also, very early on, be the ultimate toti potent. But that's super early. Yeah. You have to have a quick hand to get this tow to buy or so right. Old. So those are the embryonic versions. That's right. Then you've got adult stem cells and strangely, adult stem cells are found from infants on. Yeah. So I think the adult refers to the actual stem cell rather than the person who has that type of stem cell. Yeah, I guess it's sort of like post embryonic, is the way I looked at it. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, that makes sense. It is multipotent, which means it can differentiate or change itself into a lot of different helpful things. But not as many as pluripotent. No. And then lastly, in 2006, some Japanese people figured out that you could take English. Were the English too? Well, those two guys who won the Nobel Prize japanese when it was a sur. Awesome. They both deserve it. Yeah, because they figured out that you can take any kind of cell and make it regress back into a stem cell. And that was huge in part, or mostly because of the big controversy around embryonic stem cells, which, like you said, we'll get into it in depth. Yeah. And those are called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs induced because they're inducing it and pluripotent because they revert back to the very handy pluripotent states. Right. Those are the main three that's in general. And we'll talk about all of them a little more in depth right after that. All right, so let's start with embryonic. That seems like the logical place. Okay. If you listen to our in vitro fertilization podcast recently, you know all about how an embryo is formed. We have an egg fertilized by a sperm that divides, becomes an embryo. It's basically that simple. I encourage you to go listen to that podcast. So you'll learn all kinds of stuff. When you undergo IVF, though, like we talked about in that episode, a lot of times you will have more embryos, not always, but a lot of times you have more embryos than you're going to use. And so you can freeze those and save them for later in case you get pregnant and that doesn't work out right. Or it just becomes medical waste. You get pregnant, you're like, we don't need those anymore. You can just discard them or you can go with option three, which is to donate them to science to be used in stem cell cloning. Therapeutic cloning, yes. The reason that they would want your embryos is because, like you said, they're at some point codent and definitely pluripotent, very versatile as far as stem cells go. And it's not easy. I don't think that's the right word. But you can take an embryonic stem cell and culture it and let it divide into more and then culture those and culture those. And as long as they stay undifferentiated, you have a line of stem cells that can just keep replicating more and more stem cells. They're never going to turn into a certain kind of cell. That's right. So what you've just created is an embryonic stem cell line. The thing is, and this is what people have a problem with, to harvest these things, you have to destroy the embryo. You have to let it become a blastocyst, which takes a couple of days, and by the time it becomes a blastocyst, it's about 100 cells wide or deep, and then inside this is the embryonic stem cells. So basically, you have to crack the blastocyst open and then harvest the stem cells. And then there's nothing left to do with the blastocyst. That's right. If you're a religious type and you believe that life begins at conception, then the problem is you've just taken a life by destroying a blastocyst. Yeah. And that's just one of the controversies. The therapeutic cloning is also controversial because that's when they merge a cell, you've got a patient who needs the therapy, and they merge that cell with the donor's egg and then remove the nucleus from that egg, replace it with the patients, and it basically is like their own now. It's not likely to be rejected, which is a big problem. You're just basically using someone else's egg for its structural capabilities. Yeah, but the nucleus, the thing that's saying, like, here, build this, go do this, it's going to look like you not them. Yeah. But anytime you use that C word, cloning, well, it's going to be controversy is going to ensue, of course. Indeed. But it's also a double controversy, too, because you have to do the same thing. You're still forming an embryo that you destroy when it gets to the blastosis stage. It's just a freak of nature because you cloned it. It's called a double whammy. Right. So that's embryonic. That's right. And there's a lot of controversy around it, and we'll talk about that a little more later. But there is another type of stem cell that isn't nearly as controversial, if at all, and that's the adult stem cell, which we mentioned, which doesn't mean you have only when you're an adult. Right. But it's a type of stem cell that it's like the kind that hangs out in your bone marrow. It has a more of a specialized job. Yeah. Or it can become specialized, which is the key. And as you said it hangs out and it can divide and help out the liver if it needs to or the pancreas if it needs to. And that's the main differentiate, is that it's multipotent instead of pluripotent. It still has limits. Yeah. And it's basically, again, these are the ones that are you. They're not there to create you the human for the first time. Right. They're there to kind of keep you from wearing down too fast. Yeah. I wonder if they're left over or if they're supposed to be there. I know that sounds like a weird differentiation. I don't know because I did see somewhere that they're still trying to figure out, although this Japanese research may have figured it out, but they're trying to figure out why some types of stem cells, adult stem cells, will just sit there and just hang out for a very long time and then all of a sudden they start to divide. So I don't know, maybe they are original cells. If they're just kind of hanging out doing nothing, why would they age? I don't know. It's weird. So we mentioned earlier that one of the difficulties in working with stem cells, especially these adult stem cells, is they look like other cells. So they have a really cool way of marking them or what they call lighting them up. Every cell has a unique protein called a receptor on the surface and they bind these chemical messages. That's how cells talk to each other, basically. Right. And so they use these markers to identify the adult stem cells. They basically tag these chemical messages with fluorescent molecules. Right. And then once they put that fluorescent chemical in there, it lights up under a fluorescent light. So they make them kind of glow in the dark. Yeah, because that chemical message is now bound to the only type of cell it'll bind to the stem cell. So then when you hit it with the blacklight somebody should have won a Nobel Prize for that too. Yes, in my opinion, black light, but it's the same as embryonic stem cells. You can grow these in a petri dish, you can establish a new cell line and they are extremely useful. And like you said, they naturally say in the liver, create new liver cells. But they have been shown transdifferentiation to undergo transdifferentiation where they can be induced to do something slightly different. Right. So like a liver stem cell can produce insulin, which is typically produced in the pancreas. Right. And they haven't quite figured that out yet, right? No, they do not know this. They know that stem cells somehow can be induced to do different things. They don't know how to do it yet. Yeah, this is all super new stuff for the most part. I mean, if you're talking since 1998, that's not a long time. They did recently figure out these hemopoietic stem cell, which is a type of blood stem cell that makes all different kinds of blood cells. It's a very important one. And they found that by looking at zebrafish embryos, which are totally transparent, they actually watched these things form, and they just found out within the last couple of weeks that these require what they're calling a buddy cell to become the type of stem cell that forms blood. Right. Yeah. So now they think that they're one step closer to figuring out these hemapoietic stem cells. They don't know what the buddy cell is or where it comes from, but now they know that it needs a buddy. These are the kind of piecemeal steps that we're making toward understanding stem cells. All right. And then we have our well, maybe not final, because you've already told us about the fourth. But the third type is what we call the induced pluripotent stem cell. And that's the one that we mentioned was pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka. And Sir John almost said Sir John gruden. So Sir John Gordon. Who's? John Gurdon? It sounds so familiar. He's the NFL coach. That looks like oh, yeah. Chucky Jobs play. He didn't win a Nobel Prize, though. But for their efforts in 2012, they did win a Nobel Prize. And basically, like you said, they found a way to induce these cells to return to their embryonic state, which is amazing. Yeah. It sounds like basically they're using epigenetics. Yeah. That's a dangerous word to say, too. Well, think about this. What they found is that cells change and become the way that they later become. Like a liver cell or a bone cell or a neuron or something like that. Because they all have the same genetic code in them. But then certain gene sequences are either turned on or off in that cell. And that changes or tells them or directs them to become what kind of cell they become. Right. Yeah. What these guys have done is introduced what are called stem cell factors that go in and switch everything off to turn them back into these pluripotent stem cells. The thing that they haven't figured out how to do yet is to now activate them to say, here's some new markers to change your gene sequence, and now become liver cell to come back to liver cells. I know I'm fixated on that. That's the next step. Yeah. And the great thing about the IPSE is that it doesn't involve embryos. So that kind of skirts the ethical and political side of things. Yeah, because you can take a skin cell. Exactly. And again, these guys are having a 1% success rate, which is not bad. No. But if this other researcher has figured out how to make them at 25 or 30%, that's even better. Yeah. These are such a new process with the ISPC. They need to do research to see how effective they are in treatment. Right. If they are identical to embryonic stem cells or if they just behave a lot like them. So the proof in the pudding will be coming, hopefully in the coming years. Exactly. Not recent years. So, Chuck, let's talk about how they hope to actually use stem cells in the future once they have mastered these things after this. Okay, so using the stem cells is very important. You can create all these cell lines and they can live a very great life in a petri dish. Sure. But unless we're saving lives and reversing disease, what good are they? Well, so far, no good. But hopefully what they're thinking of is they'll be able to use these things for, say, like, drug trials. Yeah. That's huge, because right now what you have to do is test something on an animal and then think, all right, well, if it does this in a mouse, let's try and figure out how it might work in a human instead of just testing it directly on human cells. Apparently the steps you follow are mouse, monkey, human, unless there's an Ebola outbreak, and then you just go straight to human and get the FDA to pass it. And then they're like right. So if you're creating, like, a heart drug or something, and you can induce some stem cells to become heart cells, heart tissue, and then test the drug out on this, you're basically just running human trials right there. Yeah. You're skipping steps, you're saving time, you're saving money, cutting corners. Yeah. That is a negative connotation. That is one idea behind a good way to use these stem cells. Let them stop living their life of leisure and start contributing for once. Yeah. And forget the drug trials. Maybe they can actually, like you said earlier, I think at the beginning, just inject it right into the heart, let's say, to repair damaged tissue. Yeah. And they've actually had some success with this in mice. Again, our understanding of stem cells and what they're doing is kind of primitive. But they took mice with bad tickers and they injected them with heart stem cells, and all of a sudden, the mice had, like, super hearts. Yeah. But they don't know if these stem cells went in and regrew, like cardiac muscle tissue right. New blood vessels. They're not sure why. They just know that the mice, the mice hearts were better. And as they go along testing all these things, one of the things they have to get around, one of the hurdles is rejection, like bone marrow transplant. Any kind of transplant in the body, really, there's a chance that your body will reject it and say, this is a foreign invader, maybe going and attack it and kill it. Right. But one of the cool things about the iPSC is since it comes from your own body, has probably a greater chance of not being rejected. Yeah. Same with using adult stem cells. They're going to take them from you exactly. And use them on yourself. So that's very promising as well. So, Chuck, we've been kind of skirting around this issue a little bit. But we may mention that embryonic stem cells do represent a very controversial piece of scientific research, because to some, they represent the destruction of life. Yeah. And it all kind of got started with the Clinton administration. In 1995, the National Institute of Health Human Embryo Research Panel advised Billy Boy to authorize funding for research on leftover embryos from IVF treatments that we mentioned and to create new embryos from scratch for research purposes. And he said, the first one sounds good, but I don't know about that second one. Let me ask Newt Gingrich. Can you say that? Like Clinton? Let me ask Newt Gingrich. Perfect. I thought you'd ask me to do a Newt Gingrich. I was like, I have no idea how to do Newt Gingrich. He didn't have, like, a very remarkable accent. No. Especially not for being a Georgian. Yeah, that's true. So that was in 1995, and like we said, in 98 is when things really got rolling because of private funding. But by then, Congress had already put the brakes on it. Yes. Because in 1995, there was a rider on another bill called the Dicky Wicker Amendment from J. Dickey and Roger Wicker. Doesn't that sound like a British amendment? It does. The Dicky Wicker probably because of sticky wicket and cricket. Right. And they propose banning federal funding for any research in which you destroyed the embryo. Yeah. So, I mean, it wasn't specifically limited to stem cell research. Yeah. But like we said, to get to the stem cells, you have to crack open the blastocyst, which destroys the embryo, which, in effect, put the freeze on creating any new stem cell lines. Pretty much. And they've renewed it every year since then. But like anything in the US. Government, there's all sorts of ways to get around it. And one is the executive order. Right. Bush came in and he issued his own executive orders. Right. Yeah. Which kind of strengthened the existing rules on embryonic research. Yeah. And that's the one where he said you could use federal funds only on those established lines, either the 19 or the 22. Right. Depending on where you're getting your info. And it prevented basically any funding, federal funding for creating these new lines. So like you said earlier, I think they were grandfathered in. Right. The problem with that is the stem cell lines can produce millions of new stem cells within a matter of months, but you need even more for decent research. So there was, in the United States, at least, there was a huge freezing effect on stem cell research. It just wasn't nearly as widespread as it could be, at least if you wanted federal funding for your lab. Yeah. And so under Bush, I guess there was still a huge national debate about it. And the Bush administration sided with the pro life lobby sure. And said, no, you guys can just do this but how about this? I'm going to issue an executive order encouraging you to go figure out a way to start new stem cell lines without destroying embryos. Go yeah. And I guess you can kind of say, well, then after that, there was the induced pluripotent stem cells. I think they were probably already working on those. I don't know if it was in tribute to Bush's challenge or anything like that. Right. But it did come after that. Yeah. So that was all in 2001 ish and then in 2005, by the time that came around, the House and the Senate, both, even moderate Republicans, started to kind of get on board a little bit more, say, hey, maybe we need to broaden this thing a little bit because it's super promising. So let's introduce a couple of acts. The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005. And that would have allowed federal funding of research on these new lines, not those grandfathered in only from the discarded embryos from fertility treatments. The House passed it to 38 to 194. Senate passed it 63 to 37. And Bush vetoed that. He said he was going to veto it. It's one of those deals. He's like, go ahead and vote. I'm going to veto it. They voted, he vetoed it. They tried to override the veto. The House did, but they failed to. And then the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007 was similar to the original in 2005. That passes the Senate in House as well. And Bush vetoed that one as well. Okay. So that was the climate that Obama comes in. Yeah. And again, Bush wasn't saying, I hate stem cell research. It's stupid, and I want people to die of disease. He was saying we should only do it in certain ways that don't violate what a lot of people feel like our life begins at the very first day. Right. So Obama comes in and says, forget that. If you have your 19 or 22 stem cell lines, you can get federal funding for working on those lines. Everybody. That's cool. And how about some new lines? If somebody is going to discard embryos from in vitro fertilization and they want to donate them and these people are aware that these things are going to be used for medical research, then you can create new stem cell lines using federal funding. Yes. And that you're not paying those people. Right. That was the final step. Yeah. And so, ironically, a couple of stem cell researchers sued to get these rules stop from being put into place, and they actually won. Their case was overturned on appeals, I believe, who basically also said, you know, what is it? The Dicky what amendment? The sticky wicket. The Dicky Wicker. The Dicky Wicker amendment is overly broad, and so we're going to limit this and everything Obama just said in his executive order, just go ahead and we're going to go forward with those rules. So. That's the current state of affairs right now is. An appeals court interpreted this 1996 legislative act as overly broad. And we're operating under an executive order that's allowing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to continue. Nothing's really changed as far as the national conversation goes. It feels like it's just died down a bit as far as the volume goes. Yeah. And they've never banned research. It's just a matter of restrictions on federal funding and use. Yeah, well, they also didn't ban research on gun violence. They just stopped funding that, too. That's right. Remember that? I do, yeah. Do you got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay, well, that's stem cells, at least as far as it goes in August 2014. September, yeah, 2014. I'm sure that in five years, it's going to be a whole new world. Yes. You never know, we might see the end of Parkinson's and Ms and Alzheimer's and just inject some new cells in there. If you want to know more about stem cells, you can type those words into the search bar. Howstep works.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this banana flavoring. I can't remember which podcast it was plato, but I said that I didn't ever like banana flavoring and stuff, but I like bananas. Yeah, and you were like, what? We got quite a few emails explaining this, and I'm super happy because I get it now. And this is from Elliot. You guys seem to be unaware of why the flavor is different. Currently, we most commonly enjoy what is called the Cavendish banana. You ever heard of that? Yeah, I did. Don't be dumb on banana clones. Oh, you did? How about that? The long yellow bananas people like to have on their sundaes before the 1960 is the most commonly purchased banana. Was the big mike or the gross miko. I guess it came from Germany. Gross means Big. There are the bananas. These are the bananas that banana candy is based on. After Panama disease, which was a fungus, wiped out large amounts of Big Mics, most markets switched over to the Cavendish. The worry now is that the Cavendish may be affected in the same way soon. Monocultures aren't the best plan, apparently. So essentially the bananas that we eat now that we know and love the banana flavoring that they use is not based on those bananas. That's why it tastes weird. That's pretty interesting. Yeah, and a lot of people sent us in, so I tend to believe it because it's like four people say something. Yeah, exactly right. And here's an extra fact. Toyota says cherry flavors based on marshchino cherries, which are in turn flavored with almond extract. So cherry flavored candy is somewhat almond flavored. And thanks for the great show. I look forward to every episode. And that is from Elliot. Thanks, Elliot. Good stuff there. Cavendish Big Mic. I had no idea. Yeah, and bananas are all asexual. So every banana that you've ever had is an exact clone of its progenitor. Crazy. I'm going to watch that don't be dumb episode. Let's go through it right now. Yeah. Okay. If you want to check out Don't Be Dumb, you can go to our website. But first you should get in touch with us via syskpodcast on Twitter at our Facebook. Comsteno page. You can email us if you want and just send it to stuffpodcast athousepworks.com and you can check out all of our videos, all of our cool stuff, and just generally hang out and be our friends at our home on the web, the clubhouse known as Stuffyshogano.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.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 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." | ||
Does the five-second rule work? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/does-the-five-second-rule-work | You know when you drop a piece of food and if you pick it up within five seconds it's still good to eat? Researchers have studied whether that's true or not and in doing so have inadvertently shone a light on how utterly covered our world is with bacteria | You know when you drop a piece of food and if you pick it up within five seconds it's still good to eat? Researchers have studied whether that's true or not and in doing so have inadvertently shone a light on how utterly covered our world is with bacteria | Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:01:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=17, tm_min=1, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=17, tm_isdst=0) | 32267367 | 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 2012 Toyota Camry. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstepworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Charles W. Chuck Bryant consulting his notes. He's wearing his glasses. Everybody's getting ready to podcast. So that means this is Stephen Stretching doing my yoga. You just pee for the fourth time in the last hour. Got more coffee? I drink a lot of coffee. Yeah, that was exciting. Yeah. And while I was getting coffee, I was like, I use my elbow to press the buttons to make coffee. Are you doing that now? I'm trying to think back to what initiated it, but I've definitely become far more germ conscious. I'm not a germophobe because I can just be like, oh, God, that's fine. Your fingers touched your mouth. Stop simpering. Right. Like, I can get a hold of myself like that, but at the same time, you know what it is? It was flush eating bacteria when it was going around Georgia for a little while and then simultaneously being aware that the gym is lousy with germs. Yeah. And I think that did a one two number on me. And now all of a sudden, I'm very aware of what I touch. Yeah, I'm not super germ conscious. I have been more so, though, since we've started learning more about this crap. But we have a mutual friend whose girlfriend won't even keep her toothbrush in the bathroom. Oh, really? Yeah. She said among the fecal aircraft in the air. Why would I keep my toothbrush in the bathroom? Makes sense. Yeah. And she knows who she is. I don't know who she is. I'll tell you after. Okay, good. So you're okay with the idea of germs? I mean, there is this whole thing called the hygiene hypothesis, which makes utter incomplete sense to me. What that? If you allow more germs and you'll just learn to fight them and have more robust immune systems yes. Especially growing up as a child, and that children who develop allergies it's because they are raised in a sterile lysol environment. My environment was filthy dirty, and so when they finally get out into this very filthy, dirty world, eg. Preschool, they don't have any antibodies built up for it. It makes a lot of sense. I don't know that there's any hard science that backs it up, but I don't know that's ever been disproven, but it's called the hygiene hypothesis. It appeals to me. It appeals to me. I don't have allergies. I don't get sick that much. No. And I'm unhealthy as it gets. I wouldn't call you that. No. I'm in the middle. Yes, I appreciate that. Okay. I guess, really, the division line between a germophobe and a non germophobe would probably be found somewhere in the five second rule, wouldn't you think? Sure. So if I dropped something, depending on what it was and where I dropped it, I would possibly eat it. There's a comedian here in Atlanta. He's pretty good. His name is no garden Shorts. And he's saying yeah, it means Noah black garden, I think. Yeah. And he was saying that the five second rule basically exists on a sliding scale. Like, if it's a piece of broccoli, it's like a zero second. Agreed. If it's like a cheeto, it's like whenever I find it rule. Yes. Whenever I find it and pick it up and eat it rule. Right. He does it way better than me. But he had a great observation about the five second rule. The point is, for me, it depends on what it is, where it is not really even how long it's been there. I mean, if it's been there so long and it's under the couch and there's, like, dust bunnies accumulated on it, I won't eat it. No. You wouldn't eat anything that you didn't recently drop, would you? If you just found a cookie on the floor, you would eat it. Again, it depends on where the cookie on where it was found. Like, some places seem far cleaner to me than others. Mine and Yummy's department is very clean. Sure. So if it fell and was just slightly under the couch yeah, I'd eat it. It depends. I mean, if it were a piece of salami or something, I wouldn't but if it were, like, a very dry cookie sure. Perhaps a good potato chip that wasn't stale yet. It's very clean. I would blow it off and eat it. Yeah. Since we're talking about our sliding scales, I would eat nothing that I didn't recently drop, unless it was, like, a little bit sweets. The king. They're candy bar the king. Yeah. If I found one of those that I just forgotten that was under my couch, unwrapped on the floor, I would eat that no matter how long it had been there. Yeah. I would maybe rinse it off, or I would melt it down and reform it or do something deconstructed all the rage. Now, that's what I would do. That they released a box, a selection of caramels called stuff you should eat a little Bit sweet stuff. Really? Yeah. And it says specifically on their website that's in honor of us. Thank you, Liz and Jen. Okay. So I feel like we've gone in depth on what we do with the five second rule. The question still remains. Chuck is it viable? Is that a real thing? Like, if you are an adherent to the five second rule and you're like, I'm a very clean person. I only eat stuff that's been on the floor for 5 seconds or less. Are you full of it? Well, you're sort of full of it. You're totally full of it. There's a high school student in 2003, Gillian Clark, and she was doing her internship fighting lini of the University of Illinois, and she said, you know what? We should do a little study, because it's the old wives tale about the five second rule. Right. And she coated these tiles with E. Coli, which is really gross, and dropped cookies and gummy bears and things onto the surface for certain amounts of time and studied what kind of bacteria it picked up. Yeah. And of course, no matter how long it had been down there, bacteria did jump onto the food within 5 seconds. What is important to point out, though, is the longer you left it there, the more it picked up. So the 5 seconds are under is important. It's usually not 5 seconds for me. If I drop a piece of food, I've got it back within my hand in like 2 seconds. I've seen it. You're like a ninja. And it matters because the longer it's there, the more bacteria it's going to pick up. Right. Yeah. So Jillian Clark just did this very initial preliminary investigation, but she was a pioneer and received the 2004 IG Nobel Prize for Public Health for her effort. Really? Yeah. Good for her. She established this trail. She blazed the trail, and then about four years later, some Clemson University researchers really kind of dug in to figure out what was going on with this five second rule and built on Clark's work. The Tigers. Yeah. I mean, we got to say it. I don't feel like we do. Screw you, Tigers. All right, so what did they find out? They found out well, if you thought that the same thing, right. If you thought the E. Coli bacteria and the tiles was gross. I know where he's going. These guys created a broth of salmonella. Yes. They call it salmonella soup, which is so nasty. Yeah. And they applied it to three different types of material because, I mean, like, sure, maybe 5 seconds, you're going to get some bacteria on it. But doesn't it depend on the kind of food doesn't it depend on the kind of surface it comes in contact with? So these investigators, they're pros they were at Clemson, they applied the salmonella soup to tile, wood, surface, and carpet. Right. And then they started dropping bread and bologna on it. Good choice. Sure, why not? And they found what? Clark found that in less than 5 seconds, no matter how short the time, there was a bacterial transfer. Yeah. Between 158,000 bacteria. If under 5 seconds or under. And consider this with salmonella, you only need ten individual bacterium wow. For what's called an infectious dose. Okay. So that is 5 seconds or under. If you left it down there for a minute, it was going to be ten times that. And there are ten strains of salmonella. Besides just the bacteria, there's a lot of stuff going on down there on your floor. Most notably poop shoes. Yes. That's another thing too. There's poop everywhere, but you should take your shoes off. My wife is a Japanese ancestry, and one of the things I definitely picked up from her is like, you take your shoes off when you come in the house. So you just walk around without shoes on all the time or slippers or something? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Because especially if you're germ conscious, man, if you go into a public bathroom and you walk out of there, the bottom of your shoes are just like a nightmare. You don't want to track that all over your house because you may find a cookie on your couch that you want to eat. You have to plan for the future, basically, and that starts with taking your shoes off in your house. For some reason, I don't think the Japanese culture is rooted in the hopes that you'll find a cookie on your floor and be able to eat it. No, maybe not, but they are big into taking a shoe. My friend Jason in Tokyo, he is married to a woman named Kiko, and years ago, when we were living in Athens, they started that tradition of removing your shoes. And he was like, hey, do you mind? I was like, of course not. Watch this. Well, sometimes they'll even provide, like, slippers and stuff for guests, like if you're in a Japanese home. So you're still wearing shoes in there. But the point is that I've never left your house, so that's the deal. Yes. In the environment, you're all good. Yeah. And I won't wear my slippers in the bathroom either. I got to tell you, I just got some new slippers. What do you do barefoot in there in the bathroom? Socks or whatever. Yeah. Okay. But like, I don't want to burn the socks off. I bought some new slippers, dude. I'm not usually one to plug things on the air, but if you're a grown man and you want some the best slippers you've ever had and you don't mind throwing down a little cash uggs. Men's slippers, my friend. What do you think I wear? Is that you wear? Yes. I wonder if they're the same ones. Like little loafers, sort of suede. Mine don't have a back, they just have the sole. Okay. Mine has a back and they have like the hard bottom, so you can go out and get the mail or if you're me, go to the grocery store. Man, it's so comfortable. Yeah, that's nice. And all the what is it? Sherpa or whatever. It's not a sherpa. It's called sherpa lining. Oh, is it? Yes, the sheep shear. Sherpa lining. That's what some people call it. So cozy. Okay, slippers. I need to start plugging these things and getting them for free. I'm a sucker, I always buy them and then plug them. Right, I know, but it's not a sucker truck here above the board. Okay. So back to it. The longer the stuff stayed in contact, the more the more it was, the more bacteria that came upon it. But surprisingly, what they found was that the transfer was the least for carpet. The type of surface that came in contact with made a difference. I thought it was the most for carpet, it was the least, it was the least transferred. But the stuff survived in the carpet line, so it all washed out. Got you. So it made some difference, but not really. Whether it's wood, tile or carpet, when you drop something on it, there's going to be a lot of bacteria transfer. But this stuff survives on these services. Carpet, you're kind of like, okay, yeah, there's a lot to it, there's pile and there's some sort of burber factor and all that. Can't forget the burber factor. Right. So of course, carpet, it's not much of a surprise that there's a lot of bacteria in there, but wood or tile, not only do they find that, like, the stuff can survive for a while, it survives for up to a month. Wow. After they put the stuff on there, a month later, there was still living bacteria enough for an infectious dose on all three surfaces amongst dude. Okay, I'm becoming more of a germaphobe and we're alternating to David Putty right now. David Putty, was he a germaphobe? Yeah. Remember he and Peggy, who called Elaine Susie, they both turned out to be germaphobes. They had like a little bacteria necklace and all that. Yeah. Remember Kramer made a radish rose in his shower? He had a garbage disposal in his shower so he could bate at the same time. It was that episode. Okay. So I know earlier you mentioned you just kind of off handedly, said if it's something dry like a cookie or that actually makes a difference, you found out that moisture can be the key to more bacteria transfer. So a dry cookie versus a piece of like wet bologna or salami or moist baloney, we'll have more bacteria. And that's why they say when you go to the restroom and you wash your hands, the drying is just as important, if not more important than the washing. Yeah. They found that this transfer of bacteria seems to be facilitated by moisture. Right? Yeah. So when you touch something with your wet hands, you're going to get a bunch of bacteria transferred onto your hands. Right. If you wash your hands and then use one of those hands free paper towels, dispensers and dry your hands, you can touch that same surface that you would have touched with your wet hands, and you're going to have far less bacteria transferred to it. Yeah. Or nowadays the air dryers in the bathroom, have you noticed in the past few years are just like, for 50 years it was the same air dryer. Oh, now there's the accelerator. Now there's the accelerator and the Dyson blade dryer. I like the accelerator because the Dyson blade, you have to stick your hands down in there. I like that. And it's almost like playing Operation. It's almost impossible not to touch the side. Yeah, that's true. And then does anyone clean the bottom of those things? I don't think so. The accelerator is all just like blowing your hands and you're done, and you cannot touch things more. That's true. I like the accelerator because the way it makes your skin ripple like the GForces is pretty amazing. Like we were in the indoor skydiving thing. Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about hands real quick, Chuck. So there's a study that came out of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and they found some really surprising things using this technique called metagenomics, where they take a swab of, like, a sample of your hands, and then rather than doing culture, they do basically a DNA profile for everything found in that swab. What they find? Well, they did 51 participants. They found 4700 different bacteria species across the 51 participants. What I found was particularly interesting. They found that only 5% of these species were found in all 51 participants. No. Five period. Not even percent. Oh, yeah. Five, period. So out of all these species, the only one we're sharing. So that means there's just way more out there than we thought, I guess. And it's just luck of the draw as to what leads to your hands. I guess so. And not only your hands, but specific hands, too. They found that the right and left palms of a single person shared only 17% of the bacterial species. So that means that there's different species on different hands of the same person. That's weird. And then women tend to have a higher diversity of bacteria on their hands than men. Not necessarily more bacteria total, but more diversity among species. Interesting. So depending on which hand you shake, you're going to be getting a different type of bacteria from someone. Yeah. And if somebody shakes your hand, it's like, oh, it's just water. I wash my hand. Oh, yeah. Punch them in the head. Yeah. Because that's bacterial transfer. Jerk. Dry your hands. Yeah. And since you mentioned women, I think the study by the girl in 2003 found that women are more likely to eat something off the floor than men, which surprised me. What surprised me is where the person who wrote this article got that. I couldn't find it anywhere. I couldn't either. I saw that women were more familiar with the concept of the five second rule, but not that they used it more. Yeah. You know what? I'm going to call that a dubious statement, then. Dubious indeed. 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. Okay, so you've eaten something off of the floor. Are we good on hands? Yeah. Thanks for that. Okay. I like in the article, they pointed out that out of the 51 participants, there were 102 hands. Yeah. This is like all right, so good. You didn't have any amputees in the study. Right. What was funny is I didn't think it added up. And then I realized that's why I stopped for a second a minute ago. All right, so you picked up a cookie off of the floor. It's dry. It's been down there for 3 seconds. And you think, you know what? I'm going to roll the dice and eat it because my stomach acids and the acids and my saliva is going to kill all this stuff. Factor fiction. That is fiction. That is very much fiction. So it says, the germ guru of the university of Arizona go where? The wildcats. Sun devils. Arizona state. Arizona's wildcats. Wildcats. Go wildcats. Charles gerber. His name almost looks like germ. Yeah. Close. Or gerber. It's closer than Clark. Like he's the adult version of the gerber baby. So he says that viruses actually survived a low PH. In fact, a lot of them like it. And that pretty much any bacteria that you can infect your intestine with is going to stay alive long enough to get to your intestine. Right. It's going to survive that acidity in your stomach. Yeah. Look for our podcast on digestion. That was a good one, man. That was great. If you want to learn how that works. And it does make a difference on where it's landed. Like you said, some floors are more dangerous than others. And bathrooms are the worst place on earth. Yeah. And kitchens. Actually, kitchens are the worst. They're supposedly dirtier than bathrooms? It depends on the bathroom, but yeah, Gerba points out that of all the shoes that he's ever analyzed and this guy runs around on Good Morning America and the Today Show and analyzes stuff and just freaks people out. It's like kind of his trade. Sure. Yeah. He said that fecal matter appears on about 93% of the shoes he's ever analyzed. Of course it does. Yeah, like I said, there's poop everywhere. Everywhere. Especially in my house. So, yeah, you'd think a public restroom is pretty bad, and it is, but it depends on what part of the public restroom you're talking about. And sometimes compared to other places that it doesn't hold a candle, there's some surprising germ statistics that we're about to unleash on you. Let's just jump all over then. I got the kitchen floor, the area on the kitchen floor just in front of your sink where you're going to be doing your dishes, dropping food. And poop has more bacteria than your trash can. 830 per square inch, as opposed to 411. So double. And your kitchen sponge. I know, everyone knows that that's a really filthy thing to have. Yeah. Remember that one? Necessary, but filthy. Remember the, I think a clorox wipes or Lysol wipes commercial where the lady was using a sponge? If you're using a sponge, you might as well be doing this. And she was just rubbing like a raw chicken breast on her counter like it was a sponge. That's basically true, though. You should be really careful with your sponge. What you clean with it what you don't clean with it, letting it dry out, changing it regularly. If you've got a two month old kitchen sponge and you're using that to wipe your counter, you are spreading bacteria all over the place. You don't love your family, so you can use it at first. It's what I do because I'm a clean guy. My wife is not. I will clean up after her with the sponge and then I'll go back with my organic spray and then do the paper towel wipe after that. That's the final step in the process is always the dry paper towel with my seven seven stuff is what I use. And then a little bit of lighter fluid. Yep. Sterilize the counter. Alright. So your kitchen floor is dirtier than your trash can. Your sponge holds 60 times more bacteria than your pet food bowl, even though pet food bowls are pretty gross too, supposedly because you don't clean them out as much. Sure. And all of this is Jermier than a toilet seat. Yeah, you always hear that, the old toilet seat. Yeah. And I think the reason why the toilet seat is surprisingly cleaner in comparison, or surprisingly germ free compared to other things like your kitchen sink and all that, is because people clean the toilet seat more frequently because they think of it as a dirty place. And this is kind of borne out in another study that Gerba carried out on behalf of the Clorox Corporation, who make lice all whites. And he found that one of the dirtiest places in the universe is a person's desk. Yeah, apparently, the average desk has 100 times more bacteria than a kitchen table and 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet. And one of the reasons is because people don't ever wipe us out. So he did a study where he divided workers into two groups. One group used the Sanitizing wipes once or twice a day, and then the other group didn't. And after two days, there was a 99.9% reduction in bacteria on the desk of the people who are using the wipe. So wiping down your telephone handset, your desk, your mouse is a big one. Your mouse, your keyboard, apparently, where you typically rest your hand on your desk. Mine's on my mouse has about 10 million bacteria on average. But he also found that over the course of a day, if you don't wipe your stuff down, you actually increase your bacteria from 19% to 31% on telephone mouse keyboard desktop services throughout the day, it increases that much more. Man, I haven't cleaned my desk in so long. It's been a while for me, too. I don't use the phone, though. I don't either. Yeah, no one calls us. I don't even know my number to give out. And anytime if somebody asks for him, just email. Yeah, that's what I do. Molly Edmunds, the former co host of Stuff Mom Never Told You back in the day, she wrote about cubicle death and specifically germs in the workplace, like we were just talking about. And she points out that if you're a restaurant and you have more than 700 bacteria per square inch, you're going to be considered unsanitary, but you will come into contact with 10 million bacteria a day in your office. And statistics, like, 20% of people eat at their desk and don't clean. I eat at my desk occasionally. I don't clean. 75% of people only occasionally will wipe down their work area. And your desktop itself, not the computer desktop, but your desk can be 100 times Jermier than a kitchen table. Right. And again, 400 times Jermier than a toilet seat. And presenteeism, which is a big problem, 75% of workers I'm sorry, one third of workers. That's not 75%, it's close. Reported to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases that they felt like they were obligated to go to work even when they were sick. Yeah, that's the problem. It's not okay. And I know around here, especially Tracey Pop stuff, she takes it pretty serious. She's like she gets pissed off when people are in here sick. She'll yell. Yeah. She'll say, if you're sick, please stay home, because the office is dirty, your bathroom is dirty, your kitchen is dirty. That cutting board that you're cutting your vegetables on, filthy. Yes. It's all dirty. It's all gross. Well, I can't remember. I was trying to think of what episode biofilm came up. You're telling everybody about biofilm. Yeah. What was that? I can't for the life of me remember. But that's how bacteria survive. That's how they can survive on stainless steel. That's how they can survive on wood, on tile, on nonporous surfaces, on synthetic surfaces that are designed to keep bacteria from thriving. These things can survive because they live in biofilm. It's a protective film on any surface, and if the surface has grooves or things like that, where a biofilm can hide, there's going to be a lot more bacteria. And a cutting board, apparently, is one of those great examples. Yeah. Especially a wood cutting board, I think. Yeah, which I prefer. Me too. Got to clean them well, though. Yeah. Because I'd rather have some bacteria in my food than, like, shards of plastic. Yeah, it's a good point. So before you freak out and jump in a pool of Purel, most of these germs are benign. Like, we've quoted all these tens of thousands and millions of germs and things, most of them are benign. And your body is going to take care of most of it, too. But it only takes, like when you find yourself wretching over the toilet with a stomach virus, it might have just been one little bacteria that got through. All it takes is ten for salmonella to get you and 100 for E. Coli. Wow, ten little guys. The bottom of a woman's purse randomly Gerba again. Just ran up to some people, like, let me test your purse. And he found from the hundreds to 6.7 million on the bottom of one woman's purse was ten or 100. He didn't say that. That also had, like, pieces of pot pie. There are probably reasons. Yeah. But I think that was that one lady. That's a good thing to go out on, tuck you to get by, reassuring everybody that as long as your immune system is in order, you're probably okay. As far as these bacteria go, don't keep your toothbrush in your bathroom. So says our friend's girlfriend. 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. Let's see. Before we say anything like listen or mail or go find this article, I want to do a quick shout out. Okay, do it. Our Kiva team, Chuck, recently hit a very significant milestone. $1.5 million in loans. Wow. That's enormous. What's? Kiva? No, say it. Oh, yeah. Kiva. I know what it is. Kiva.org is a micro lending site where you can make loans and little $25 increments to people in the developing world to use for entrepreneurship, to have their taxi license, to buy auction to retail clothes, what have you, farming, whatever. And our Kiva team has doled out 1.5 million in these $25 loans. This is such an amazing accomplishment. Yeah. When we started this, we had no idea that it was going to have life like this. And, I mean, we're going to keep it going in perpetuity. We are. One of the reasons I wanted to shout out is because we are resetting our goals. We're setting our goal to $2 million by the summer solstice, June 21. It's an international date, right? Yeah. And Glenn, the team leader at Kiva, came up with this. I think it's a sound idea. Yeah. Thank you to Glenn and Sonia, as always. So we're going to 2 million by June 21. And if you want to join us in this, we are not the least bit exclusive. We're a very inclusive and welcoming group of people. You can go to www.kivakiva.org teamstuffychinoe. Okay. And if you want to know anything more about the five second rule, type five second rule in the search bar athousedoforce.com I said search bar. So it's time for listener mail. It is, Josh. We are just a few days away from our TV show premiere, though, when we would be remiss I know you're probably tired of hearing about it by now. I'm not. That's fine. We would be remiss if we didn't remind everyone that on Saturday night at 10:00 p.m.. Eastern on Science Channel, you're going to get two episodes of Stuff You Should Know back to back. The premiere, episode two, following the season premiere of Ricky Gervais's Idiot Abroad. Yeah. With Charles Pilkington. That comes on first. And then we come on at ten with two brand new the first two episodes of Stuff You Should Know, the TV show. That's right. And if you do not have cable, fear not, because, as we have announced, you can purchase these episodes on itunes after they are released next day. And because we love everyone so much in the world, you can get the premiere episode for free on itunes. So just seek it out, download it, watch it and make some noise over at Science Channel. Yes. And on Twitter, too. We think you're going to like it. It's us and we play ourselves, but it's set in like a kind of a fictionalized version of our office. And there's podcasting and action and adventure and all sorts of goodness, so it should be hopefully everybody likes it. Yeah. As we had said before, it's the realis in a fictional world spelling factual information. All right, I hope you stuck around for this listener mail because it's pretty good. This is from Ben. Guys. My name is Ben. I'm a 30 year old husband and father. Never considered myself a very smart man. I did mediocre in high school, not because of lack of trying, but because of being viewed as a lazy student. And I was just socially awkward, to be honest. My wife has talked me into catching up with your podcast, and since then I've gotten a smartphone and done so. And all I can say is thank you guys from the bottom of my heart. It's helped me become a better husband and father. Let me explain. After high school, I became a father to a beautiful boy with an ex girlfriend who was not the best person. Due to some heart complications, my son Logan passed away four days after his first birthday. This resulted in me not following through with college, shutting down emotionally, basically becoming angry at the world and God for my son's passing. Put it bluntly, I became someone who I said I never would become. It was full of hate. The years that followed in my life was just gray as I went through the motions of life. Things turned around when I met my wife Jordan, got married and had our son Raiden. And, yes, I did name him Raiden after Mortal Kombat. And then I was turned on your podcast after listening to over 200 of them. You two have opened a hard spot in my heart after listening to you guys and hearing how good natured you are. I myself have been trying to give everything in life a fair chance and have become more of a good hearted person who no longer battles something bad within myself. Wow. I know, right? I'm happier in life than ever before. And I have my wife and son and now Chuck and Josh to thank for helping. I'm trying to further my education. I can't stop reading and learning, and I saved your show. So when my one year old son is old enough, he can experience something that changed his daddy's life for the better, just like he and his mommy did. So I can't thank you guys enough for what you've done without even knowing it. Sometimes all it takes is good hearts and a good podcast to make even a small difference. If you guys are Evan Ohio, I'd like to place with a drink that is from Ben Chilton. Damn, Ben. Thank you for that. We're not even trying. I know dude, I read the stuff and I'm just like, are you kidding me? That's pretty cool. What are you supposed to say to that? Thank you. Yeah. So thanks, Ben. If you want to get in touch with Chuck and me about five second rule, how about this? We want to know the nastiest thing you've ever eaten, whether it was something that was prepared, something that touched the ground. Tell us your nasty eating story. Yeah. And if you're one of those kids I had friends in elementary school that would have gross eating contests, that would throw mashed potatoes on the floor and then eat them. I explored that once. I was like, you know what? Maybe I am that kid. Let's find out. And I ate a sticker that was on the ground with some hair attached to it, and I was like, no, I need to keep seeking my persona, not me. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Well, we want to know about them, right? Yeah. I can't believe you tell that me that long story. Tweettuis at syskpodcast. Join us on facebook. Comstuffychnow and as always, you can send us an email, too. Stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetoftworks.com. Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. 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. 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Capgras Syndrome: You Are Not Who You Think You Are | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/capgras-syndrome-you-are-not-who-you-think-you-are | There is an extremely rare condition where the sufferer is convinced that everyone around him is an impostor posing as their friends and family. Learn about the neurology behind this strange and sad mental disorder in this episode. | There is an extremely rare condition where the sufferer is convinced that everyone around him is an impostor posing as their friends and family. Learn about the neurology behind this strange and sad mental disorder in this episode. | Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:11:34 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=15, tm_min=11, tm_sec=34, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=162, tm_isdst=0) | 23448867 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I'm pretty sure the person with me, as always, is Charles W. Tuck Bryant. Capgras eva. Yeah. I think it's cop gras because it's a Frenchman who was the first person to describe Jared. Just call it crap grass. I know. So we're all kinds of screwed up. Yeah. And I'm not going to say capgra the whole time. So we'll just say cop grass. That's obnoxious. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like we're not in Quebec. That's right. We're in Quebec. Right. This is basically our invasion of the Body Snatchers. Yeah. Episode. Yes. Unless we do one on the Invasion of the Body fantasy. That's kind of the deal, though. We're talking today about a very strange and once thought to be very uncommon and rare disorder, a delusional disorder, a delusional misidentification disorder, to be specific, where the sufferer believes that the people in his or her life, people very close to him, have all been replaced by impostors. That I'm looking at you right now, Chuck. You look just like Chuck, and you're doing a great job with the voice and everything, but I don't want to say it and I don't want to look you in the eye, but you're obviously not Chuck, and what's going on? I think we all feel that about each other occasionally, but imagine that all the time. Yes. How would you just not lose faith in the reality of anything if you thought, first of all, how are they coming up with great impostors like this? Sure. Who is they? Why are they doing this? Why you? Is it just you or is the whole world impostor? Yeah, it's like there's a lot of really weighty questions involved with this, and as a result, science has been trying to really figure out the mystery behind it and has failed thus far. Yeah. And we already should say it's not only difficult on the person, but it's difficult on the person being misidentified as well. Sure. And you don't really hear a lot about that. I read a bunch of articles on this and only one said, and don't forget, if your wife thinks that you're an imposter, it's really tough on you as well. Sure. Yeah. That is kind of overlooked. Yeah, very much so. Yeah. So this is actually kind of a newish phenomenon as far as description goes. Three doctor, Copgra and Dr. Rabul Lashole described Madame M, who believed that she had as many as 80 husbands, all of them looking the same, but they were all imposters, and she never could get close to them because eventually they would just kind of leave and be replaced by a new one. And she was utterly convinced of this. And I'm sure at the time they thought, this lady is just nuts. But then the more people did research, the more they found, and I couldn't find any good stats on how rare it is. I got it. I read thousands, and that means nothing. So the one I saw, it was in 2006, I believe the estimate was between 1.3% to 4.1% of all psychiatric patients have Capgra. And you can probably say that if that's close, then that's probably close to the general population. Because if you believe that the people who are closest to you in your life are imposters and you're accusing them of such, they're probably going to force you to go seek psychiatric help. So that would probably be a pretty close statistic for the society at large. And where you really see it, though, is in Alzheimer's patients, the statistic was between 2% and 30% of Alzheimer's patients possibly suffer from Cop or Crabgrass. Yeah, but isn't that just Alzheimer's? No, not necessarily Alzheimer's. That can be forgetfulness. Yeah, I guess this orientation, this is like you're accusing your husband, your wife, your son, your daughter of being somebody else, somebody posing as them. Right. Okay, that makes sense. So this is different than something we've covered Faceliness before. Right. We talked about it, came up in something else, but yeah, maybe we did do a whole podcast on it. I'm not sure. But that is prosopagnosia, and this is not prosopagnosia. That's when you can see your face over and over and over and still you just don't know who it is. Right. In this case, you know, like, hey, that's Josh. I'm looking at him. I know that face. But they've done studies with skin conductance. They're basically measuring the amount of perspiration on your face. Right. Which is a measure of the limbic system being active, which is, in turn, a measure of your emotions going off. Yeah. With the idea being that if you're sweating a little bit on the face, then that is a physiological or psychological cue that like, hey, look at this picture of your mother. I will recognize that as my mother, and maybe my face will sweat a little bit. Right. If you are what's called a normal participant, if you have propagnosia, you will not recognize that picture intellectually, consciously, but your skin conductivity will go off. So that means that the emotional cue is still triggered even though you don't know who you're looking at. Right. That's the opposite of studies of Capgras syndrome. Yeah. They'll see a picture and they will not have it's. Basically like they're looking at a picture of a complete stranger. Right. They don't have the face. Right, exactly. But they don't have an emotional response. Here's the thing. They recognize the face enough to know, this is my dad. They are rational enough. That's the other thing, too, other than this, they're rational. Yeah. It's what's called a monothematic syndrome, where you have one delusion and it's a whopper, and it basically consumes your whole life. So they're rational otherwise. And they're rational enough to say, okay, this is my dad I'm looking at, but I don't feel any kind of emotional stimulation from seeing my dad. And I should. Yeah. And because I don't, this is an imposter. That's what they think is going on. Yeah. One of the common things that the people with the syndrome will say is that their soul is gone or their soul is missing. That's a different syndrome. No, that's linked to Cap Grove because they'll recognize oh, the other person. Yeah. Okay. The person they're looking at is that's not my mother. I would sense my mother's soul. Right. So what they think then is that this kind of proves that we make memories two ways that are connected, that we take in stimuli. Right. Like visual stimuli. I'm looking at you, and at the same time, I'm looking at Chuck. And I like Chuck. So I'm also kind of taking note that same memory that I'm forming of the visual representation of you also has an attendant emotion. Happiness. I like you. Yeah. So when I see you again, I should feel that same thing. Happiness. I'm glad to see Chuck. That is a full memory with Cop grah people who suffer that they're missing the emotional aspect and they have the recognition and the Vs. Rama sean Drawn, I think I said his name right. He came up in the Mirror neurons episode. Just a brilliant genius dude. You see San Diego? Aztecs, maybe. I think so he said probably what's happening then is you have a secondary lesion or secondary damage, where your right brain is very analytical and it checks your left brain, which wants to explain everything away. And if that right brain analysis is damaged, then the left brain can go to whatever links it wants to to explain away strange phenomenon. In this case, if you have that disconnect between the sensory input and emotional aspect of a memory in conjunction with the loss of the right brain checking your delusions, then the left brain is able to go off and say, oh, well, it must be an imposter. Yeah. Well, the emotional side wins out essentially as an explanation to sort of reconcile those two things. Yeah. Because it's missing. It's not deluded. The person is not delusional. There's an imposter. Yeah. You know what's really weird is another one of the characteristics sometimes is it can extend to animals and objects as well. Yeah. So it's not always just people. That's my dog. But I know that chair is not the original chair. Someone came in here and replaced it with an exact replica. And they're not hallucinating. They're aware of all the stuff. Yeah. And I mean, imagine the paranoia that that would generate in you. Who moved the chair? Who replaced the chair? What's the deal? And they found that it is comorbid with things like Alzheimer's and schizophrenia as well, and other psychotic disorders. Yeah. And it's usually your spouse too. One article where it said it's always your spouse is how it starts. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but I don't know if that's quite right. That seems a little willy nilly to say every single time it starts with your spouse. So let's talk about some of the explanations that science has come up with since it was first described in 1923. I was right in Freud's wheelhouse. Oh, yes. So the psychoanalysts had the first crack at it. They swung and missed. They basically said that it was repressed edifice or electric complex. Right. Yeah. And that was kind of poopoo. Pretty quickly, they were saying that you're just trying to resolve guilt about your circumstances, identifying your parent as it looked alike. And then pretty quickly, scientists it probably doesn't have to do with repressed feelings in this case. Right. Done. Done. Everybody took his ball and went home. Yeah. He's really been kicked to the curb. Yes. Even by psychology, they turn their backs on him. Psychodynamic approach. Sorry, Freudians. That was the psychodynamic approach. And that's, like we said, it's kind of been poopooed. Well, the psychodynamic approach was the one where it's repressed feelings. The approach was that you wanted to have sex with your mom. So you resolve the guilt from that by saying, you're not my mom. You're not my mom. You're an imposter, so I don't want to have sex with you, and that's okay. I mean, the Glenn Miller version of the Mood, and I feel really guilty. Again, we should say that one was thrown out. A lot of researchers think that it's a result of an actual organic cause, something physically wrong with the brain, which makes sense to me. They look for lesions, cerebral dysfunction, signs of atrophy. And like you mentioned, it is also morbid. A lot of time with psychotic disorders, epilepsy, even Alzheimer's. And you mentioned schizophrenia, which makes sense. I think bipolar is on there as well. Yeah. So other doctors say, you know what? It might be a combination of these things, like physical and cognitive causes. Yeah. Like, you have some sort of organic damage, but then mentally, you're rationalizing it inappropriately. Like you can't accept that you're delusional because of any sort of brain damage. You're projecting. Everyone else is an imposter. Right. That would be a combination of mental and physical. And again, it's your brain trying to explain something that doesn't quite add up in your head. Yeah. So what's clear is there's a breakdown in communication. There is somewhere in the brain. Rama, sean Drawn and his partner. I don't want to just call out the star, but Herstein and Ramachandran did a paper in 97 that was pretty interesting. They consider it a problem of memory management, wherein, like you or I, if our brain is to be if it's a computer like it is a computer. Right, sure. When we see somebody or meet somebody, we create a file on that person, and then when we encounter that person again, we access the same file and then add to it. But it's the same file. Right. What Rama, Sean, John and her team were proposing was that people who have copcraw make a new file every time for the same person. But there has to be some sort of link between these files. I don't think that's necessarily an app description. I think they're more onto it with it's the same file. It's just missing something that the patient senses is missing. It's a void there. And they're saying, well, I'm missing something. It's because you're an imposter and I don't really know you. Yeah. Like some sort of emotional identification marker. Right. This is really interesting to me. They have studies that show that blind people, it can actually extend to their voice of the person, but other times they've shown that they recognize them on the phone, but not in person. Yeah. That was a dude named DS. That Rama Chandra. It can be both. The only modality is what they call it for his delusion was visual. Right. So, like, when he saw his parents, his dad was not his dad. And actually, his dad was pretty cool. His dad, one day, DS, was a 30 year old Brazilian guy who got into a car accident and started suffering Capgras Syndrome. And his parents started to get really worried, didn't know what to do. So his dad one day came in and declared that the man who had been replacing him as an imposter, he had sent him away to China and he would never return. That's pretty smart. I'm your father and I'm back. And it worked for a couple of weeks, and then it just went back. The guy became convinced that, no, the impostor is back. He had Capcross Syndrome so bad that he came to believe that he himself is an imposter. Wow. And he asked his mother, when the real DS returns, will you still love me and treat me as your friend? Can I still stay around? And she said, I don't know who you are. So this guy thought everything, including himself, was an imposter. He thought there were two Panama that he'd been to recently, thought there were two United States. Wow. There were doubles for everything. And when he talked to his parents on the phone, though, he didn't suffer that delusion. It was strictly when he say things like, dad, there's this other guy here pretending to be you. Yeah. I don't know. He didn't hide it, from what I understand. Interesting. Which is something that's probably healthy if you have Capgrass Syndrome, because there have been instances of violence with Capgras Syndrome. Yeah. This one guy thought a robot had replaced his father, so he decapitated his father to look for the robot inside. A woman in a mental institution killed another patient because she thought that she was going to kill her double, her daughter's double. So she was actually protecting the imposter from somebody who she didn't necessarily think was an imposter. That is very interesting. So as far as treating this, since it's pretty rare, there's not a lot of prescribed regular treatments. Sometimes it goes away, doesn't really yeah. Sometimes if it's like a physical brain trauma, you can reestablish that connection and things start firing correctly again and it just kind of disappears. I wonder, when you come out of it, Chuck, do you feel like, wow, that was really crazy, what I used to think? Or do you feel like all the imposters have left in all of my families back now? Oh, I don't know. That's weird. Yeah. Another thing that they say if it's linked to a mental disorder, sometimes it can be helped by medication that would also help that mental disorder. But really, for most people, there is no treatment and there is no cure. I think it's just probably a long series of sessions on the couch, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, but I mean, how do you forge trust in somebody which is required to say, okay, it's me, everyone's not impostor. I have a false belief. When ultimately, the closer you get to say, like, your therapist, the more likely you are to come to believe that they're going to be replaced by an imposter. Yeah. This is a sad condition. Yeah. Let's talk about some other sad conditions, too, that are similar. I mean, it's a delusional misidentification syndrome. It also falls under the umbrella of a Duplicative para amnesia. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's a mouthful. So another similar one is the Fregoli system. It was named after Leopoldo Fregoli. He was a quick change artist. And that leads you to believe that people around you are people in disguise. So not replacements, but, hey, I know that you should be my dentist, but you're really my sister in disguise as my dentist. Yeah, it's like over recognition. Like, everyone in your life that you see and interact with on a daily basis, like your dentist or somebody on the subway or whatever, is actually somebody very close to you dress up in disguise. Coachard syndrome. Yeah. That is a belief that you are missing body parts or you are emotionally dead. And sometimes they think, like, my heart doesn't beat, or I don't have bones, or I don't exist any longer. Yeah. These are people that really feel this way. It's pretty much like the psychological manifestation of an existential crisis. Yeah. Like, you think your brain is rotting inside of you and like, you're dead, you don't feel anything. What about inter metamorphosis? This one's odd. It's kind of like Top Grass syndrome, but it's more complete and it's not impostors. It's people close to you switching. Right. Just your brother's now your father, psychologically and physically, the whole ball of acts, like, apparently you see them. Like when you're interacting with your father, you see and think you're interacting with your brother if they've switched. Wow. Yes. Wow indeed. The thing about this, though, and you kind of get this from the Rama Chandra paper, which I strongly recommend reading. It's only like nine pages. It's pretty interesting stuff. Every once in a while he pulls back and he's like, can you effort believe the brain? Yeah. It is incredible what it can do. And when it malfunctions, man can ever malfunction. But he's pointing out that through these really rare cases, you can start to get a glimpse into how we form memories and how we retrieve memories and to better understand human consciousness through these very unique, unusual patience. Yeah. I'd like to think at the end of our run in 50 years, we're going to have a nice body of work on the brain for people to pick and choose from alien hand to capcra to how memories are formed and how you taste and myths on the brain. Yeah, it's just pretty amazing stuff. How do you taste it? I taste delicious. I think it's probably our favorite topic. Did you say 50 years? Yeah, man. Hey, how's going for you? Have you seen the Imposter? Yeah, I think I talked about it before too. That's good documentary. Good documentary. Go check that one out. Yeah. And you got anything else on Capgra? No, sir. Okay. Capgra, crabgrass, capgrass, cudi, gras, butter, all those things. Type them into the search bar. How stuff works.com, and it may or may not bring up this article, at least a couple of them will. And since I said search bar, let's take a message break. And now listen to me. Yes, buddy. I'm going to call this one email from a former Mormon. Former Mormon. Hey guys, I'm Jerry. I listen to the podcast of marriage. I want to give you some information on Mormon marriage. Though the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints no longer practices nor supports the secular act of mirroring multiple spouses, men can still be sealed to multiple women. I'll try and explain sealing to you, but even though I was raised a member of the Church, the details are a little bit fuzzy because he's been out for a little while. Though ceiling is related to marriage and takes place at the same time, it is a separate ordinance where marriage ensures that a couple receives all the legal benefits promised by the government. Ceiling insures all of the religious benefits promised by the Lord. That was a good preacher. Thank you. The two main benefits that I can remember are one, the sealed persons will be together for all time and eternity, and two, the sealed persons will enter into the highest level of heaven of the three levels. Okay. I found out a man can be sealed to multiple women. When my parents went through their divorce, even though they went through the legal process of divorce, they never had their ceiling nullified. When my dad remarried, he was sealed to my stepmother and to my biological mother at the same time. Later on, when my mom remarried, she had to nullify her sealing to my father because women are not allowed to be sealed to multiple men, only men to multiple women. Furthermore, my new stepfather was sealed to his late wife when he married my mother, and he still is to this day. My intentions aren't to bash the church in any way, but the fact that men can be sealed to multiple women is a little known fact to most people inside and outside the church. Though the Church's practice of polygamy doesn't bother me anymore. Educated, consenting adults should be allowed to be with the ones they love, in my opinion. That's his opinion. I am bothered by the fact that they don't inform people of their policy on being sealed to multiple spouses. That's all I've got. Guys in Mormons of marriage no longer a member of the church, but I still find the religion and culture very fascinating. A podcast on how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints works would be amazing. And that is from Ethan Clarke. Clark Ethan ethan Clark is a long lost brother, and we've been asked by many Mormons and members of that church to do one on their religion. We have a whole queue of ones that we have to do. Nice. Kind of piling up. It's like before we hit the 50 year mark. It's just like one after the other. The never ending cycle. We'll add it to the cycle. The Never Ending Cycle starring a tray you if you want to suggest a podcast and accompany it with a story or some outsider former insider analysis, we want to hear it. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. Join us on facebookcom STUFFYou know? You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and wait. Don't press stop yet. Go to our website. It's www.stuffysheeknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. This podcast is brought to you by BASF the Chemical Company. 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's. 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/2018-02-20-sysk-feral-children-final.mp3 | Are Feral Children Real? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/are-feral-children-real | For millennia people have been amazed by legends of wild children found in the forest or jungle, sometimes raised by animals like wolves or apes. But it turns out these stories may actually be true in some cases and may actually have been children with co | For millennia people have been amazed by legends of wild children found in the forest or jungle, sometimes raised by animals like wolves or apes. But it turns out these stories may actually be true in some cases and may actually have been children with co | Tue, 20 Feb 2018 14:53:04 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=14, tm_min=53, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=51, tm_isdst=0) | 40271947 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. We are going on tour in 2018. And where are we going? On April 4, we're gonna be in Boston at the Wilbur. You can get tickets@thewilbur.com. Chuck and then on April 5, we're gonna be in DC at the Lincoln Theater. And you can get tickets for that at Ticket fly. That's right. And then we're going to two new cities, right? Yes. On May 22, we're going to be in St. Louis. You can get tickets on Ticketmaster. And on May 23, we are going to be in Cleveland, and you can get tickets there at Playhouse Square.org. And then there's one more. Chuck. That's right. We're going to wrap it up in Denver, specifically Inglewood, Colorado, at the Gothic Theater on June 28 and possibly adding a show on the 27th. Stay tuned for that. Yes. And you can get tickets@axs.com. So come see us live. We'll have a good time. Come on out. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. I must forgot my name for a second. And there's Jerry. It is a little weird. Jerry jerome the Germster. Roland Kaboom. How are you doing? Fine. Terry, stop snorting. I have complete whip flash over this topic. You have what? And you know why I have just doing this topic. After what the story is behind it, I still kind of like, shudder. Should we even talk about it or just no, here's the story. And I think it was two years ago now, right? Italy. Yeah. Two years ago. In March it will be two years at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas. We were going to do a live podcast, which we've done there before. It's always been great. Yes. For this one, we had a bar that we were doing it in that was set up with a lot of events all day long. And we thought, okay, no big deal. We like bars. We're closer to the booze, no problems. But what they failed to do and failed to tell us was they did not clear the room after the hippie jam band beforehand. And so what ended up happening was we ended up doing a live podcast in front of a noisy, crowded bar full of trunks with about 17 Stuff You Should Know fans up front, trying to listen, turning around and shushing the people at the bar. And it was about as fruitless as a shush could get. And this is the part I feel the worst about. A couple of hundred real deal stuff you should know. Listeners standing out on the sidewalk in the hot sun, unable to get in. Yeah. It was all around. Maybe our third worst show. I know VidCon is up there in the top three, right? Yeah. I'm just putting a phantom show in to hold the number two slot because I'm sure there's one I blocked out, too. Just so you guys know. VidCon was bad because we did a show in front of about 17 people maybe, and we worked with eleven of them. Although we did get to meet Tejan Day that day. Oh, true. So anyway, we did Feral Children in front of a crowded, noisy bar full of drunks. And you and I, we've been doing this for so long and we have such great unspoken eye contact chemistry. I remember looking over at you and our eyes both said, skip through as much of this as possible and let's get the heck out of here as soon as we can. I clocked it. We did it in like 22 minutes. I believe it was supposed to be at least 45. We were talking like the guy from the old FedEx ads from the early eighty s. Oh man. It was truly, truly a miserable experience. So it's taken a full two years until I could wrap my head around actually doing this again. Yeah. So here we are. We're going to do it, Chuck, and it's going to be great because it's just the three of us today. Yeah. And that's also where we had that too drunk guy. Oh yeah, remember him? That was a bad jam all around and that's where I lost my hat. That was the worst trip ever. It really just sucked all the way around. We considered burning Austin to the ground on the way out of town, but we did. So we're glad we did because we've been back to Austin a couple of times and we're always happy to be there. Now. This is not Austin's fault. No, but we just didn't want to have any memories of it anymore. I hear you. So we're talking Feral children. And even if you were at that show, this is probably really the first time you'll hear it, so it doesn't matter. And we're going to start in Moscow in the late ninety s. There was a big problem that had developed from the dissolution of the USSR, namely that the fabric of society had largely disintegrated in a lot of ways. And one of the results of this is that there are a lot of families that were broken up for one reason or another, and a lot of very young children from what I see, something like 2 million of them living on the streets of Russia in Moscow, of course, being the biggest city in Russia, had the largest problem. And one of those kids was a little boy named Ivan Mushikov. Nailed it. Sure. And Ivan was six in 1998, they estimate. And he was a little different from the rest of the children living on the street at the time because he was what you would is widely considered an actual example of a feral child because not only was he living by his own wits from the age of four to six on the streets, he was leading a pack of stray dogs that protected him as well. And he had been fully absorbed into their pack, into their society. Yeah. So as the story goes, like you said, he left home at four and was basically just another one of the begging children on the streets until he started to feed a little bit of the food. He would get to these dogs, and the dogs, they trusted him, they befriended him. And you hang out with dogs long enough and give enough food, all of a sudden they say, hey, we're pals. And they literally took him in as one of their own and would guide him to the warm places to sleep at night, underground, near heated pipes and things like that. And they lived together for a couple of years, to the point where the cops could not get close to this kid because of these dogs. Right. So they finally, apparently baited some traps and got the dogs just systematically away from Ivan. And they finally had him cornered and he snapped and growled and barked at the social workers who were advancing on them to get him and to take them off of the streets and into a group home. And they were finally successful. But they said this kid was acting like a dog with its back against the wall and they got their hands on them, they put him into a group home and he was actually a success story. He managed to become inculturated into human society as a result of just being taken over by the state. But he stands as one of the very few documented examples of a feral child. Yeah. There have been stories all throughout history, people have been fascinated with this notion, whether it was Mowgli in The Jungle Book or stories of baboon girls and Ostrich boys and bird girls, and they give them these names because that's who they eventually take up with. Right. They're very compelling stories. In fact, I think at one point there's a taxonomist named Carl Linnaeus who created the Tree of Life. He actually established a whole separate category, homopherous, which was literally a different variety of human beings because they didn't even think at one point that they counted as humans. Yeah. There was a time when this is all very much discussed and talked about what exactly feral children were, who they represented. Yeah. One of the competing theories is that they were, like, basically like Sasquatch. Like, if we found Sasquatch, you'd be like, oh, we need to expand the Tree of Life to include these cousins to Homo sapiens. That's right. So Romulus and Remus were another very famous story, too. Romulus, the founder of Rome, he and his brother, Romulus and Remus were cast out by their uncle, their wicked uncle, and they were raised by wolves, I believe, according to legend. So, yeah, there's this longstanding legend of children, of wild children, feral children, being raised, but for the most part, it has existed in legend. It's not like there's all these great well documented cases. There's just enough documented cases, there's just enough tantalizing evidence that science has remained interested in this idea of what our feral children that kept it going. And still to this day, we don't really have enough evidence to say definitively fearful children are this or more to the point, feral children tell us this about ourselves, about human development. But there are documented cases ivan Mushikov is not the only one. Yeah, and this can happen in a lot of ways. What would cause a child to become separated from their family and end up with a pack of monkeys or wolves or ostrich? It sort of depends. It was one girl named Miati who survived a boat capsizing it killed her friend ends and left her stranded in the Sumatran forest. Eventually she was found in the early 80s living with orangutangs. Orangutang? I think she was living alone. She was mistaken for an orangutan. Oh, I thought she was taken up with them. No, that was all that actually makes her kind of different as far as fear of children are concerned. She was living by herself. Oh, interesting. Other ones have been taken in by everything from pigs. This girl in China, Wang Xing Fing was discovered living with pigs. She had been nursing on a pig, later fed as a pig and that's one of the more depressing cases of straight up abuse from parents. Yeah, her parents were unable to raise her, they're both cognitively impaired and they basically left her with the pigs out back and the pigs ended up raising her for years. There was another girl this is even more depressing, frankly there was a girl named Jeannie that was a pseudonym, obviously. I don't know what her real name was, but she's very well known as Genie, who was raised back in the 1930s, or believe locked in a closet from age two to age twelve. She was kept away from human society. So rather than being kept away from human society by being stranded in the wilderness or being raised by animals, she was left by herself. And as a result, she developed a feral nature as well. So there's basically like three categories that develop when you're looking at stories of feral children. And Genie would be one that's called isolated or no, she would be confined immiate would be isolated, where she was just stranded in the woods and lived by herself. And then the third category would be among animals, like Ivan Mishikov yeah. And we're going to talk mainly about the ones who live among animals because the other two are just some of the worst cases of abuse and neglect you could imagine. And it's not like the ones who live among animals are fun, but at least they have their pack of dogs and they're not like, chained in the closet. Right. That's the weird silver lining. What would you want to be taking in what kind of animal dogs would be pretty good. Yeah, lots of OPSO. Yeah. I could probably become the leader of that pack. I think monkeys would be pretty great. They would be. But they're also man, those things will bite you. Well, they'll bite their own. Do they? It depends. If you say something wrong, I would get along. They would just pick my nits and they would love me as their own in my Jungle Book story. Wait a minute. Do you have nits now? Occasionally. Oh, man. Should we take a break? Yeah, I think we should. All right, let's take a break and we're going to talk more about feral children right after this. So, Chuck, one of the big reasons that feral children has really kind of kept the interest of science over the years, especially starting in about the 18th century on, is that they provide the idea that they provide a window into human nature. Right. They're like a natural laboratory. Nobody's going to say, hey, get that kid away from its parents. It's one and a half years old now. Throw it out into the forest and then we'll come back and get it in twelve years and see what happens with it. Yeah, you just can't do that. Even back in the 18th century, they wouldn't have done something like that. It was just too unethical. Right? Yeah. So the idea that there are children that this actually happened to through no scientists fault, they can be studied and they could answer conceivably some questions. And some of the questions are things like language acquisition. Like do we go through what's called a critical period where we either learn language or we don't? And if we don't, then we miss that window. We'll never be able to learn language, even a native language, let alone a second language like you and me are having trouble with these days. And then another is basically any way that they differ from a normal kid, like their behaviors, the way they carry themselves, all this stuff. You could say this clearly stands for nature or nurture. Bam. That's right. And when these kids are out, at least the ones with the animals, they become as much like these animals, sometimes even physically as they can. A lot of times, like I've been, the dog boy would bark. There's another dog girl that we'll talk about later, she would bark. Some would chirp like birds. Sometimes they would run on all fours like a dog, or clean themselves like a cat. And they would eat raw meat. They would sleep on the floor. Because of the way going on for us, their bodies would actually change in a lot of cases. Like their knees would become just super tough from running around on their knees, or their teeth would become sharp from eating bones like an animal. So sometimes they were super fast, sometimes they might. And a lot of this stuff is anecdotal, but you've heard stories about them developing even keener senses of smell that their animals that they live with have, which is amazing. Yeah. There's a kid named John Deleg who is five in League, Belgium, which is why he's called John of Lige. But he and his whole village moved to the woods because war was taking place. And once the war subsided and they moved back to their village, john stayed. And over time, he became like a feral child and he was known to be able to root out like truffles and stuff from the bases of trees just with his nose. Again, it's anecdotal, but it's a pretty good story. Yeah. Some of them could climb trees like an animal or sleep in a tree. Some could run on all fours faster than their counterparts could run on two legs. So this is really remarkable stories over time that have been collected. But again, the problem is this. A lot of these stories, like John delicious story comes from the 16th are some modern ones, but there's plenty of ones that came between the 18th century, the 17th century, and like, the 19th century or even early 20th century. And the stories are almost invariably so fantastic that they defy belief. Right. Especially if you're a scientist, you start hearing about these things like the kid could outrun a human, but on all fours, that doesn't make any sense. It's just basically not possible. And if there are enough people who are eyewitnesses to this and who documented it independently, then maybe it would get some credence. So there's this whole problem here where feral children, the stories are so fantastic that science wants to believe it, but they don't know what to believe. And it does turn out that there's actually been plenty of cases of fraud over the years where, I mean, somebody said, hey, I think the best way to get famous is to make up a feral child story, so I'm going to do that. Yeah. And one dude for sure did that. Mr. J-A-L. Singh in the 1920s found two young girls, a toddler, 18 months old and an eight year old in India and claimed they were raised by wolves. Named them Amala and Kamala and said they prefer raw meat. They walk on all fours, they how the moon. I can't get them to walk upright or speak like a human being would speak. I was about to say speak English, but it was India. Sure. And they had books written about them and it was sort of a big media sensation until people started poking around and said, well, these girls are real. But you know what? They weren't raised by wolves at all. They actually had developmental and birth defects. And he would eventually admit that. And then we start learning that in a lot of these cases, although not all a lot of these cases are kids with autism or other developmental birth defects that they just maybe at the time didn't know how to deal with or how to categorize or just would straight up lie about. Yeah, there's this line in here that says that the investigation into feral children is kind of revealed, that you could also call feral children's stories stories of amazing survival, of attempted and fantasy, basically that that counts in some people's minds. And this is not a new idea. Going back a couple of hundred years, some people have said, you know what? I think all of the stories of feral children are probably true, but they weren't really raised by wolves, or they weren't necessarily raised by wolves, or they hadn't adopted wolf like behavior. They were kids who had cognitive impairments and intellectual disabilities, who had been left to die in fend for themselves in the woods by their parents, had grown wild, and then somebody came across them five or ten years later and mistook them for a wolf boy or an ostrich boy or a wolf girl or whatever animal you want to call it, or Los An Opson man. Some people think that accounts for basically all stories of all of the older stories of feral children. I think that's definitely debatable. But that's one camp. Yeah. Here's another case. Misha. The Wolf Girl, 1997. Monique Misha Defonesca. Even though she's not Italian, she actually published her memoirs about the Holocaust called Misha Colon a Memoir of the Holocaust Years. Basically. You mean her memoirs? That's right. MEMORIS. She said that Nazis killed her parents in Brussels when she was seven. She set off on her own through Europe, ended up in the Ukraine, and then a pair of wolves brought her in, and she lived with them for years, published the story. It was a big sensation, and like I said, this was in the 90s. Turns out she made it all up, which was disappointing in that she could have been a real good case study and ended up just lying about it all. Yeah, she said that she told the Belgian press that she had made it up, but that her story was her way of coping with what had happened to her. In reality, her parents had been killed during World War II, but her grandfather raised her, and by all accounts, he was not a wolf at all, just a dude with a beard. Yeah. There's another famous case that's not necessarily fraud, but this isn't very well documented. A woman named Marina Chapman, who supposedly was left in the woods after a kidnapping that went bad and was raised by monkeys and eventually became a housewife in England and published her story with the help of her daughter. I think, again, in the must have been super hot for feral children memoirs. I guess that was probably some stupid Jerry Springer or something. I'll bet it was. That people were, you know, it was his influence. The Springer influence. Yeah. Should we take a break or talk about Peter the Wild Boy first. I think Pete deserves his due before the break. All right, we'll talk about Peter the Wild Boy, then. This was a true one, because there are a few cases which are verified. This is the summer of 1725 in the forest of Hertzwald near Hamilton in northern Germany, which we know has no bodies of water near it. It's a landlord. He was about twelve years old, walked on all fours, fed on grass. He would run up trees. He could not speak the language. And then he became hereto known as the Wild Boy of Hamilton and achieved such fame at the time. After he went to the house of correction for a little while, the king, the Duke of Hanover and King of the UK, said, george said, bring him to me. Basically, they trot him out there like a spectacle, essentially dress them up in a little boys outfit, sitting down at a table, and of course he acts like an animal. And then George is like, take him away. He discussed me, right? It wasn't like, put him back in the woods. Once he was brought to court, he was under the king's care, and they attempted to tutor him. Not only could he not speak German, he couldn't speak any language. He just basically grunted, right? But he was basically under the Royal Argus after that point. They baptized him, they dressed him up, they cleaned them up, they tried everything they could to teach them, but eventually they were like, this kid can't be taught. We don't know what we're doing. We can't get through to them. So let's send them over to London. Apparently they'd heard about them in London because you noticed that the Duke of Hanover in Germany was also the same person who is the king of the United Kingdom. Does that seem odd to you? No. Okay, well, at any rate, he had a connection to London. So London heard about Peter the Wild Boy, and they went crazy for them. They're like, send them over here if you guys are sick of them. So Peter the wild boy made his way over to London and became like a sensation, but basically had the same experience there. Everybody wanted to be around him. They saw what he was actually like, and they were like, okay, I don't want to be around this kid any longer because he's grossing me out. Well, yeah, except for the Princess of Wales. Caroline said, I want him, daddy. Give him to me. And so they did, and she persuaded the king to allow Peter to move into her place in the West End. And he was basically like a pet for her. He would still insist on sleeping on the floor. They would dress him up again in his little green and red suit every day, like little Lord Fauntleroy. Still tried to tutor him, baptize him, taught him the manners of the day. They taught him to bow and to kiss the hands of the ladies in the court. And he was a sensation there for a while and was the talk of the town. And they even painted a very famous painting of him and put it on the King's Grand staircase at Kensington Palace. Yes. So again, though, he kind of, I guess, lost his luster, as far as the courtiers were concerned, and he was sent off to live on a farm. And again, he was cared for by the Crown. I think he got like, a 35 pound pension for the rest of his life, \u00a335 a year, maybe. And he was just taken care of by a kindly old farm owner. The problem is, well, he had a good life, supposedly. He liked Jin a lot. Right. Yeah, man. And he would clap and sway to music and dance, basically, until he would just fall over. He'd be so tired. He was like me. Yeah. He was having a good time out in the country. I think it was definitely more speed than, say, like, London. The problem was he would wander off sometimes. So they eventually, after he was arrested a couple of times and thought to be somebody who is undermining the state, like a spy. Basically, he was fitted with a leather collar that basically gave instructions to anybody who found him. If they brought them back to this farm, they would be rewarded for their troubles. And he lived a long life still. Yeah. He died at 72 years old in 1785. And the story actually has an interesting ending. Not too long ago, a historian named Lucy Warsley did some investigating and saw this painting that we mentioned at Kensington Palace right. And said, Hold on a minute. I think he may have actually had this been suffering from Pitt Hopkins syndrome, and it's an intellectual disability and characterized by developmental delay, breathing problems, seizures, epilepsy, and these facial features that it looks like he had in this painting. Like he was short, he had coarse hair, droopy eyelids, thick lips and club fingers and everything. Kind of led people to think, well, wait a minute, this wasn't a feral child at all. Again, it's another case of mistaken developmental delay. Yeah, that's what they think. Unbelievable. It really is. Now, you want to take a break? Yeah, we'll take a break and talk about a pretty remarkable story. The story of Oxana malaya, the Ukrainian doggirl. Okay, Chuck, we're back. And we're in Ukraine now. I don't know if you noticed. It's not bad. So there's this girl. She's probably in her mid to late twenty s by now, but now is in today. Yeah. I think she's like, 35. Oh, really? I thought this article is way more recent than that. She was born in November 1983. Oh, okay. Yeah, she's old. Wow. This is a very old article. So at the time of this visit with her that the article was based on she was 23 and she was living in Ukraine, but she had been raised on a village, on a farm, actually, in a village called Novaya Blago Veshenka. Nailed that one, too, I think so, in Ukraine. And she was raised there, not by her parents, who apparently discarded her like so much human garbage, but she was raised by dogs, a pack of dogs that lived on the farm. After her parents left her out one night and didn't bring her in, she just stayed outside for basically the next, I think, five years, living with the dogs who took her under their care. Yeah, her parents were severe alcoholics and didn't even notice she was gone for a while. And so, yeah, she stayed there. She lost she's three years old, so she only had a little bit of language at that point anyway. So she had tapped into a bit of that critical period, but then lost that after becoming a member of this dog pack. Yeah. So again, for five years, she lived like this, basically living on raw meat and scraps. Being a member, I didn't get the impression that she was the pack leader, but a member of the pack of dogs. And then finally a neighbor is like, okay, it's been five years. I got to call somebody. So the neighbor called the authorities, and the authorities came out and got her. And apparently they didn't do a very good job documenting when she was found, but later on, the people who worked with her all basically very roundly, said, like, yes, this girl behaved exactly like a dog. She slept on the floor. She walked on all fours. She ate raw meat. She would bark at you. She just had the demeanor of a dog. And so this is actually one of the more documented cases. It's also a case that turns out it turned out about as well as you could hope for from a situation like that because she managed to like Ivan to be enculturated into human culture, human society, over the course of years. Yeah. I don't know if she's married now, but she got a boyfriend at one point, learned to speak intelligently. Seems about as well adjusted as you can be. At the time of this article, which was now, a while ago, she was working on a dairy farm. But at this time, which was like I said, this was quite a few years ago that they wrote this, but she was deemed to have the mental capacity of a six year old because a child psychologist named Lynn Fry ended up doing a lot of interviews and tests with her. And she had a dangerously low boredom threshold, could count, but couldn't add, couldn't read or spell her name correctly. And she said that she would still, like, when she was just feeling bad or whatever, she would still go off in the woods by herself because that made her feel better. And more calm. Right. And so her case is one of the ones that's pointed to as evidence that there is a critical period and that it can be gotten back if it started, because she was beginning to be verbal, like you said, when she was left by her parents, and then she was managed to get it back. So they think that that's evidence for the critical window period. And you can see videos, like, on YouTube and pictures of Oxena the doggirl, and it's pretty remarkable to see. She was on a Ukrainian TV show, and I think Discovery Channel did a special on her that use that footage. I don't think they did any new footage, but just really amazing to look at the footage of her running around like that. Yeah, she knew that that was socially unacceptable, they were saying, but she could still do it. Yeah. That also is a check in the box of people who say, like, there's this thing where if that critical window, if it happens to pass over a period where the kid is being encultured by a non human culture, they could conceivably adopt the behaviors or learn those behaviors just like they would learn human behaviors. But they're not surrounded or interacting with humans. They are surrounded by and interacting with wolves or ostriches or chickens or whatever. So they're not mimicking it. They're actually learning this behavior. So goes one school of thought that is kind of a subgroup of the critical window people. Yeah. And there's some people that have thought, I think, incorrectly. There was this one psychologist named Bruno Betelheim that said basically all of these examples are children with autism who were abandoned. Sadly, a lot of them probably were, but there have definitely been enough cases that weren't to know that it's not always the case. Yeah. So as it stands now, apparently the science is science believed that for a little while, the Bruno Bettelheim theory that it was just all cases of mistaken identity were just children with cognitive impairments, with developmental disabilities who had been abandoned by their parents. But I think the scientific community who studies this kind of thing are kind of coming around to say, like, well, we actually don't know. And that's probably just too broad of a statement. That probably covers a lot of them, but clearly it doesn't cover all of them because Ivan Mushikov was not cognitively impaired, and he was clearly a documented feral child. There was another one from the 18th century, the 17th think, Mimi LeBlanc, who showed up in Champagne, France, and they taught her to speak French. She wasn't cognitively impaired. And she eventually told them that she gave them enough clues to figure out that she was a Huron Indian who'd been captured by slavers and escaped from a shipwreck and made her way to France and showed up as a wild child there. So she wasn't cognitively impaired at all. There are just too many examples of ones that are probably true that weren't cognitively impaired, but we're still clearly feral children to say Bruno Betelheim was right. Yeah, it's a shame because there is so much you could learn. It's a shame that so many of these stories turn out to be dead ends or these really sad stories. Or fakes. Yeah. Because if they were true, we'd be able to say, this is a great, perfect natural laboratory for human development, but we don't know enough to base it on that. And that's not necessarily the case across the board. Like Jal Singh and Kamala and Amala, they wrote, like, textbooks on their case. Unfounded, it turned out. So I think science has kind of learned to say, this is really interesting, but we don't know enough about it to really extrapolate under the larger human race. Yeah, but it's still pretty interesting, dude. Yes. I had a script idea. I'm not going to reveal any more of those on the show, though, because I think people are ripping me off. Okay. Yeah, definitely. The sharknado people did. But I will just well, no, I'm not going to say anything. Okay. Don't keep it under your hat. And we'll announce it when the thing is in production. Yeah. Which will never happen. You don't know. So, you got anything else? Now, let me say this. I will sell this idea for $1,000 to a Hollywood big shot. Oh, wow. But you have to pay before you hear the idea. I think that's good, man, because those Hollywood big shots, they'll trick you. That's right. They'll be like, Go ahead and tell me. Okay, well, if you want to know more about feral children, there's actually a lot more cases that we didn't get to cover. Like Shamdeo, who was raised by wolves, and Suji Kumar, the chicken boy of Fuji. They all have pretty astounding names, but when you start to dig in, they're actually all pretty depressing cases. But it's really interesting stuff. So dig into feral children by jumping onto your favorite search engine today because oh, no. There is an article on how stuff works, isn't there? Yeah, you can check that one out, too. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I got to call this one Proud Pothead Anonymous. Proud Pothead so he's not that proud. Hey, guys, long time listener. I want to let you know I'm a chronic pot user. For most of my life, I'm not condoning the use of marijuana. Individual results may vary. But here's my story. In my mid thirty s, I smoked pot on an almost daily basis since I was 16. I have no medical reasons to use it, and I'm also not in a state where it is legal, but I enjoy it. Similar to the reason people enjoy alcohol. I am not a frequent drinker. I enjoy a nice bourbon every now and then, but I can't recall the last time I was drunk. It's just not my cup of tea. I view pot as a luxury, though, so if money becomes tight, it's the first thing to go. I did not smoke for an entire year to save money for my wedding. I smoke daily, and I would not advise this to many smokers, but most days, I start and end the day with a bowl. Almost 95% of the time I'm driving, I'm stoned. All right, dude, maybe you shouldn't say that. Yeah. Or do that. But I've never been in an automobile accident, never wrecked a car, never received a ticket, never filed an insurance claim. I've never damaged any vehicles. I own a house I bought in my mid 20s, drive a nice sports car, pay my taxes. Texas pay my taxes. He pays his taxes in Texas. I've never been in trouble with the law and have a successful career as a chef. I work long, hard hours. Most people would enjoy drink. After a long day, I enjoy a bowl pack. That's funny. He could have just summed all this up originally by saying, hey, guys, I'm a chef. The end. Now, a lot of chefs are drunks. Yeah. And a lot of them are just regular, awesome, normal people without vices. Yeah, actually, that's not true. All chefs have vices hardcore gambling, et cetera. I work with a lot of chefs. They're a different breed. They're good people, though. Oh, sure. For sure. Yeah. Anyway, back to the email. But in my state, I am still viewed as a criminal, which to me, makes no sense. Although I never travel around with my pot, I do have to buy it and drive it with at home. I'm always incredibly nervous. I could end up in cuffs during that drive. I'm glad times are changing, though. And I wait the day when I can smoke legally in my state. I just want to say thank you for not putting Pat what is going on with me? Pat from Texas. We just cracked the code subliminally not putting pot in the same category as methamphetamines and speaking the facts rather than a bunch of untrue propaganda. Yeah, except when it comes to chefs. And we just seen everybody. Same broad brush. Definitely. Thanks, Pat from Texas. We appreciate that anonymous letter. If you want to get in touch with us anonymously, we will keep your name secret. How about that? Tell us whatever you can tweet to us at Josh Clark or S-Y-S-K podcast. I also have a website you can visit called Ruceriesclark.com. Chuck is on Facebook@facebook.com. Charlesw Chuck Bryant. And there's an official Facebook page for stuff you should know, too, called facebook. Comstuffytunnel. You can send all of us an email to stuffpoadcast athousetufworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web you should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com." | |
Please Listen to How Plasma Waste Converters Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/please-listen-to-how-plasma-waste-converters-work | There is a way to not only sustainably get rid our household waste, but also produce enough energy from it to power the process and even create electricity for the grid. The future is here! | There is a way to not only sustainably get rid our household waste, but also produce enough energy from it to power the process and even create electricity for the grid. The future is here! | Tue, 20 Oct 2015 14:28:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=14, tm_min=28, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=293, tm_isdst=0) | 34167428 | 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. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarkner. Charles W, Chuck Bryant, guest producer. Noel is here. Noelle moved in. Yeah, so that cot is on the floor. He works constantly. You know what my superhero nickname was as a child? I'll tell you. Plasma Boy. No, it wasn't. Yeah, I'm just kidding. That was a weird joke. Why? We're talking about plasma? Plasma Boy? Yeah. Like Radioactive Man and Plasma Boy. Right? Yeah, but it wasn't Plasma boy. What was it? What was the sidekick name? Radioactive man. Sidekick. Now I want to know, dude. Well, the answer is fall out, boy. That's a band. I know, but I wonder if it's based on that. Maybe. I don't know. We'll find out when we're well, we'll look it up and then we'll find out with a million emails. So Plasma Boy, huh? I wish. You must have an affinity for this episode, then. Yeah, it's great. Chuck, you know when lightning strikes the Earth, we did a pretty awesome podcast on lightning. Do you remember we talked about how it literally rips the sky open? It rips the atmosphere open, and as it's traveling down through this ripped open atmosphere, the air on either side of this stuff is super heated to about 20,000 degrees. It's more than three times the surface temperature of the sun. Yes, celsius. I should say Celsius. Not even Fahrenheit. Yeah, it's about twelve grand Celsius, roughly. It's super hot. Right? I'm sorry, fahrenheit. Did I say Fahrenheit? Yeah. Twelve grand Fahrenheit. Yeah. Okay. At any rate, 20,000 degrees is lightning, and when the air is super heated, it takes on what's commonly called the fourth state of matter. Plasma. Right? Yeah. So you've got solid, boring, liquid gas. Awesome. Okay. But plasma is super awesome. Gas. Yeah, it's a bit like a gas, and usually it starts out as a gas, but it holds an electromagnetic field, or creates an electromagnetic field, and it holds an electrical charge. It has free roaming electrons, it's running through it, doing all sorts of crazy stuff. It just basically breaks gas into this crazy, weird, different type of fluid, and that's plasma. And it's awesome. Yeah. Ionize gas. Yes. Pretty good stuff. Super high temp, as you were saying. And because it's a super high attempt, what it can do is it can break down, it can cause something solid to undergo what's called molecular dissociation, which means it's not just burning something, not melting something. It's actually exposing it to so much heat that the molecular bonds break apart and it becomes a pile of its components. Yeah. And it breaks it down from its compound of molecules to its atomic components. Yeah. Pretty amazing. It is very amazing. And like you said, it's not burning. Like this process of using a plasma torch to break something down, to decompose it, is actually what it's doing. Doesn't even need to use oxygen. Nope. So that means that it's a process called pyrolysis, which is intense, intense heat that creates decomposition in some sort of matter, especially organic matter. And as a result, you get these byproducts if it's an organic piece of material, say, like some corn stock that you're using as biomass feedstock, it will become something called sin gas. Yeah. Synthetic gas. Right. And then if it's something like a pair of roller skates yeah, we'll save those. First of all, plasma, they're just not very good any longer. All right, so the weather was, at one point, organic. I guess it would still be considered an organic material that turns into gas. The metal in the skates, that will turn into something called slag. And it undergoes a process of vitrification. Yeah, it does. Vitrification is where this stuff becomes the bonds break between it so thoroughly that it becomes basically a form of glass. Yeah. Like volcanic glass, almost as at least what it looks like. Yes. Like obsidian. So all this sounds great. We're kind of beating around the bush about what a plasma torch can do. Right. And here's the big bomb. Boom. Plasma torches can burn garbage and waste. Yes. And not only that, they can burn it without combustion, which means there's not a bunch of smoke. Yeah. And they can actually harvest the energy in that garbage in incredible ways, because it turns out garbage is chock full of potential energy. You can release that energy when you burn it. Like just regular incineration. Sure. But you only can maybe net about 15% of the energy that's locked into this big pile of garbage in, like, a landfill. Right. What a waste. With using a plasma torch to create pyrolysis or gasification, you can get up to 80% of that energy that's locked in there. Potentially crazy in the garbage. So what we're talking about is a potential future where we are using plasma torches to create energy, to sell back to the grid, to create steam, to turn those turbines, like we're always still just knocked out. But that's how you create energy these days. I'm sorry. Electricity. Sure. And then sell off by products as well and make more money. Yes. I cannot be more excited about this. And medical waste, chemical waste. Throw it in there. In fact, you know what? Throw anything you got in there, daddy. Except for, like, radioactive material. You got a swine flu outbreak. You take those pig carcasses, you throw them into the gas vacation chamber. There is no swine flu left. It is totally gone. How about this? I'll bring it to your farm. I'll have a small one set up. You got a swine flu outbreak. I'll come to your farm. Sure. And I'll burn up all those nasty pigs. Right. You got some toxic waste. Well, we'll just burn that in a gasification chamber and we'll break it down to its inner components. It's not going to hurt anybody. No more little lamb, I guess. We keep saying burn. Well, it's really tough not to you're right. Torch. Torch, yeah. Nice. All right, so let's talk strickland wrote this Jonathan Strickland of tech stuff, and he did a great job, as always, and he seemed to be as excited about it as we are when he was writing it. Right. Because how can you not be? Let's talk about some of the parts of these things. The first thing that he points out, that we should point out is that any plasma conversion gasification facility is going to be unique to its own needs. They're all custom built at this point. There is no standardized unit. There are some companies that are starting to like westinghouse has some that you can just like what amounts to off the shelf, the backyard gasifier, pretty much. That'd be awesome. Yeah. I think they have like three different models, although I'm sure they will custom build you whatever you want. Yeah, you're probably right. But anyway, when he wrote this, they weren't super standardized. And that's good that we're going toward that. So what we're going to talk about, it sort of depends on the system. Sure. But what you're probably going to have is conveyor belt. It's going to move the garbage into the converter. Yeah. It's going to play that Bugs Bunny powerhouse song. Oh, man. Sometimes they will pretreat the stuff. Although if you had a big enough machine, you could throw an entire car in it, let's say. But sometimes it's more efficient to break that car down and have a pile of tires and a pile of scrap metal and break it down to its components just to make it more efficient. Yeah, because it's going to use a lot less energy to break it down into smaller parts and then feed it into the plasma torch incinerator than it will to just torch it with the torch. Because these things used a lot of energy. Yeah, a lot of energy. They probably saved that for when the investors come by, right. They're like, watch, now you see it, now you don't. You have your furnace, of course. And Strickland says, this is where the magic happens, because you don't need oxygen. It is airlocked and airtight junk goes in, but the heat doesn't escape into the atmosphere or the gases or the byproducts, which, again, that is really saying something about the material science. That's gone into this because these things are burning at like or heated to 6000 deg, like the temperature of the sun in this canister right here. That's amazing. I'm surprised you don't have plasma weapons for real. I think it's really great that they don't. I looked into it. It's like the realm of video games, of course, like plasma guns and stuff. So if you have a furnace, which you will, you're going to have the plasma torch, which is in the lower, like half of the furnace, let's say. And they're also going to have some drainage for that flag and some venting for the gas. And it's going to be water cooled. Yeah. One of the things that came across to me in this researching this is these things frequently have really elegant designs, right? Yeah. So you have a drain for the slag, which again is the molten metal that's broken down to like, its constituent parts. It's inorganic material and depending on how you treat it, it will turn into glass or sand or nodules. Right. Or asphalt. Yeah. And then you have the gas going up and you're draining off the flag. But you're also keeping some in because it forms basically a coke bed that keeps the furnace hot, which means you have to use less energy in your plasma torch. It's like having your own little lava bed right. Just sort of sitting there. Exactly. Eating things up. So that's pretty cool. But eventually you're going to probably want to get some of the flag out of there because you're going to do cool things with it, which we'll talk about later. That's right. The plasma torches themselves are clever, amazing little instruments. It's basically a lightning creator. Yeah. Like they use an electrical arc. They push usually just plain old air through it so that this electric charge heats the air to the 6000 degrees, turns it into plasma and then that's what's directed into the furnace. That's crazy. It is very crazy, but that's what they're doing. It's a little water cooled torch that gets super hot. It also doesn't use any kind of oxygen for combustion. Right. And also these things you want to turn me on with electrical stuff is show me a system that powers itself. Right. I just love that more than anything. And these facilities, I mean, they've got excess energy to spare afterward. Not only can they power themselves, in a lot of cases they're selling back to the grid. Right. So once you've got this initial input where you get this thing going online and you heat that plasma torch up for the first time, the moment you start feeding feedstock into it. Which in this case is garbage. Plain old municipal solid waste from the landfill back to the Future. Right, right. When you start feeding that, it starts to produce energy. And the way that it does that gas that escapes sing gas. Let's talk about Sing gas, dude. Yeah, sing gas is a beautiful, amazing, elegant thing. It's combustible in its untreated form, so you could use it to burn, like natural gas, although it has about half the energy density of natural gas. But if you're burning garbage, it's just basically free natural gas. It's a byproduct. You can also treat it and scrub it and just release it into the atmosphere, as inert gas. No problems with that. Water scrubbed, right? Yeah. But when the singas exits the furnace, it wants to expand. So if you're a very clever engineer, you'll put what's called a gas turbine right there, and gas turbine is spun by expanding gas. Well, you got plenty of that stuff, right? So you've got the sin gas going through the gas turbine, spinning that, so it's generating electricity. It's also very hot. So once it goes through that gas turbine, it can be caught by what's called a heat recovery steam generator. Right? Yeah. And that's just got some water going through it and uses this hot heat gas to turn the water into steam. Well, that in turn turns another turbine that generates even more electricity. And then at the end, before you even treat it, you have all the sin gas that could be used to fuel a combustion engine to generate even more electricity, all from burning garbage. All right, we have to take a break because I have to peel Josh off the ceiling. Because you're so excited about Send gas. I am. All right, we'll be back in a SEC. 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. How are you feeling, buddy? Are you okay? I'm so excited. This might as well be ocean currents. Oh, yeah. You like that one too? Yeah. All right. So we're talking about Send gas. You need to scrub it with water. They pass us through a spray of water. You're actually cleaning gas, which is pretty interesting. As a concept. And then there are all measure of filters afterward to remove acids and things like that, which do form weird byproducts, like salts and salts. Yeah, it's pretty neat. If you run it through a base scrubber, it turns into salt, but they're again inert. Just go ahead, pick up a handful and eat it. See what happens. Probably nothing. And if you use an after burner, sometimes they'll use a secondary burner, which is actually just natural gas flames, I guess, to finish the job, maybe. Yeah, to burn off like any particulate matter in the gas. Like if the process didn't the gas isn't pure right there's. This basically burns off particulate matter. Or you can scrub it too. And if you're doing all this, you're probably just going to release it rather than try to trap it and use it for combustion. Right, if you're going to scrub it. But you do need to scrub it, especially if you're going to release it in the atmosphere, because it does contain some pretty nasty stuff, cadmium, mercury, a lot of heavy metals. Because remember what this process does, the plasma torch and the gasification process breaks these things down into their constituent atoms and molecules. Right. And heavy metals and some other things are not really good for us, even in their most basic form. The most part is going to take something that, chemically speaking, was once a threat, but has been broken down into its separate, innocuous inner components. Some things, even when they're at their most basic level, are still dangerous to us, like cadmium, like mercury, like other heavy metals. And these things do have to be taken out of the slag and or the sing gas and disposed of. The thing is, if you put 10 tons of municipal solid waste into one of these furnaces, you're only going to get about 20 tons of that stuff. Right. So we will still need landfills or something like that, but it will just be for these very dangerous chemicals or very dangerous, like heavy metals or something like that. But you still got great stuff out of the other 980 tons. Yeah, exactly. So the byproducts we talked about, the sun gas, the slag and the heat are all used or not always used, depends on what you're trying to do with your plant. But they can potentially all be used. And the flag, I think you already said you're getting 80%. So that means the weight of your resulting flag is only 20% of what you started with. So you took that Buick and it now weighs 20% what it formally weighed. Right. You could pick it up if you want. Yeah, maybe. So. Probably should wait for it to cool down first. And the volume is only about 5% of the original waste volume. And like you said, it looks like volcanic glass. And they can use it in asphalt and concrete. They can pour it directly into molds and make paverstones. Right. And all of a sudden it's something you would find at your big box hardware store for your garden. Yeah, which is pretty amazing. Another potential creation that you can use flag for is to turn into rock wool. Oh, man, I love this stuff. Right? So as molten flag is coming out, if you expose it to compressed air blasts, it turns into this thready, very light, but also very strong wool type material. Like gray cotton candy is how strickland puts it. Yeah. And there's a lot of uses for it. You can use it in hydroponics. It's a growing medium. You can also use it as insulation. Apparently it has twice the insulating properties of fiberglass. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, it is. And you can also use the clean up oil spills, it says. Yeah. This is the one that really gets me going. It's lighter than water, so you can just throw it on water and it will sit there and it's super absorbent. So it'll basically what they'll probably do is contain it in something like a tube or something and then just throw that tube in a big circle around an oil spill. It will float on the water, soak up the oil and just go back and scoop up the rock wall. Yeah, I guess so. I had a friend that used to work and I need to look that up and him up, actually, because I don't know where it went. But they were using banana fibers to do the same thing to clean up oil spills. Didn't we do one on oil spills? And like your friend, you emailed with them or something like that about it? I don't know. I feel like we did. It seems like the distant past. But here's the cool thing about the Rockwell. They currently use it. It's not just something that you can only get as a byproduct of creating the sungass. Right. It is produced by mining rocks. You melt it down and then spin it sort of like cotton candy, like you said, in a big machine. And here's the cool thing about the gasification, though. The way they make the rock will now it's about one dollars a pound as a byproduct that can be sold for ten cents a pound. Plus you don't have all of the disturbances in the earth of mining rocks to turn into rock wool. It's a byproduct of garbage that you're burning. That's great. It's amazing. This is like when the flag is not leachable. That's another cool thing that I found too. So Strickland specifically said you can't do this with radioactive material. I have seen that you can. Oh, really? Yeah. And what you can do is it'll turn it into the flag, the subsidian glass. And while it's still radioactive, it's not going anywhere. It's not going to leach out into the soil. And it should be stable like this for thousands of years, conceivably until the radioactivity is not harmful to humans any longer. Interesting. So it would be a really great you could just turn it into these radioactive paverstones that might even glow at night. You'd have a nice little path in your backyard, and it'll glow. There's actually glass like that. I can't remember what it's technical term is, but in the mid 20th century, there was a big trend for they called it vaseline glass because it glowed about the color of vaseline, which is weird, but you can find cut glass, like, ashtrays and sculptures that glow. And the reason they glow is because they're radioactive. I think I know what you're talking about. Really neat looking, but it's also like, I don't know if that should be in my home. Light your own cigarette. Hold it against all right, well, let's take another break here and we'll talk about where we are now and where we could be headed with gasification. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so here's what I found. And this might not even be current. What I saw was that there are currently eight functioning plasma gasification facilities in the world. That sounds about right. One Taiwan, one in Japan, one in Canada, one in England, one here in the USA. Where's the one in the US. Vero beach, Florida. Oh, yeah. One in India and one in China. And get this one, there's one on an aircraft carrier that the US is using. The idea is that it's a little small unit that basically just treats the onboard waste. Oh, that makes sense. So they envision a future where, like, cruise ships have these things. They don't have to just dump all their garbage in the ocean while they're exactly. You treat all the waste. And I guess they could even sell byproducts if they wanted to. Yeah, pretty cool. There's one that's supposedly going I know you saw it was mothball. Right. But there's one that I can tell that's planned. They have like all the, I guess the licenses and certifications that they need to build one in Port St. Lucie, Florida. And supposedly it started out as it was going to take on 1000 tons of garbage a day and put out. It was going to generate 67 megawatt hours a day and sell 33 of that. So it would completely power its own operations and still have 33 megawatt hours to put out, like to sell back to the grid. It's just more money that this thing is making. Right, yeah. What I saw is that I think it was like 2014, it said that it was going to be about 60% of that. So it would take in about 600 tons of garbage and generate a total output of 22 MW. But yeah, I don't know if it's coming or not, but either way. The thing that got me about this one, Chuck, was that they plan to not just accept landfill waste, but to go out and mine existing landfills and use those things as feedstock. And in fact, there was one in Utah, Shina, Japan that closed down because they ran out of feedstock. They burned through all the garbage. Wow. Yeah. That's pretty great when you're out of garbage. Exactly. They like to go get more garbage. I guess we'll stop earlier this year, I think the world's largest plant is they said it was near completion in May, so it may be done at this point. But a company called Air Products began processing 350,000 tons at this facility, creating power. Wow. Wait, 350,000 tons? Yeah, it's got enough power for 50,000 homes. Wow. And 50 full time jobs, which is not that many. Not for that much, but highly automated, I would guess. Yeah. Which is sort of good in a way. But I guess you'd want more jobs created too. Sure. Sort of a balancing act, I guess. And it costs half a billion, $500 million. And that is one of the stumbling blocks along the way, strickland points out that anytime you have a new technology, it's going to be super expensive to get going. And everyone's dug in on the landfill and how we're doing things now. So it's going to take a lot. It will get cheaper over time like everything else. That's a new way of doing things. We also have to win over the establishment with dollars. You have to show them why it'll be better for them financially. Well, yeah. Also if say, a municipality is kind of like, well, we're not going to close down the landfill, but if you guys want to open one, go ahead. Well, then you have a plasma waste treatment facility and a landfill in direct competition. And if you are the customer, meaning you have some garbage that you want to take, you don't care where your garbage is going. Probably you want to go to whoever has the cheaper fees for accepting that garbage. Because a landfill is kind of an expensive proposition. The tipping fees are going to be high. It's basically the only way they can make money is by charging people to deposit their garbage with a plasma waste treatment facility. They're making money all over the place. They're selling flag as paver stuff. They're selling rock wool to clean up oil spills. They're selling electricity back to the grid. So they're making money and all these other ways that can pay for the operation and generate a profit so they could keep their tipping fees low. So if you own a landfill and somebody opens a plasma waste treatment facility in the same city, you may be in a bit of trouble business wise. Yes. Keep the tipping file, and not just people like municipalities will begin using your services, ultimately. Because I think the one thing that's lacking still is that environmental will. Right. And we're definitely a lot further along than we were when Strickland wrote this article. Sure. But I think that's one of the things that makes it so attractive is we're going to burn your garbage in really green, sustainable ways, create energy from it, and we're going to go get your old garbage and burn that too, and make even more electricity, and the plant is going to power itself with your garbage. Yeah, it's a win win win. Strickland interviewed, he was from Georgia Tech, right? Dr. Cicero. Yes. I'm sorry, Cersei. Oh. I thought it was Cicero, too. Yeah, it's a mind trick. R before C. So Dr. Cersei said he envisions a future where you don't just have the big municipality plant. Like, that would be great and all. Maybe you could bring a plasma torch to a landfill and just bore a hole through it and stick that plasma torch in there, cap it off and start burning that junk from the inside out. Yeah, but if you're like, whoa, there could be a coal seam nearby. That's what I thought. What about, like, centralia Pennsylvania, right? Centralia Pennsylvania caught fire. There's a combustion fire going on. If any coal seam was exposed to this, it would just be decomposed into carbon, into its constituents. It wouldn't catch fire. That's nothing to do with this again. So it's actually extremely safe. And the landfill itself would act as the furnace. That's amazing. Isn't it? It's really tough to think of really intense heat without thinking fire. Right. But that is not where this goes. Yeah. Says, hey, why not work together here and bring a plasma converter to another existing traditional facility where they can work hand in hand like a coal fired power plant? Yeah, why not? So what this would do is you would just basically stick a plasma facility onto it, into the existing infrastructure and just accept garbage in there and burn that and everything. And then the sin gas that's created would be used to help. Fire, the coal fire plants. That's right. Then it would be used for combustion. Right. And you would be using less coal or less fossil fuels to do the same thing, to create steam, to spin the turbine. Because ultimately, that's what it all comes down to, is electricity. So if you have a green way to supplement this stuff, all you're doing is using less fossil fuel, too. Right. It's also way cheaper because then you're not having to treat the single gas, which apparently is half the cost of a plasma treatment facility, because these guys have to treat the escaping smoke and everything anyway. So all you're doing is adding actually a cleaner fuel into the fire that's going to ultimately be clean down the line. Amazing. And then we talked about sort of half joking, but they're serious about decontamination. If you have an outbreak on your farm and you have a bunch of sad, but if you have a bunch of sick, diseased, dead livestock, right? Just bring out the P 3000. Throw those cows in there, bing, bang, boom. Yeah, maybe grind them up first, too. Yeah, why not? Yes. You can do that with soil as well. Contaminated soil. Got an E. Coli outbreak in your spinach field? Not anymore. Yeah. Bunch of dirty humans. Not anymore. Storm in there. Medical waste to biohazard. No, you've got inert stuff. Yes. A poopy cruise ship. The P Three thing in there at once. I'm kidding about dirty humans, by the way. Why? I didn't even need to say that. I don't think so. Okay, good. I hope not. You never know, buddy. So that is plasma waste treatment, hopefully the wave of the future. Yes. We should title this something a Little Sexier. So people aren't like yeah, there's a lot of people listening to that. Because it should. Yes. Because then even people that are super into, like, green technologies will probably be like, oh, I want to learn about this weird science thing. Yeah. How about plasma waste treatment? Please listen. Signed, Josh and Chuck. Yeah, I like it. It's a little clumsy. We'll work on that. If you want to know more about plasma treatment facilities or any of that stuff, you can type those words in the search bar@howstuffworks.com. And since Chuck said sexy, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this you guys got Africa, right? Thank you. Hey, guys, listen to your podcast about female puberty and was very impressed with the thoughtfulness and sensitivity in which you explained things and gave advice. By the way, we heard from a lot of people on that, and thank you. A lot of young women, a lot of grown women, a lot of men and dads. Right. And that one meant a lot. It was really good to get that one right. I think the one thing that we didn't quite get right, that someone has pointed out more than a few times is we said, boy crazy a lot, and we should have gone out of our way to say, like, you might also be girl crazy, or you might not have sexual feelings and thoughts. I wish we had that one back. I know. I'm giving us a break on that because people know how we feel about that stuff. We just didn't point it out as strongly as we should have. But that's how things change and improve, though. We're seeing it now. Young ladies out there going through puberty might like other girls, you might not like boys or girls and all that's. Okay, too. Yes. All right, thanks for saying that. So back to this. Probably listen to about 200 or more of your podcasts. Man, you got a long way to go, buddy. And I'm always like, I'm almost a 301. Yes, only 500 after that. I'm always happy to hear you guys do your best to be specific when you make references to events in countries or geographic regions. What I mean by this is you don't generalize like a lot of people do and say crap. Like, in Africa, they blah, blah, blah, or in Europe, it's normal to blah, blah, blah. When you got to the part of your latest show where you talk about female puberty rights, I was elated to hear you being careful enough to say, in Ghana, there is a village where the reason for my reaction is that I've lived in the US for 20 years, but I'm from Ghana. There are at least 20 distinct ethnic groups and languages in Ghana alone. Wow. And I know for a fact that the ritual you described is not done in all of them. In fact, I've heard of it, but I don't think it happens anymore. By the way, the official language in Ghana is English, so we are able to communicate with each other. Nothing irritates us Africans more than to hear someone start a sentence within Africa, I bet. Sure. Continent. That's huge. Yes, because no one says, well, in North America. No, they do say, like, in the US. But at least it's a confederation of associated states in Africa, it's like, yeah, you're putting the whole continent and it's all these different countries, all these different cultures. Yeah. It's amazing. So thanks, guys, for being so thoughtful and professional. Eric from Seattle. By way of Ghana, I guess. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Eric. I appreciate that. Thank you. If you want to get in touch with us, whether to give us big ups or poopoo us or submit some sort of neutral statement that's fact based, who knows? It does a lot. Yeah. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@howstafs.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyouknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. School's out. The sun is shining, the daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. 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." | ||
http://netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1215462920122sysk-hysterical-strength.mp3 | Can People Really Get Hysterical Strength? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-people-really-get-hysterical-strength | During times of emergency, people have been known to preform feats of great strength. Learn more about going from the dull stare of the dairy cow to the eye of the tiger in seconds flat. | During times of emergency, people have been known to preform feats of great strength. Learn more about going from the dull stare of the dairy cow to the eye of the tiger in seconds flat. | Thu, 29 May 2008 18:34:06 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=18, tm_min=34, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=150, tm_isdst=0) | 5594211 | 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 Clarkefaper, writer. Here how Stuff works.com. With me today is fellow staff writer an extraordinary guy, Charles Bryan. How are you, Chuck? I'm great. I am extraordinary. Thanks for having me, Chuck. I am so jazzed. I've got all this adrenaline pumping through me right now. I feel like I can lift a car. I could throw this table across the room, and you might. Yeah. Have you heard of these stories about people, like, picking cars up? Of other people? Yeah, I have. You might think it's an urban legend. You hear these stories about people just chunking a Buick off of their sun when they're trapped underneath it, but it's actually true. There are plenty of documented cases. When you were researching this, he found a bunch of good ones. My favorite was the grainy in Texas. This is my favorite, too, actually. Yeah. Marie Payton. Who? Her nickname is Bootsy. We call her Boots around the office. Right. I think everyone calls her Bootsy lovingly. Yeah, we love Boots. So Bootsy was cutting your grass in Texas one day on a riding mower. I don't know if she fell off or what, but somehow the lawnmower got away from her, and it kind of kept on going. And her little granddaughter Evie thought it might be a good idea to stop the riding mower with, I guess, superpowers. She jumped in front of it all. A supergirl. It was the impression I have. And I imagine poor Evie suffered quite a start when she found that her superpowers had failed her and she was suddenly pinned beneath the running rider motor. Right. She suffered more than that, Josh. She lost four of her little toes. Terrible as a result. And she probably would have lost a lot more if it hadn't been for a super granny coming in there. Yeah, Marie. Yeah. So Bootsy flies in there well, not literally, but she runs in there, and she picks up this lawn mower and throws it off of her granddaughter, saving her life. Threw it off of her like it was a piece of cardboard, actually. A piece of cardboard? Or maybe something even lighter, actually. I imagine after the tremblings have decided and Eve's injuries have been attended to, marie went back over, kind of curious, and tried to pick up the lawnmower again. Couldn't budget, right? She couldn't even bend over. No. I'm sure what we're talking about here and what Bootsy experienced is something called hysterical strength. Right. And it's not actually recognized by the medical community. Did you know that? Yeah, I did. Because there's no way you can really follow up and do a study on something like this. Right. For something to be experimented on, it has to be able to be replicated. And you can't just throw a kid beneath a car in a lab and see what the parents do. We could. You could. It's unethical, and you'd lose your funding very quickly. You would? Yes. Medical science hasn't taken many steps to explain it, but these cases are widely documented. There's lots of witnesses, that kind of thing. And it seems to be an extension of the fight or flight response. You know much about this? Yeah, I do. Okay, well, I'll tell everybody else, and you just sit there quietly. So basically, let's say you're walking down the street and you're eating a hot dog and you come upon a lion and he's loose and he's hungry. That happens all the time. All right. Well, this hot dog is being digested until your fight or flight response kicks in, which is from the sympathetic system. It takes over. All of a sudden, adrenaline is released that hot dogs no longer being digested. Instead, all the energy on stuff that's peripheral all of a sudden to this danger is transferred over to things like increasing your heart rate, your respiration, your pupils dilate so you can take in more visual information, that kind of thing. And basically, you go from the dull stare of the dairy cow to the eye of the tiger, and seconds flat, you're ready to go. Right. The way this connects to hysterical strength, like lifting a car, is in the fight or flight response. Your muscles contract. They shorten and tighten so that you can run faster, throw a harder punch, that kind of thing. And your skeletal muscles actually contract by receiving electrical impulses from your brain. Yeah, exactly. Have you ever been electrocuted? Twice. Well, if you get a sudden surge of electricity, a lot of times you'll be shot across the room or across the street or who knows where you could land. And a lot of people think this is probably just like a blast from the electrical box, but that's not the case. It's actually your own muscles doing all the work. You just get such a surge of electrical impulse that you tap into this energy and your muscles you didn't know you had. Yeah. You're actually throwing yourself right. Which illustrates this kind of untapped reserve of muscular strength. Well, yeah. And it makes you kind of wonder why you don't walk around like that all the time and just be a race of superheroes right. Or people ready to beat up a line at any given moment. Right, right. Well, I'll tell you why, Chuck. The short answer is that it would kill us in fairly short order. The whole goal to our body is homeostasis, which is like this balance between the eye of the tiger and the dull stare, the dairy cow, that kind of thing. And if we don't achieve homeostasis, if we're in the state of hyperarousal, we get worn down, our hearts wear down, we're more susceptible to illness, that kind of thing. Well, you can feel that. You can and you can see it actually to you and I both know from being overworked, you get worn down and you'll eventually die because you're in a state of stress. Well, exactly, Josh. Like a stress induced or work related heart attack. Exactly. And you can avoid a stress related heart attack or work related heart attack by taking some time out of your day and reading how can Adrenaline help you lift a 3500 LB car on howstuckworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit Howstep Works.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcasts@houseworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | |
How Charles Darwin Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-charles-darwin-worked | Charles Darwin wasn't the first or only scientist to grasp the theory of evolution through natural selection, but he became its father and icon. Learn about the man who reluctantly but bravely became the source of the divide between religion and science. | Charles Darwin wasn't the first or only scientist to grasp the theory of evolution through natural selection, but he became its father and icon. Learn about the man who reluctantly but bravely became the source of the divide between religion and science. | Tue, 08 Apr 2014 15:19:01 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=15, tm_min=19, tm_sec=1, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=98, tm_isdst=0) | 47160083 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell. Anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. comSK, 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. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate covered goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM. Let's create this. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. 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. So this is stuff you should know. That's right. Unless I forget, Jerry's over there. She's over there. You know, we went, like, five years. I went five years of this podcast just mentioning us once in a while, mentioning Jerry, but, I mean, like, I can't imagine the podcast without Jerry, too. Now after five years, finally, I'm like, I guess she should stay on. She earned her place. Yes. At least she keeps quiet. That's right. How are you doing? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. Yeah? I'm like low key calm. I'm fine. That's good. I'm a little smelly, which we talked about. I know. I keep talking about it, which makes the smell worse. What is it about someone's own special sweet tang of a scent that they're drawn to? Like you're drawn to your own tang. Yeah, man. Everyone, I think, secretly smells their own shoe and their own armpits when they get a little ripe. Maybe we all deep down want to mate with ourselves. Maybe so. That's not true, because I'm disgusted with myself. Yeah, but I see you looking at your armpit, eyeing it like that. I know what you want to do to that thing. Yeah, I slipped out twice today. Just the smell of them. There's a little on your nose. That's gross, Chuck. You're doing good. I'm doing good. We'll just assume Jerry's doing good, and we're all doing good because we're fairly fit. You know why we're fit? Because we're alive and we are evolving as we speak. We are part of this huge, long, natural procession of change forced by scarcity, competition, the ravages of nature. And we as humans have climbed to the top of the food pyramid of the evolutionary chain and said, we own this planet. That's why we're doing good today. Yeah, it's one of my most favorite notions. Evolution. Yes. Natural selection. I think it's like one of the most beautiful things that we've been able to figure out. Yeah, evolution gets all the spotlight. I'm a big natural selection fan myself, too. Yeah. Divergence. That stuff turns me on. That and you smell intellectually. So let's talk about this. You can't have evolution without natural selection. Again, even though evolution gets all the spotlight, at the very least. There's no evolution on Earth without natural selection. Right. And the idea of natural selection, of evolution in general, the idea that God didn't create everything exactly the way we see it now is a fairly recent notion, despite how tremendously widespread it is. You know Bill Nye, the science guy? Are you talking about this debate? Yeah, he got in a debate with Ken Ham. Just totally off the cuff, not planned at all. They just both happened to be in the same auditorium. I watched the whole thing. Did you? The whole 2 hours, yeah, man. I couldn't pull myself away from it. So I'm guessing that you suspect Bill Nye won the debate. Well, I mean, are there winners and losers? So don't be shy. There are. Okay. There is a British religious website that pulled its guests because people go to websites, are called guests, but in England there and said, who won? And I think 92% said Bill Nye won. And the reason why is because in the comments section, it was revealed that most of these people said, yeah, we believe in God, but evolution is still real. And to deny evolution outright is pretty silly. I think when you say things like dragons, you might lose people. Did he say dragons? I didn't see it. Yeah, he mentioned dragons. Well, I mean, that's some people. And like you said, religion and science coexist for a lot of religious folk. Oh, yeah. But there are some that are very literal and strict and say that how do you explain dinosaurs while they may have been dragons? Got you. That doesn't explain anything. Well, I think dragons were in the Bible. Oh, yeah. If I'm getting this wrong, I'm going to really get killed. We should pause for a second. The point of this episode is not to stomp on anybody's beliefs. No, I think science can be just as dogmatic as religion. Sure. So that's not what we're doing now. If you believe in creationism, to each his own. Like, we're not going to pound our beliefs into you or vice versa. I've never understood that. Like, who cares? It's either way. It's like, convert to my way of thinking or else you are just so wrong, it's mind boggling. That's not the point of this. No, I think we should just see away with that because it's not what we're like. There's some people who don't always listen. Maybe this is their first episode. Welcome. We are not those kind of guys. No. And specifically with this episode, it's on Charles Darwin the man. Right. And kind of what made him who he was tackled. Are we committing to go ahead and doing natural selection? I think we shall. To pair with this. As a matter of fact, we'll have this one come out on a Tuesday. We'll do natural selection on a Thursday. Look at that. All right. I agree. Let's do it. Let there be life. But Darwin is a fascinating dude, though. Yeah. Because you can't really overstate the idea that he was, as Robert Lam puts in this fine article, I say one of the best agreed. That Charles Darwin was the fulcrum by which or on which the entire sea change from a religious worldview to a scientific worldview took place. It was on this man's shoulders. Yeah. Even though, oddly enough, he wasn't the only person to come up with natural selection. No. And we'll get to that. He wasn't the first or the last, but it turns out he was the most thorough in his research right. And had the most social breeding and inbreeding. Yeah. Man, this is the ultimate season. It is. So, let's get started. Chuck. Let's talk about Darwin. He wasn't born with a Bunsen burner and a flask in his hand. No, he was not. He was born, if anything, with stethoscope in his hand, because his father, Dr Robert Waring Darwin, had designs on little Chuck being a doctor like him. Right. Because they had some dough. He was an English gentleman. They weren't poor by any means. No. Apparently his grandfather amassed a vast fortune in China and not the country, but the porcelain. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. So it'd be incorrect to say he had a Chinese fortune. He had a China fortune. Okay. But little Chuck was not into anatomy. He was definitely not into surgery on humans. It freaked him out. I think he was a little queasy as a person of fainting, it seems like. Yeah. But he was way into the natural sciences and was just fine with dissecting a frog. Yeah. He was cool with biology. As long as you weren't human, he'd cut you. That's right. So he was sent to several schools. First when he was going to be a doctor to the Anglican Shrewsbury School, then to Edinburgh University, and finally his dad was like, all right, you don't want to be a doctor, so the only other option for you is to be a man of religion. Yeah. Parson in the country. Yeah. So I'm going to send you to Christ College in Cambridge, which is, I mean, if you're going to go be a country parson, you could do a lot worse. Agreed. The Fighting Padres. Go Padres. He was very well educated and had been exposed to all kinds of science, so he was a very smart guy from early on and way into natural science, like I said, but not into the religion thing as much. He was agnostic from a pretty early age. Right. And he seemed like he was going to follow the path that his father was laying out for him. I guess he did it anyway. He was very domineering and Charles Darwin was a pretty great thinker, pretty all around good guy. But he also was a bit of a pantywaiste. It seems like he was like really affected by stress. He had a lot of psychosomatic symptoms from stress pretty much throughout his whole life. Despite that, though, he took a very brave course in life and it started when he was 21 and he was on his way to becoming that country parson that his father had decided he would be. And he got an invitation to go on a tour of the islands of South America from a guy named Robert Fitzroy, who is 26 years old. He was an aristocrat and he liked Darwin. He said, hey, you're good at conversations. When I get bored, I suffer bouts of depression. I'm about to go on this boat called the HMS Beagle for God knows how long. So why don't you come along and we can chat and I won't get depressed? And Darwin said, you know what, let's do this. That's right. That's a pretty bold move. Yeah, he was for someone who was, would you say, paniwa's. Yeah, paniwaist. It's sort of surprising that he was up for that kind of adventure. Yes, a milk toast. You could also call him a milk toast. Maybe we'll call him that. All right, so this was an 1831. He boarded the HMS Beagle, which for some reason just cracks me up. You know, our buddy Joe from forward thinking just adopted a dog park beagle and his name's Darwin because of that association, I would imagine. Yeah, that would have been. Joe said, he looks like Darwin head on. He's got a bushy eyebrow. That's funny. All right, so he bought the HMS Beagle. What did you say, how old was he? 21. Yeah. And they took a five year voyage around South America. The purpose for Fitzroy was to chart the waters of South America, the coastlines and that kind of thing. But Chuck was like, I'm into natural stuff and species that I don't know. So what better thing to do than spend, like, most of my time not on the boat, but on land, just researching stuff. I'm sure you got pretty good at rowing from the ship to shore, back and forth. Yeah. He was basically Paul Betney's character and master and commander, which is ironic because Paul Betty played Charles Darwin. Did he really? In that movie Creation? Oh, yeah. I never saw that, but I know what you're talking about. That's funny. You had no idea? No, he stepped right into that one. I wonder if he recognized that. I don't know. It's a good movie, that Creation. You should check it out. It details a lot of the struggles of his life that we're going to go over here. And mainly it's about his anxieties of what he was doing and his relationship to his Christian wife. Oh, yeah. I bet that was kind of a sore spot. Big time. We'll get to that, though, in a second. Okay, so they head off to South America. Yes. He's spending two thirds of the voyage of this five year voyage he spends on land. One of the most famous places he visited was the Galapagos, which are still around. Yeah. And that apparently was really overstated. He was only still around. Is that a joke? The Galapagos are still around. Okay. I thought I was missing on something, because he looked at me like, no, you're missing a joke. No, that's this one. Okay. What was that one you smell? That was my eyes are water. So the Galapagos apparently was a little overstated. It's significance wise. He was only there for about five weeks out of the five years, and historians think it's been overstated because it was so exotic and people wanted to point to some kind of fantastical birthplace of all these ideas. Yeah. I mean, for sure. And he collected all kinds of different specimens from the Galapagos, but it wasn't as big a deal. Have you ever seen the size of the turtles there? Or the tortoises are the huge dude. They're like the size of VW beetles. Wow. They're enormous crazy. And apparently they'll hang out with you. What else are they going to do? Run away slowly? Okay. They have no choice. They have agency. They could be like, I don't want to be here around you. I'm going to go this way. It wouldn't work very well or very quickly. Yeah. Okay. So where are we, man? I was just poopooing the Galapagos. But what he did while he was gone was he did a lot of great work and made a real name for himself and kind of came back a well known scientist, because the whole time he's making all these findings, he's finding new species of animals that Europeans didn't even know existed. Yeah. Like, entire types of animals. He's sending back specimens, which means he killed a lot of animals while he was on these islands. Yeah. Mailed them back to Europe. Mailed back some of his findings. He's basically writing papers as he's doing this journey. So back in the jolly old England, basically, he becomes a celebrity. Yeah. Like before he even returned. Yes. He had the idea of natural selection, but like we said, it was already out there. It was known as the mystery of mysteries or transmutation. And he called his research at first the Transmutation Notebooks. Is that right? Yes. He's researching stuff that he had heard about. It was a working title. It was a working title, actually. What would later become on the Origin of the Species. Of course. Yeah. And he and another guy we'll talk about in a little bit. We're also inspired both were inspired by Thomas Malthus, who we've talked about, who came up with the idea of carrying capacity and basically introduced the idea that scarcity and competition forces adaptation and change. And then Darwin and the guy, Alfred Wallace Russell or Alfred Russell Wallace both read this and said, well, wait a minute, I wonder if that adaptation and change that's forced by scarcity is what creates the change in species that we're seeing here. Yeah, that was definitely the book was called Essay on Principle of Population, and that was like a super game changer because it really gave him the notion that by studying any species death, you can kind of study its life. Yeah, it wasn't just biology that it gave rise to. It gave rise to economics, largely. A lot of anthropology, a lot of ecology. It was, like, you say, a game changer. Thomas Malthus, go back and listen to our Population podcast. Is that where he appears? I think he appears a few times, but that was a good one. Yeah, it's an oldie, but a goodie. So, like we said, he came back sort of a celebrity of sorts, and he came back with a lot of information and settled in at the down house in Kent. And this place was he spent the next 40 years there studying his property. Essentially. He didn't need to go anywhere. He had plenty of nature there. Apparently there were 40 different species per square meter on his property. He had ten kids, and he used them as sort of a little laboratory experiment because three of them died. And he was fascinated with why things and people survive and some don't. So it was all sort of part of his everything was part of his laboratory, essentially. He had people sending him samples from all over the world. And there are some theories that if the postal service hadn't been so good, he may have never been able to write The Origin of the Species because he relied on people sending him stuff in due time. Oh, yeah. And also he was really big on corresponding, which kind of helped develop his ideas, flesh him out even further. He was huge on correspondence. Yeah. He had an area on his property called the Sandwalk that he had built. It was basically just a loop path through the woods. And he would just spend, like, countless hours just walking this path and thinking and looking at everything. Everything, right. Nothing escapes his eye. One of his favorite subjects was Earthworms. Remember our Earthworm podcast? Yeah. There was a quote from him in there where he said, it may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as these lowly organized creatures. He was down with earthworms. Down with earthworms and orchids. Very famously, too. Yeah, he was active. He wasn't just looking at things. He raised orchids, he was a beekeeper, he raised pigeons. And it was all just in the name of study. Right. One of the things, though, he married his first cousin, his wife. Yeah. And at the time, they didn't really know much about the troubles with inbreeding, and he was one of the people who discovered the troubles with inbreeding, and it apparently had a really big effect on him. Like he felt kind of guilty and weird and wondered if maybe his kids early deaths had to do with that. Which has to be kind of startling if you're the guy who discovers the problems with inbreeding and you've inbred. Yeah. It's got to be a little jarring. Sure. Emma Wedgewood was his wife's maiden name. And one thing that happened when he married her was he got more money because she was also in the family fortune. Right. So they were set up pretty nicely. And like I said, she was Christian. And she was amazing, though, like the creation movie, really, like, it's a great love story. Despite the fact that he was agnostic and she was Christian, she spent her life caring for him because he was a very sickly man. May have had some sort of viral disease his entire life. Is that right? Maybe that he picked up in South America. So he wasn't a pennywise. No, he was a pennywise. On top of that, he was just fraught with anxiety, and she cared for him and all the kids and her life's worry was, are we going to spend eternity together in the afterlife? That was her big concern. Yeah. He didn't buy that stuff. No. And he was religious when he was younger, but as he grew older no. The more he exposed himself to these ideas of evolution and natural selection, the less religious, the less he bought into it. And it's funny that that divide first occurred in him and then it just kind of grew out from him to create this divide throughout the world. Yeah. He was the epicenter of that divide. That crack in the world first appeared in him. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. For sure. He's the one to blame. Pretty much. Or he was patient zero, one of the two. So he comes back to Down House, he gets married, settles down, doubles his fortune by marrying Emma, and is experimenting with orchids, earthworms bees, his kids, all this stuff. And he's also, at the same time, writing. He's expanding that notebook into what he's calling natural selection, another working title. And he is taking his sweet time with it. One of the reasons he's taking his sweet time with this is one, he is being very diligent. He's making sure he's crossing all of his T's, dotting his eyes, making sure he's not looking at it wrong, making sure he's backing up everything. And the second connected reason to that first one is that he is really not looking forward to the storm that this is going to create when he unleashes it on the public. He was well aware of it from the beginning because there's a couple of things that are inherent in the theory of natural selection. I'm going to add a third reason, my friend. If you're studying natural selection, evolution, it takes a long time. Oh, yeah. You can't study something for a week and detect changes. And like you said, he was thorough because he lived his life basically in anxiety of not being accepted by these peers. Right. And like, these are people, these are friends of his. So his procrastination is definitely fear driven by his peers and by society at large, and by the fact that it just takes a long time to study something like this. Right. For instance, he left the area of his lawn unmowed for 20 years just to study what would happen, and out of like yeah, that sounds like an excuse. Exactly. But out of like, the 20 different species he studied, eleven survived and nine died away. So, boom, natural selection right there, just in a portion of his lawn. Right, okay. But it took 20 years is the point. Okay. So time, fear of his peers, fear of the public, and he had good reason to fear or be anxious because the world was a much different place than it is now. And he was well aware that what he was about to unleash on society was going to create some big changes and some big problems. And we'll get into that right after this message. 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 twelve. Compodcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast, and start taking charge of your future today. 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, 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.com SYSK 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. So. Chuck we're talking about Darwin. He's at his house, down house. He's working on his manuscript. He's kind of procrastinating a little bit, and because it takes time, too, but he knows that he's about to unleash this complete change in paradigm. A poop storm onto the world. Exactly. And it's because the world was a much different place than it is today. Because Darwin hadn't talked about natural selection yet. Yeah. I mean, religious biology was biology, right. They didn't call it religious biology. That was just biology. Yeah. So he was the first one to secularize it and make it just about the science. Yeah, because before, scientists thought like, well, God created this, and that is our starting point. Like everything else, every other scientific explanation we have has to trace back to creation, which is kind of it can make science a little easier, but at the same time, it leaves you open to a huge problem when somebody comes along and can fill in all these other gaps through a completely different explanation that doesn't use creationism. And that's what Darn was doing with natural selection. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and add a fourth thing, man. You just keep them going. There were two texts that were vital, and we talked about one of them, the Malthus Principle of Population. In 1844, there was a book written called The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, and it was published anonymously for 40 years. No one knew who wrote it because no one wanted to put their name on it. That's how radical it was. And it was slammed. It was hugely popular. It was like a phenomenon. Everybody read it and everybody slammed it, and it came out later. It was a guy named Robert Chambers. He was a Scottish journalist. But it scared the crap out of Darwin. Darwin, yeah. It was a lot of the same ideas as he had. So what it did was it caused him to basically rewrite his voluminous work and pare it down and armor it with sturdier armor over the next 13 months. Very smart. I mean, you could say for him that that was a stroke of luck that was published and he read it and saw what happened. Dude, total stroke of luck. He might have been laughed out of existence if he had gotten there first. So he goes back, redoubles his efforts, strengthens his argument, and again, he's combating not just the religious ideals of the time, but the religious ideals of science yeah. Like most scientists at the time, were deus, and deus believed that God created the universe, basically like a clockmaker makes a clock, wound it up and walked away. Like, See you later. Good luck with everything. And then anything that happened as a result after that was the result of the mechanisms of this clock. And there was a theory that was fairly well accepted called catastrophism. Yes. And that basically sought to account fossils, because fossils were a big sticking point. Why were there clearly extinct animals that had lived before? There's fossils. We have them in our hands. Why do these kind of resemble the things that are alive today? Yes. That doesn't make any sense. Well, catastrophism, which was suggested by a guy named George Cuvier, and Cuvier said, that catastrophism. Which one? I like the second one. Catastrophism. Catastrophism says that something happens volcanoes, floods, pestilence, something very biblical happens, and a species dies out in an area, and a new species comes in and fills it in. And maybe that species, just from living in proximity, was similar, and that explains why some are extinct and some are now here. I would also call that coincidences. Yeah, it's another way to put it. It's another pronunciation. It wasn't, like, super science based. Right. But this was a well respected scientist, and this was the prevailing thought at the time, that creationism and the natural sciences went hand in hand. Creationism was the basis for it. And Darwin is about to say, you know, that basis that everybody built science on for the last several centuries, that doesn't hold water. And then he went and threw up again and again. Apparently, he threw up a lot. Yeah. On the Origin of the Species came out in 1859. He was at a spa, recovering from bouts of nausea. Yeah. So, yeah, he was all thrown up. I feel bad for the guy. Sure. He was just wrecked with anxiety his entire life, but imagine that. Imagine being racked with anxiety and still going through a bit. It's pretty impressive. It is. So, previous to its publication, another important thing happened. We mentioned earlier. Alfred Russell Wallace. He was a fellow Englishman and specimen collector, and he wrote almost exactly the same thing that Darwin had been working on, sent it to Darwin, and people urged them both to present their works at something called the Linnaein Society in 1858. They did so together as a team, but it didn't kind of make much of a splash at the time. It wasn't until he officially published his work that it made the splash. Right. And Alfred Russell Wallace actually was the impetus for him to publish Origin of the Species. Yeah. He'd been sitting there dawdling, waiting, waiting, waiting, procrastinating, not moving along, and he got a letter from Wallace, like you said, and he realized, holy cow, wallace has come up with the. Same thing. Yeah, I've been working on this for 30 years. I'm not going to forget that. Forget my anxiety. I'm just publishing this puppy. Yeah, and he did, and it came out in 1859, and he was hailed as a villain and a genius, depending on who you spoke to. And let's talk about the origin of species and what it says and what natural selection means. Chuck, first of all, the official title of the book is on the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. And that's why everybody calls The Origin of Species, because it's long and wordy, 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. 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 at 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. Comsok 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.com SYSK. But what it basically says is that species adapt. They adapt due to population pressure. They adapt through competition with one another, between species, inside species. That when you see, like, slightly different traits, individual traits to be expected. But those individual traits can ultimately lead to a new species on a long enough time table. If those traits make increase their chance of surviving to reproduction, age and enhance their ability to reproduce. Yeah, right. And if you aren't good at that, then you go, Byebye. Right. And this explains why some species are extinct, why the ones that are here today are the winners. And chillingly, that all this is still going on. It's very slow, so we can't see it happens on a glacial time scale or geologic time scale, but it's still going on. And here's proof. The thing that he doesn't come out in state, but that wasn't lost on the Victorians, especially the religious Victorians, is that inherent in that argument is that man, the king of the world, is nothing more than an animal that evolved from who knows what. Yeah, I bet he fretted over that so much because he believed it. But I think there are only two mentions of mankind in the entire work. But the implications were clear. Like, the public at large may not have been wise to it at first, but scientists were like, wait a minute, are you saying that we came from apes? He's like, I'm at a spa recovering from nausea. I can't be. But, yeah, he definitely skirted around, coming out and saying that upfront in plain English. Yeah. And it caused, like you said, a poop storm. Yeah. And I guess we should say Russell Wallace, he's been sort of lost to history, as far as what most people know. Yeah, it's sad. It is sad, because he was a smart guy, but he had no standing like Darwin did. And that's kind of one of the reasons he was forgotten to history. Right. He was out in the field, and he seemed to be happiest out in the field. After this theory was introduced, he retreated back to the Melee Peninsula to collect specimens. Yes. But he would sell them, which kind of degraded his standing, I think. Right, but he was using those funds to further fund more scientific exploration. It's not like he was funding his opium habit. No, but the point is, Darwin didn't need to sell it. So I think people were like, well, this guy's collecting species and selling them. He's a merchant. Right? Exactly. That's exactly right. And regardless of whether Wallace Russell was a great scientist or not, it didn't matter if you put these two men and their theories were exactly equal, but one was of higher social standing and greater wealth. Well, that guy won, and that was Darwin. Yeah. So Darwin became the fittest exactly. Under Victorian aristocracy rules. But he became, again, the rallying point, the fulcrum, the center of the universe. And this new debate that he unleashed between creationism and evolution, that's still going on today, literally. Not today, but a couple of weeks ago. Right. So almost literally. And he didn't like that at all. So what he said was, you know what? You guys talked this over. I'm going to go hit the spa. Yeah. And grow up, do what you want with it. Right? I'm going away. I've got a lawn de NATMO. But lucky for him, he had a lot of supporters, like, right out of the gate. Yeah, he had both. He had scientists that I think some wanted to say this stuff all along, and now that they had such a wonderful concise and well researched piece of work to back them up, they came out of the woodwork and like, yeah, see, this is great. But some people weren't. In fact, I think oh, I can't remember the guy's name. Someone he really respected and his wife really respected, basically slammed them, called it heresy. And that was really impactful. Again, more anxiety, more thrown up. And there was a lot of name calling, there was a lot of political cartoons that were unflattering and unflattering for the Victorian age. Basically, his head on a monkey or something like that. Right. But while he had his detractors, he had his supporters. And there was one guy in particular named Thomas Huxley, and he was, I believe, the grandfather of algorithm huxley. Oh, yeah. And sometimes if you see Darwin's theory mentioned, you'll see the Darwin Huxley theory, because Huxley basically was a religious man. And Darwin, I think, firsthand not just through The Origin of Species, but through the correspondence as well, convinced him, like, no, dude, natural selection is actually right. And very ironically, just like Saul converting to Paul on the road to Damascus, huxley converts from a religious fervent to a natural selection fervent. And he just takes it with religious zealotry and starts taking on anybody he can in debate, writing any article he can, and defending not just Darwin, but his theory as well. And it came so much so that he came to be known as Darwin's bulldog. And he actually coined the term agnostic. Oh, really? Yeah. He was the one that coined that term to differentiate people like himself who were still believers in God, but also fervent believers in natural selection as well. Yeah. That's pretty cool. So that wasn't the only thing he wrote. That was his life's work for sure. But he wrote eleven more, published eleven more times before 1882, and then finally 1973, which is pretty old for someone who was in such ill health his entire life. Sure. Heart attack finally got him. Yeah. Very sad. It is. But he lived a good, long, nauseated life. That's a good point. So I guess we should talk a little bit about his legacy. Right? Yeah. You do that kind of work, you pass away, you're going to have a legacy. Sure. They name a city in Australia after you. Really? I believe it's Dwind. Australia. Please, God, don't let it be New Zealand. You don't look no. Okay. I'm feeling like a gambling man today. Got you. So his influence from then on, and continues to be today lamb calls it, rightfully so, a paradigm shift in science, society and literature. It can't be understated. It was a game changer for kind of everything and the way things went. You were on one side or the other. It's like neo water. It changes everything. What's that? You haven't seen the ad for the little droplets of flavoring you can add to your water. I've seen that. So you haven't seen the ad where the guy's in the office talking. And as they cut back and forth, everything keeps changing because they're adding meal. It's one of the better ads around. And you know me, I'm an ad aficionado. That's true. Well, one thing we can point to is that Herbert Spencer, he was a sociologist after Darwin, applied Darwinism to sociology in the form of social Darwinism, aka survival of the fittest, which it didn't bastardize it, but he definitely used it for his own purposes to say that, you know what? The week? We shouldn't even worry about the week. If we want to be a strong mankind, then let the weak die out. Well. You know. This sociologist that came up with this idea of social Darwinism. Herbert Spencer. That's a very Malthusian view of humanity and nature. Because Malthus is basically saying. Like. Look. Man. We take care of the poor and everything. But if we do that. We're interfering with nature and we're going to end up overburdening the population because population is going to grow geometrically and we're not going to be able to support ourselves and society is going to collapse. That was what Malthus was saying. This guy said, yeah, it's weird that Darwin was in the middle of kind of both bookended by these two ideas, and I think you can kind of say, like, it really just kind of he was lacking a bit of evil, where if he had been a little more evil, maybe he would have come up with social Darwinism himself. Yeah, but he didn't. Herbert Spencer did. And it kind of took off like a rocket, this idea like, yeah, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. We don't need to pay taxes anymore, right? We don't need to tithe. We can just let the poor die in the streets. It's social Darwinism. Survival of fittest. We don't have to feel guilt for not taking care of these other people any longer. Survival of this. They weren't meant to be. And basically, they replaced God's will with nature's will in explaining the cruelty of the world. And like I said, it took off. It became what we call the eugenics movement very quickly. Yes. Which was the idea that the government would actually get involved in weeding out the weaker parts of society. Yeah. Because you don't have to wait around for evolution to do this. We can speed it up by picking out the weakest and exterminating them, or at the very least, letting them exterminate themselves by only breeding the boys from Brazil. Yeah. I finally saw half of that movie. I can't tell you how surprised I was surprised I was to see Steve Gutenberg. Oh, Goot was one of the kids, wouldn't he? He was like the first one. Yeah. God, I forgot about that. Oh, wait a minute. He was one of the kids from the experiment. No, he wasn't. He was, like, the journalist. Oh, was he blowing the cover off of this whole thing? I haven't seen it in a long time. Yeah, I know. It was creepy, though, so yeah. Possibly gave birth to eugenics, which we should say obviously the Nazis loved. And they used that to rationalize the extermination of the Jews. Gypsies, homosexuals, epileptics, mentally handicapped, the blind, everybody. Guys who smelled like me. Yeah. They would have been in big trouble. Yeah. But prior to the Nazis doing this, the United States, Indiana, Georgia, all sorts of other states forced sterilization on people of similar stature. And actually Adolf Hitler, while Germany had its own sterilization program as well. But Adolf Hitler was apparently well aware of what was going on in America and was a pretty big fan of it. And if you don't believe me, go back and listen to our episode. Is it legal to sterilize attics? Oh, yeah, because it's still going on today. That was a good one. Yeah. So what about this deathbed recant? Have you ever heard that? I have not. True. Apparently so he supposedly said on his deathbed, basically, I took it all back. Yeah. I wish I hadn't have ever said this. It's not true. God is good. God is the one. And a woman from New England named Lady Hope claimed that she was there and took this confession. And both his daughter and his son, who were both at his side while he died, said this lady was not at his deathbed. She never came to our house. Right. And she had absolutely no influence on our father's way of looking or judgment or opinions at all. He never recanted to the end. He was an ardent supporter of natural selection. Yeah. That's a pretty good idea, though, if you're a creationist, to make up that story. The father of evolution even changed his mind on his deathbed. If you look up today on the Internet, I think Darwin deathbed even will bring up creationist website after creationist website that use it to support their claims. Oh, really? But it's bunk. It was debunked right afterwards. Yeah. And then, Chuck, let me say one more thing about social Darwinism, okay? This idea, although in a very cold, calculated sense, it might make sense, it doesn't appear in humanity's history. In fact, there's evidence from up to 500,000 years ago of severely disabled people, fossils, their remains being found where they could not possibly have lived to the age they lived to without being cared for by their community. Wow. So this idea that in a more primitive state, we just left people to die out in the weather because they couldn't keep up doesn't hold water. Well, that's good to know. Yeah, it is very comforting. So that means we were innately have compassion as a species. I would guess that. Yeah. That's the way I like it. I think it's one of the things that makes us human. Agreed. But not just us. No other species have compassion, toots. So maybe we should. Why don't you play us out with a little bit of Darwin, man? Yeah. The last paragraph of The Origin of the Species to me is one of the most beautiful things ever written. So I'm going to read it. Okay. It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank and he's talking about his home in Kent, that patch of grass. Yeah, well, now all of it. It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothes with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects splitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth. And to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws taken in the largest sense being growth with reproduction inheritance, which is almost implied by reproduction variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life and from use and disuse a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for life and as a consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and the extinction of lessimproved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life with its several powers having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one. That's where he's kind of skirting around things. And that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved. Bravo. Good stuff, Chuck. Not me. Both of you. Joe was a great reader. Chuck D. I felt like it was in our Halloween episode again. Oh, yeah. That's good, Chuck. Don't think me, Chuck. I can just read. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I think that was a fine way to end this one. If you want to learn more about Charles Darwin, the man and his ideas, you can type Darwin into the search bar@houseworks.com. It should bring up a whole bunch of articles, some of which we will record in the podcast. Yeah. Or that movie creation is really good. Or if you're into documentaries, there are tons of them. The BBC has got like a dozen. Oh, yeah. They love him there. Sure. Well, since I said search bar, I probably did. It's time for this before the mail, there's a quick correction in our Kent State episode. We said Mussolini had his brown shirts. Yeah, they were the black shirts. Duh. No biggie. It's the presence of all color, not the presence of some colors. Brown is the new black anyway. Is that right? Orange is all right. I'm going to call this amputee. Like amputee. Comma amputee. Hey, guys, been listening for a couple of years now and really enjoy it. As a 60 year old woman who had her right leg amputated above the knee in 1969 due to cancer, I was especially interested in that podcast. First, I want to correct one off hand comment which he stated that being an amputee probably becomes the focus of your life. Not always. In my case, being an amputee did not become the focus. In fact, occasionally friends forget that I am an amputee now. I consider it a compliment. As you said, life isn't over because a person becomes an amputee. I was married for 20 years, went to graduate school for my master's degree in counseling psychology. I have two wonderful grown children. I worked from the age of 14 to 55 with time off for raising kids and attended graduate school and have been able to travel quite a bit. I've been lucky not to have experienced phantom pain. I have always had and have been told by my doctors, will always have phantom feeling, though. That is so weird. I know. It feels as though my amputated leg is present, but as sweet, sort of a benign prickly feeling. The feeling quickly faded into the background and I only notice it now when I'm thinking about it. You may be interested also to know that the artificial leg I received in 1969 was literally a wooden leg away from the knee down. I'm now on my fourth prosthesis. I thought she was going to say like an old Bessie. Still with me? I'm now in my fourth prosthesis, and they get better and better. My current leg is very high tech and impressive. It can make coffee. That is from Denise Slattengren. Awesome. From Arcada, California. Nice. Not Arcadia. It's Northern California. A-R-C-A-T-A Thanks, Denise. You sound like a very well adjusted person, and we appreciate you writing and calling us out on that. And I hope you still have old Betty on the shelf somewhere. At least. Betsy. Chuck betsy. Yeah, I would keep it. Just got it carved into the side. Nice. Yeah. Thanks for writing in. And if any of you out there want to write in, share your story. We love hearing them. We're pretty much like the central clearinghouse for people's stories, so bring them to us. We will disseminate them as best we can. You can hang out with us on Twitter. S-Y-S-K. Podcast. You can hang out with us on Facebook. Comstuffynow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. Check out the stuff you should know television network on our YouTube channel. Josh and Chuck. And, as always, hang out with us on our home on the web. Stuff you should know. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them Halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics. For Digestive health, find us at chewy amazon and Halo pesticides.com." | ||
c4421996-5460-11e8-b38c-9798fc0d2d92 | SYSK Selects: How Caving Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-caving-works | Entrances to the underworld have been places of wonder for eons, and humans have ventured into caves to sleep, hunt, create art and explore. Thanks to the hobby of caving, that tradition continues today. Get all this plus Chuck discussing his caving experience, in this classic episode. | Entrances to the underworld have been places of wonder for eons, and humans have ventured into caves to sleep, hunt, create art and explore. Thanks to the hobby of caving, that tradition continues today. Get all this plus Chuck discussing his caving experience, in this classic episode. | Sat, 09 May 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=130, tm_isdst=0) | 47725169 | 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, it's me, Josh. And for this week's SYSK selects I've chosen our episode on caving. We had already done an episode on Biospeligy, which is about animals that live in caves. We kind of touch on that too. But this is all of the ins and outs, if you'll excuse the unintentional pun, about caving. And you are going to love it. It's just a great, thorough, classic example of stuff you should know. So check it out. Starting now. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I am an MC of sorts. Not the cool kind, the boring kind. With me, as always is MC. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. He's the same kind of MC that I am. Sucker MC. No, not even. Okay, we're not even sucker MC. We're too square for that. Even. So sad. Maybe sucker MC, but certainly not with an A. Yeah, I'm a sucker, right MC. Yeah. Two square to be a sucker. That is a t shirt. Well, I'll bet it is now. Number two, the square shape. Number two, the letter B or two squared. Two with two to the second power. Two squared to be a sucker. Yeah, that's it. We've reached the point where you say stuff and people make t shirts of it. One of these, though. We're going to hit it rich and we can quit this whole podcast in game. Retire on our fortune. Never will be rich oldman podcasting. Still, if only. Hi, Chuck. Hey. Are you doing well? Yeah. I think I remembered that you actually have done this before, what we're about to talk about. I have. And you had a good time, didn't you? Yeah, I'll be offering my personal insights along the way. Good. I was hoping so. That's what I was getting at. Yes. Okay. So I read this article in Slate. It's called America's ancient cave art. And back in the late seventy s, there were a couple of friends who worked for the US forestry Service and I think Tennessee, and they were running around the forest and they found a cave and they started to explore it and they went into it and they noticed there were all these weird scratches on the wall. And when they looked a little closer, like wait that's not a scratch. That's a snake with horns, and that's a bird that is tearing the head off of something else. And one of them luckily realized that these are all images associated with what's called the Southeastern ceremonial complex, or more coolly named the Southern Death Cult, which sprung up around the southeastern United States inexplicably about 1200 years ago. There was, like, the author of the article called a religious outbreak that they have no idea where it came from. But the weird thing about this is that these drawings were completely preserved. Like, you could still smear the charcoal. Oh, wow. And even though they were anywhere from 500. And then they found some others that are up to, like 6000 years old, and they're all in this enormous elaborate cave system in the southeastern United States, specifically the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. But what's most remarkable, aside from their preservation, is that some of these are like a mile into the cave. Wow. So some of the Mississippian people were running around, walking a mile into a cave to leave this art, and it was perfectly preserved. That's pretty cool. Even though almost every other trace of this religious outbreak, the Southern Death cult is just gone. Wow. Isn't that cool? That's awesome. So I bring that up because that is one of the big reasons that people go caving, which ultimately is entering a cave. Once you walk into a cave, you're caving, right? Yeah, I think so. Wasn't Southern Death Cult the original name of the cult, the band? Yes, it was. And they changed it. Southern death so much better. Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's one of the coolest names anyone's ever come up with. And it's an archeological term. Yeah. So it's got academic meaning as well. Right. All right, well, aside from the poor name change, I like the band. Yeah, it's a good band. I used to. You don't like them anymore? Well, I mean, it's just that sort of represented like, high school to me in early college. They still hold up. Yeah. It's not like I don't like it. I got you. Billy Duffy plays a mean guitar. All right, so spellunking, should we go ahead and get this out of the way? That's another word for caving. There an Atari game named Spelunker. I think so. But cavers don't really use that term a lot. They use it derogatorily. Yeah, I think that is the case. I'm trying to remember because I went caving, like you said. Go ahead and set that up for the rest of the show with my former neighbor who was a fan of the show. Your former neighbor? Do you guys have a spat? Yeah, we don't talk anymore. I refuse to acknowledge his present. No, he moved. Okay. That's the other way that happened. Yeah. He lives across the street and left a letter in my mailbox one day and was like, hey, dude, I heard you mentioned it. Might have been after the biosphereology, I'm, which will touch on it again, said, I'm an experienced caber. Me and my buddy would love to take you. And you guys, too. You and you. Yeah. We were invited originally. It was all four of us, and it ended up being just me. Right. The day came, I was like, let's see. Crawl around in the cold in a cave, get wet and muddy. I'm going to stay home, boy. After I did it, I was like, I'm so glad Emily and you, me and Josh didn't come. You guys wouldn't like it. Yeah. There's a good picture of you on Facebook where you're covered in mud. Yes. I'll post more pictures when this comes out. Okay. Yeah. I'll touch on it as we go. But the first thing I want to point out is that a cave can be a thing that you picture when you picture a cave. Which is like. You're walking along and there's a big huge entrance that you're looking at. And you walk in. Or in this case. It can be a little hole in the ground. Which is when I walked by. I was like. That's where we're going? And he was like, yeah. I was like, really? It's like a two foot little hole in the ground. Yeah. It looked like maybe a place where foxes live or something. Yeah. He's like, no, that's how you get in there. I was like, okay. You're like, that's how you get in there, pal. But it ended up being, aside from the most physically challenging thing I've ever done, one of the coolest things I've done. Yeah, it was very difficult, but I mean, you nail it on the head. A cave is basically any opening from the surface below ground yeah. Into the earth. Right. And for the most part, when we think of a cave, it's part of something called a carset landscape, which is characterized by, like, sinkholes underground, aquifers subterranean drainage, caves, a cave system. It's technically called a cart landscape. Yeah. Well, once you read that, you kind of take it for granted. But if you never really thought about it I hadn't ever thought about it. I was like, well, why are these caves even here? Right? Someone didn't come in here and carve these out. No, but some natural processes, too. That's right. There's actually four main ways that caves are created, right? Yeah. Most caves are limestone caves, and you get those when rainwater seeps down through the soil, picks up some CO2 along the way, and that forms carbonic acid, which is kind of weak. It is. But if you have carbonic acid present in the same area for eons, it's going to eventually eat away at even stone. Yeah. Like limestone. And that's basically what happens. It either collects there for a long time or is rushed in there by rain and corrosion is what happens. It's erosion through abrasion. Through abrasion. Just basically rainwater running over something long enough, it's going to erode it. And that is how you get a cave one way. Yeah, that's the main way. I think you've got Extremophiles, which is kind of cool. We're starting to realize I think we talked about them in the Are we All Martin episode. Yeah. We have an article on Extrema files that I have earmarked for us. Okay. That's pretty good. They are basically bacteria that live and thrive in toxic environments. Yeah. Like places where nothing else lives. Right. High sulfuric content. Or really high temperatures. Or really low temperatures. They're the only things that live there. And they are starting to realize that they have a pretty big impact on cave formation. For example, there are some that like to eat oil underground. I never knew this. And they eat and eat, and then they shoot ducks of sulfide gas. Right. And the sulfide gas goes up and up and up as gas wants to do, and it travels through groundwater, picks up oxygen and becomes sulfuric acid. And that really starts to eat away at caves. Yeah. That's probably more so, I think, than Cerbonic. Yeah. Which is you probably want to look out for the sulfuric acid, like in a cave system. If you're ever caving. I would say so. Yeah. So that's number two sea caves you'll see a lot. If you ever do sea kayaking and stuff around the island, you might venture into a sea cave. It's pretty cool. They are basically just water pounding away at the sea side cliffs to the point where they form caves. Yeah. Pretty easy. Yeah. Did you ever see the orphanage? The German DelToro movie? No. Dude. You've not seen that? I almost watched it last week. That is one of the best ghost movies ever made. Yes. I was by myself, and I wanted to watch something scary because it was happening. That's it. And I searched around on the Internet for, like, what's a really good scary movie? Not some crappy scary movie. And that was on the list. And I ended up searching and researching for so long, I didn't watch anything. I went to sleep. You should have asked me. Or go on to the social medias. Like, I was looking for some scary movies and got into a conversation with Joe Randallo and a couple of other people and ended up with this list of, like, great horror movies, and all of them panned out. Awesomely. I need the Devil. Have you seen that? No. Dude, that was another one recommended. I love del toro too. Dude, is this like the Spanish Civil War era orphanage? No. What is that one called? I know the one you're talking about. Devil's Backbone. Yeah, I saw that one. That's okay. Compared to the orphanage, it might as well have been like Pewee's Playhouse. Hey, I like PII. No, I mean, as far as lightfare goes. Yeah. Okay. It's just so much better. I'm watching it. Yeah. And watch House of the Devil too. It's pretty good. I think you'll like that a lot. Yes. I like good scary. I don't like all that crappy saw, like stuff like shocking torture porn crap. I like the first couple of thoughts. Yeah. All right. So that's the third way that caves are. Well, that was a good one. The fourth is lava tubes. When lava comes up through a volcano and it shoots up, if the conditions are right, the outer part will cool more quickly than the creamy, gooey middle. Yeah. And when that happens, our shell will come together and form this coherent crust, and the stuff in the middle might fall back down. Right. You get yourself a tube. You have a tube of lava. Now, if at the top of this top cave zone, or crumbles, all of a sudden you have an entrance. And the lava tube is now a cave, because, again, cave is any entry from the above ground to hell. I imagine the lava tube caves are pretty interesting to explore. Yeah, but I'm a limestone guy. Well, I mean, you don't spend much time in Hawaii. If you did, I'll bet you'd be a lava tube guy, too. Yeah, you're probably right. All right. So once you're in the cave, you're going to notice a couple of things straight away. Stalactites and stalagmites. Okay. Which is which? Man, I feel like we have a golden opportunity here to explain this to thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of people. It's very easy. There's a lot of little ways you can remember maybe millions of people stalactites. And then that is what the C are, the ones that hang down. And you can remember that by maybe hold on tight. Stalag tight. They got to hold on tight. Yeah, because it's not stalag tight and stalag tight. Or stalagmite and stalagmite. It's stalactite, yes. With a C and then stalagmite with a G and an M. So that helps, too, because you have C for ceiling or G for ground. Great. There, you just did it. Or T for top, if that helps you. We give you three ways to remember this. I don't think that we're I don't I think I messed it up. This is so simple for a second, and then I'm sorry, everyone. So stalactites hang down. Stalagmites come up from the bottom. They are spleotherms, which is a cave formation. And this happens when carbonic acid eats away at the slime stone and it starts dripping the calcite mineral from rainwater. Yeah. It's just kind of trickling in over centuries. Yeah. And as it is, it's depositing that calcium, right? Yeah. So it drips down from the top, so it forms and then it will not drip up, but collect and form up from the bottom. Sometimes they'll meet and form a column, which is really cool. Yeah, it is. But these things grow at a rate of a quarter inch to an inch per century. Wow. So you can't sit around and watch the stalactite form. That's basically the rule of thumb. So the rainwater comes down and drips down, and whatever deposits are at the top going down is a stalactite. That's right. And it drips down under the ground and builds a formation that grows up towards the top. Yes, that's a stalagmite. And that's why you usually find them together. And stalassine is actually the Greek derivative. It means to drip. Really? So there you have it. That's great, man. And they did mention I looked this up because I've never seen them other spelliotherms like fried eggs and bacon. Did you look these up? No, it's pretty neat. It looks like a fried egg. This weekend formation. Yeah. Looks like it's large and round and has a center that's very round as well. And then the bacon stuff, it looks like bacon strips. It's like these little strip like formations that have different colored patterns that look like the fatty part of the bacon or the meaty part. Right. And it looks like fried eggs and bacon. I feel like I saw the fried egg one before. Yeah, you probably have. When I saw it, I was like, oh, that's what that is. Fried eggs and bacon. I had to see it because the name wasn't descriptive enough. Yeah. And this just proves that splitters are fun loving people. Right. So while you're in the cave, you're probably going to run into certain kinds of animals. And as speculologists love to do, they've classified these things in categories, right? Yeah. We talked about these in biosphere. The right. Creepy cave dwelling things. Yes. If you haven't heard that episode, go check it out. It's all about caves and the stuff. Living in caves. Really cool. But the troglazines, those are temporary visitors, like a bear maybe hibernating in a cave. They live most of their lives outside of the cave and come in for shelter, food or something like that. Then there's a chocolate of files. That means they love the trog. They do. They spend most of their life there. Right. But they will come out some for food. Yeah. But they spend most of their lives in the Cape, right? Yeah. Salamanders crickets. Daddy Longlegs. Yeah, daddy Long legs. And other spiders love them. And then there's the chuggle of bites. Yeah. Those are ones who live their entire lives within the dark zone of the cave. And usually they don't have eyes. And apparently, without exception, they're all blind. Like the prometheus. Salamander yeah, I remember that thing. The Ozark blind. Salamander the tooth cave spider, which isn't as creepy looking as it sounds. I expected to see, like, something out of a B movie, but it was just like a little skinny spider. Okay, but if you name something the tooth cave spider, you expect some really scary looking thing. Yeah. Or something with glasses and huge buck teeth. Yeah, same with the tooth cave beetle and they're also blind fish and shrimp and all manner of little white creepy creatures. Yeah. They lack pigment because they don't need it. Yeah, like screw pigment. What do we need that for? And then this kind of stuck out to me the idea that it's always the average annual temperature of the surface above the cave within the cave. So if it's the average temperature over the course of an entire year in the spot above a cave is 65 degrees, it's always 65 degrees in the cave. Not true. Oh that's not true? No. So the temperatures in a cave are very stable but depending on how deep it is, the closer you get to the center of the earth, the warmer it gets. So that has an effect. And just like above ground with the sun warming the surface differently causes weather, different amounts of heat inside a cave what we wouldn't recognize is weather but actual weather itself. So is this wrong? Yes. The way it's stated, it's always the average annual temperature. Yeah, but generally it is yeah, it's usually very stable and it's very close to that. But we're finding now that there is actual weather that happens in a cave just like we found out there are seasons on the bottom of the sea floor. It seems like the same thing to us but there's actually like seasons and changes that we didn't recognize because that's what you don't think of it that way. Yeah. Caves sometimes can be dry and dusty. I guess it all depends on where you are in the country. But when I went to and like many caves are wet and muddy and I was not expecting that. I was not expecting a lot of what I encountered actually. Really? Were you prepared for a wet money? Oh yeah, they told me what to wear and we'll get into all that stuff but I don't know, I thought I was going to be walking into a thing and then walking around sort of like the kid caves that you can take the whole family to. Right, but yeah, it wasn't like that at all. It was being dropped into a muddy, wet, cold hell. Yeah, and you looked like it too, man, afterward. Yeah. You were really glad to be top side again. It was weird coming out, I'll say that. So why did you go? Why would anybody go? What's the allure of Caving, the unknown and the thrill of discovery. Oh yeah. Well it's true though, that's what the article says. But I don't mean to be glib. It is very cool and way different down there. Like you get a sense that it is not the same topside as it is in the bowels of the earth. Very different place and very cool to experience firsthand. And as we mentioned, there's a lot of good opportunities for cave archeology because the climate and temperature in the cave is so stable. Things left in caves are really well preserved. Yeah. And the caves were a good place for ancient rituals and things. And they mentioned the cave art in France. Yeah. In let's go. Have you seen this stuff? Yeah. Holy cow. It looks like artwork painted on canvas. Some of it does. It's not like, just scratchy cave drawings. Like, this stuff is really beautiful. Yeah. And they found this in they discovered this in France from the Paleo lithic era. 17 to 20,000 years old. And over 2000 figures drawn, from what I understand, like, the granddaddy of all cave drawing scores was here in France. Here in France. There in France. Well, there's also another one called Chauvet Cave in France. And that's what Warner, herzog's cave of forgotten dreams is. I never saw that. Oh, you didn't? I'll watch anything that he's in now, or narrates. He does so much narrating. He's a bad guy. Is it the new bond? No. Is that right? No, he's a bad guy in some movie coming up. And I was like, that's brilliant. Yeah. No one sounds more diabolical than Bernard's. Yeah, it's perfect. But yeah, that's a good one, too. I think they shot it in 3D as well. It's supposed to be, like, really good. Oh, wow. Check that one out. It's very interesting because they figure out that they're like, why would these idiots draw bison with eight legs? Was there an eight legged bison back then? Somebody figured out that if you look at it by torch light not electric torch, but real fire torch. Does it move? It moves. Oh, my God. That is so cool. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. I highly recommend you guys go and Google Image these. L-A-S-C-A-U-X. France. And it's all over the place. And what was the other one? Chauvet. C-H-U-V-E-T. Yeah. Very cool stuff. And see Kava forgotten Dreams, if you're into that. I mean, it's a lot of cattle drawings, granted, but it's better than you would think, right, considering they're doing this on a cave 20,000 years ago. Exactly. There's also biospeley, which we talked about at length, and we don't need to really get into here, go listen to the biospeeliology episode. But that's another reason people go through caves. But ultimately, I think the first sentence was the right one. It's like the thrill of discovery and unknown. There's so few people doing any actual caving and enough caves out there that you got a pretty good shot of finding something that no one else has seen for 10,000 years or maybe ever. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And cavers, too. Part of being a caver or a speedleyologist is being into conservation and preservation. And that's one thing I learned from my buddy Eric and his friend. They were like casual speed lunkers that were in there. Clearly didn't know what they were doing, weren't dressed for it, didn't have the proper equipment, and of course, these guys are just like, these are the people that get us in trouble or that get in trouble, that we need to come help get out of trouble. But I think serious cavers are uniformly way into preserving the cave. Sure. Like, they don't just go cave and like, yeah, that was cool. They're all into the meetings and the preservation. A lot of them do the volunteer for search and rescue and stuff like that. They really get into it. It's not a casual affair. No. That idea actually extends to urban spelunking or urban exploration. Yeah. Where you enter something like a sewer system or an abandoned building or something like that. But one of the big rules is that you can't break and enter. You can enter. Somebody else has already cut a hole in the chain link fence. You go through that hole, you can't cut that hole yourself. And you don't take anything. You preserve the place exactly the way it was. And we actually have, I think, what's, a new article on the site. That is awesome. Top ten cities for urban exploration. Oh, yeah. It's, like, got all these attractions of where to go in the city and what to explore. It's very cool. Well, Francis the catacombs I know are really popular. Yeah. And I did a little bit of that in Florida. In Fort Pickens, in Pensacola. Oh, the fort pickens catacombs. Well, the fort pickens battery. It was like Civil War battery. Oh, yeah. And I think it's all blocked off now, but at the time, the metal bars were bent enough where you could get through, and me and my brother and my brother in law, like, made torches and went all through the stuff. Where did you find stuff written on the walls from the Civil War and then stuff written on the walls. Clearly more modern in nature, but just graffiti and stuff and beer cans. But it was just neat walking around. Yeah, it's cool. What else, Chuck? How to get started? Yeah. I guess if this podcast tickles your fancy, then you may want to know how to get into this. Yeah. A lot of people might be into the very easy guided, you walk in and you walk around type of experience. Right. Take the kids. There's nothing wrong with it. You can still learn a lot. It's not a cop out like Carlsbad Caverns and, like, the real touristy ones. They're great. Yes. Have you ever been there? I haven't been there. I've been to Ruby Falls. You mean I went yeah. Ruby Falls is nice. It was, yeah, and there were plenty of people running around. It was very well lit, safe. Yeah. But it was so awesome getting to the Falls. Yes, it was great. I think part of the reason I appreciate it so much, because I took it for what it was, it was like, this is tourism, you know? Yeah. But it's also very cool yeah. I mean, you're walking underneath a fault line in the earth. It's really kind of you can sell T shirts afterward, but it's still very cool to be in there. Exactly. So you can do that. You can go to these, like, really big touristy ones and still get a nice experience, or you can get a guided tour for a little more intense experience. Have you been? In Carlsbad Cavern. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's nice. It's lovely. It's like red carpet everywhere. Yeah. Couches everywhere. But they do mentioned in this article that kids are great to take into caves. They love that kind of stuff. Obviously, you want to keep an eye on them because it's pretty easy to get lost in there. Yeah. But these big, major attractions, they take care of you. Right. You're not going to let your kids go off and live with the Salamanders. Yeah. And you've got a guide for the guided tour. But even self guided tours, it's usually, like paved or clearly marked trail. You're going to have a lot of trouble getting lost if you get off of this trail. Or if you stay on the trail, I should say. Yeah. I went to a concert in a cave one time. Really? Yeah, in Tennessee. Man, what's the name of it? Something Caverns. I can't remember now. But the Silver Jews played their last show ever in this cave. And they have regular shows there. Usually it's like bluegrass and stuff, but it's awesome. Like, you park in this big field, and then it's one of these where you walk into a huge opening and there's big paths, but you walk, like, probably half a mile down in there, and then it opens up to this huge open room, and there's a stage, and there's lights and everything. That's a cool it's really cool experience. I wonder what the green room is like there. I don't know. It's probably brown. Right? Just sit on that rock and we'll bring you some shrimp. Yeah. It was really very cool show, though. I might post pictures of that, too. Okay. Wow. It's going to be a picture of an anza. Then there's cave diving. Yes. Probably the most dangerous thing a person can do. Yeah, we can't overstate that enough. Like, even these cavers dudes that I was with that are hardcore. They were like, Those people are crazy. Yeah. And if you're a hardcore scuba diver, even a wreck diver, that doesn't mean you're a cave diver. No, cave diver is its own thing. Yeah. And it's very easy to die in 2012. Seven people already died in a cave diving in 2012 now. Wow. Three of them in three different days. Three consecutive days in Florida in three different incidents in March. Yes. It's scary. And I asked Eric, I was like, well, what's the big deal? And he's like, Dude, you got to be crazy to do it. He's like, you are underground, underwater, and it's very. Easy to get lost and turned around and you've only got so much air. They say that to never like to try and exit with half a tank of air still or whatever. It's not air. What is it? It's compressed air. Okay. Compressed air. There's like an air mix, but it's generally air. Yeah, but they're like you don't want to go below half a tank ever. That's just scary. I'm sure. And after we went Caving, he took me to the entry point for the cave diving nearby. And it's this little probably ten foot by ten foot hole, little pool, but it's like, infinitely deep. Right. And it's like wow. So you can jump in and just sort of waddle around or below that, there is the tube where you enter. And it just seemed like the scariest thing ever. Right. With a tank of air on your back that could be punctured by anything because it's not like there's not stalactites hanging down. Yeah. It's utterly frightening to me. That said, if you are in a cave diving and you go through the certification and you are into that kind of thing, there's some awesome cave diving, like cenotes, any cenotes. Yeah. And there's a place that I missed when we were talking about the Abandoned Mines podcast. There's a place called Bonter Mine in Missouri, and it's an old lead mine that was in production for, like, 100 years, and then they closed it down in 1960, and they didn't remove anything. There's, like, magazines. All this stuff is still sitting around, and they flooded it with, like, a billion gallons of crystal clear water. Really? And you can go scuba dive. You can cave dive this abandoned mine now. Wow. And see, there's like an old movie theater down there. Really? There's minecars elevators. Yeah, it's pretty cool. That's awesome. Yeah. But it's like the visibility is just limitless. Wow. Yeah. I wonder if that's slightly safer. I think it's pretty heavily guided as far as tours go. So if you're going to start somewhere, that would probably be a good place. Okay. Yeah. I saw a couple of dudes come out of the hole, and all the cavers know each other, it seems like, because they knew these guys and they were like, oh, yeah, these guys are really nice. And then they turned around, they're like, they're nuts. These guys are crazy. Yeah. Oh, so all the cavers know each other because they're all members of Grottos, right? Yeah, it definitely seems like a close knit community. Right. Like, they're all on each other that have each other's contact info, because when someone gets lost, they send out who can come and help, basically. Right. Who's free tomorrow, right. To come and find these idiots tomorrow. They're in trouble if it's tomorrow. Yeah, that's true. Well, a Grotto is a Caving club, right? And any legitimate Caving club is sanctioned by the National Speedological Society. And there's about 200 Caving clubs or grottos in the US. Nice. Wow. So if you're a member of a grotto, if you're a caver, what are some of the things that you're going to need? You're already into this. You're like, come on, let's go. What are we going to do? What do I need to take with me? Well, you want to take three forms of light and plenty of backup batteries. And take glow sticks, take the headlamps, take lighters, even though those will get wet. You can bag them in the dry bag, but take as many forms of light as you feel comfortable with. That's not less than three. And not only I took like four or five flights. That's smart. Yeah. And I knew I was going to be fine, but I was just like, you know what? I'm going into the depths of the Earth. I want to have lots of light at my disposal. Right. And you want to also have lots of batteries and extra bulbs for those light sources. Sure. Because your light is the number one most important thing when you're caving, that's the number one most important piece of equipment. Yeah. And my buddy Eric had a carbide lamp, which back in the day, even car headlights and lights on the fronts of houses, it wasn't always a gas lamp. Sometimes it was carbide. And old school cavers used these things, and it's basically a chemical reaction. It burns acetylene gas and it's created from a reaction of calcium carbide with water. So he had this pod that he carried on his belt that had carbide pellets in it, and it would drip water down and create the gas. And it fed it up through a tube connected to the gas lamp that he's wearing on his head. And it was really cool. The other guy didn't have one, but Eric used it. And the light that it gives is just really very illuminating. It's not like, you know how incandescent light is just so specific. Even if it's like a broad range, it's not like having a flame. Right. So this thing really warms up the cave and does actually warm it slightly, but just generally with light warmth. Right. It's just like the cave was illuminated, not like a flashlight shining on something. Right. Very cool. Nice and very durable. Like, if you take care of these things, they're a little finicky, but if you take care of them, you can have them, like your whole life. Sounds kind of new fangled. No, it's very old school. Well, old fangled. Yeah, it's old fangled. Yeah. And you just look cool. Eric looked like a cool guy with his tube running out of his head and flicking the little lighter switch. And he looked cooler than I did. Right. With my glow stick. Yeah, with my glow stick. So you need light. You need light. You need a helmet. And you want your helmet to be certified by the Union International Day Association del peas. Me? Yes. Jerry just laughed at me. You want a helmet? And this is if you want to do it right safely. We saw morons and tank tops and shorts walking around and crawling around, and these guys were just rolling their eyes. Those are the people that get hurt and get lost. Right. We had knee pads and elbow pads, helmets. As far as safety gear, that was pretty much it. And they had, like, rope and stuff, just in case. And you want to dress appropriately in layers. Avoid cotton. Well, if you are wearing cotton, you want to wear under layers of synthetics yes. Snag less easily. They dry more quickly. I would imagine you just want to avoid cotton altogether, if possible. Yeah. Or one of those, like, synthetic wicking shirts. The workout shirts. Yeah. But you do you want to dress in layers because it's cold in there, but you may raise your heart rate here or there, and you may get a little warm. That definitely makes my heart rate. Yes. You're going to get wet. Most likely. You can be in a dry, dusty cave, but chances are you're going to get wet. There were times where we were up to our chest in a crevice about 2ft wide up to our chest in water, and it's intimidating. It's like, I'm far away from anybody. And what if this water rises? I mean, it didn't, but what if it started raining? These things can happen pretty fast down there. Correct. We were literally soaked to the bone. It's like getting in a swimming pool, and then you get out and you're covered in mud, and you're supposed to climb things. That's like climbing a greased wall of stone. I'm like, Am I supposed to really do this? And they were, like, pushing me by my butt. It was sort of embarrassing, like, pulling me. I felt like a stuck pig at times. The only thing that made it better was the warm glow of the carbide lamp. And then they had the pancakes where it's like, I'm surprised my body fit in this thing. And you had to go, like, 30ft across this pancake. What is it? Well, it's where there's a top rock and a bottom rock. So basically, you just I got you. There's, like, a foot of space to crawl through, and you can't even crawl. You're, like, inching using your shoulder blades. I would have lost my mind. You would not have liked this pancake. And that's when I remembered thinking, boy, Josh would not have liked this part. No, it was uncomfortable for me, and I don't even have issues with, like, you know, closing spaces. But you feel like, what if the Earth shifted and this thing just smashed me? Yeah, of course the earth doesn't shift like that, but I don't know, it could. I'm down there. I'm freaking out. Yeah. And you made it, though. I don't want to spoil it. Yeah, you survived what else do you need? Food and water. Yeah, sure. You want enough to last your whole trip and then some, just in case, like, you want gloves, you want a first aid kit. Yeah. And here's my favorite part. So we were talking about how, like, you do, you just preserve the environment exactly as it was found. This also means that you're not allowed to poop there. You can poop there, but you're going to poop into, like, a plastic container that you can carry out with you because you take your urine and your feces out of the cave with you. So you want a plastic bottle to pee into and, like, a good crush proof container to poop into. I did not poop. I wouldn't have pooped. I'd just be like, Well, I guess I'm not pooping today. Yeah, I was only down there a few hours, so if you can't hold your poop a few hours, you probably shouldn't be caving that day, man. Just put it off. Imagine getting sick down there. Oh, like vomiting? No, I'm not sure what you mean. The other kind. Oh, like poopy sick? Yeah, that would be awful. If you have a cave map, which you should have, bring a few copies, put them in, ziplocs, hand them out to your friends that you're with. Make sure everyone knows what's going on. Right. And you also want to probably leave one at home with an X marks the spot of your route. Sure. Well, at least it's the case safety, doesn't it? Yeah. There's a lot of precautions you should be taking before you set out. You know what you're doing. Do not take it lightly. It's not like a hike that you can go on, so it's definitely different. You should go with someone that knows what they're doing, at the very least. A couple of people would be even better. They say not to go in really large groups because you could leave someone behind easier. Like, four to six people right. Is a good number. And you want to put the slowest person at the front of the group. That would have been me. So everybody's kind of pushing them from behind sometimes, literally. And the reason why is because that person doesn't get left behind. That makes the whole group stick together. And if you're into passive aggressive peer pressure, that's great. That's a great situation for everybody. Yeah. No, you're fine. I know. That's what they kept saying, too. You're doing great, buddy. And I was like, no, I'm not. I know. I'm the guy. You also never, ever want to go caving alone. I don't think there's a better sentence that's ever been spoken by anybody. Never go caving alone. It's a good idea if you do get lost. They say to stay put and that it's better to stay put instead of moving around, because at least you're where you last were. Right. You are where you last were. Well, you're where you said you were going to be? Yeah, at least roughly. If your light goes out and you're alone start screaming at the top of your lungs until someone comes and gets you, that's probably not a bad idea, but they say not to freak out. But yeah, I would definitely try to make a little noise. Although you also don't want to attract the descent. Hail, bili. Yeah, whatever those were, they were mountain folk. You know what? That was a lot like Lovecraft Story. Was it? I can't remember the name of it, but there's a whole thing that takes place in the Alleghenies, maybe Adirondacks somewhere up there where this family that was, like, kind of mountain folk came to embreed and eventually moved underground. It's one of his best ones, man. We should do a podcast on him. Okay. What a twisted mind. Yeah, well, we did the Necronomic, I remember. Yes, but let's just do it on his life. Okay. What made him tick? Let's do it while we're at it real quick. Dude. I found a real legitimate physics paper or written by a legitimate physicist that explains how certain events in lovecraft, the Call of Cthulhu can be explained away by quantum physics. Really? Yeah. It's specifically a gravitational lensing to explain what Cthulhu is, or no, like, what happened to this guy who went mad and described this crazy place that he went and stumbled upon in the South Pacific and then came back and wrote about it. They were like, well, actually wait a minute. What he's talking about is a quantum bubble. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. He works out math and formulas for explaining all this, but the rest of it is really interesting. Wow. Yeah. I can't remember what it's called, but probably look up the physics of the Call of Cthulhu and I'm sure it'll bring it up. It's a good one. That's awesome. So what are some of the big problems you're going to run into, Chuck? Aside from getting lost or running out of light? Hypothermia. Right. Always a concern when you're cold and wet, like I said earlier, flooding of passages, which I was worried about the whole time. Slipping, falling. I was slipping all over the place. It's going to happen in these muddy caves. And I just sort of slid and tried not to pick my face up off the rock. Right. But I definitely got bumps and bruises, and I was really sore the next day. It was like mountain climbing, except underground. And the mountain was slick and muddy. Yes. That's basically kind of what it felt like. Rock climbing was not what I thought it was going to be. Once again, I can't stress that enough. It's not a stroll. I ate my bologna semens by 10:00 a.m.. Yeah, it was pretty bad, but super fun. And like I said, when you come out, man, it's so weird once you've been underground for that long, when you come out to the real world. Everything is just like hyper colorful and bright and just weird. And it's like, man, there's a whole different world down there that most people don't know about. Nice. I highly encourage it. Just be careful. Yeah, I think that's good advice. Is there anything else in here? Always make sure that several people above ground know where you went, know where you're going, know when you expect to be back. Yeah. And if somebody does get hurt, never leave that person alone. Right. A couple of people have to stay with them. A couple of people have to go top side. The people who go top side need to leave some of their supplies and light and stuff and water back with the people who are hanging out with the injured person. Yeah. They need to know exactly where the injured person is so they can tell other people who can come get them out. Right. And they also need to remember to take the car keys with them. Telephones. And really kind of important. You don't want to get all the way out there and be like, can you imagine I left the keys in there? Yes, that would suck. And then like you said, if you ever get lost, you don't want to panic. You want to stay put. You want to rely on your plan, your backup plan, which was letting a bunch of people know that you were supposed to have been home 2 hours ago and you weren't. That's right. And there are thousands of caves in the US. Many of which are very explorable. Just do your research beforehand. Go with someone that knows what they're doing. There are more extreme caves around the world that are very cool to look at, ones that you actually can Skydive into, or not skydive, but base jump into. Boy, I can't imagine Skydiving into one. I think I've seen videos of people base jumping into this Sotano de lasco. Lynn Ryan yeah, I think Planet Earth, the Discovery show had that. Okay. Yeah, that's where I saw it. It's way cool. Yeah. And then like you talked about the cenotes. Those are very cool, too. Just be careful that we said that enough. I don't know. I don't think you can, because like I said, once you get there, you realize there are just a bunch of dummies, no matter what, that are ill prepared locals that are like, yes, I've been down here before. Well, if you want to learn more about caving, you can type in Spelunking in the search bar athouseauforge.com spelunking and we'll bring up this article. And I said Spelunky, which means, of course, it's time for listener. Now, I'm going to call this Pakistani Pizza. We did a pizza podcast, and we got lots and lots and lots of feedback on that. I knew that was going to be one of those very ubiquitous food that people love to talk about. And this is from and I'm probably going to put you your name. Sorry, buddy. Nabiha sier. Okay. And he said that he listened to the pizza cast and thought he would drop some 411 on pizza in Pakistan. He's originally from Orlando but currently lives in Karachi for University. And he said here when you order a pizza, you don't really order toppings, but you order a specific flavor. Although if you're at a pizza place, you can order specific toppings and build your own pizza. This Pizza Hut calls it. So they are a little less cooperative when you order for delivery, apparently in Pakistan. So he said your pizza will most likely have some form of chicken on it. And then of course, there's no ham because it's a Muslim country. Pizza Hut alone serves chicken tika, chicken curry, chicken fajita, Bahari chicken, Afghan tika, and the spicier fajita Sicilian, as well as vel, as well as the veggie, shawarma pepperoni, and a couple of other different beef flavors. That's so good. Chicken takea pizza in Pakistan. Yeah. Here's the kicker for me, guys. Not only do they offer their usual stuff crust with the ROPA cheese, they also serve beefy Sikh kebab stuff crust? Yeah. Wow. Papa John's, I want to just make sure everyone understands what you just said. He said that they offer a pizza with a crust stuffed with kebab, with beef kebab. That sounds delightful. It does. Papa John's offers a more traditional American pizza menu with their various pseudo Italian names, including Chicken Florentine, Domino's. Flavors in Pakistan are a little more mainstream American. While they do serve chicken tikka as well as something called Golden Feast or something to that effect, which as far as I know involves corn, pineapple, and probably chicken. Along with the corporate giants, there are plenty of local chains, oddly generic sounding names, including Pizza Place, Pizza Point Pizza, California Pizza, and the list goes on and on. Pizza. Pizza. This is the type of unfortunately, my university and dormer located on the outskirts of town, not in the ideal neighborhoods that these places usually don't deliver, but I suppose that's fine. I don't order pizza very much here. Pakistani pizza. It's kind of small and a bit too cakey and very super ready, but it fills you up and you never leave hungry. I just had a fairly tasty contraption from Pizza Point around 5 hours ago for dinner. I can still feel it in my throat. Lesson learned, do not go to bed in the morning, sleep until the evening and order excess food. Anyways, love the show and lots of love. That is Nabiha. Ted, thanks a lot. That's all saeed, but it's we'll find out. Nabiha right? Yes. Thanks a lot for writing in. Good luck with your study and the pizza. Yeah. If you're in a foreign land and you're listening to us and you have some, as Nabia pointed out. Nabija right. We want to hear from it. We want to hear about it from you. You can tweet to us at syscast, you can join us on Facebook.com Stuffyturnnow, and you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.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 show." | |
What are ninja? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-are-ninja | Ninja, Japanese warriors famous for stealth, deception and sabotage, were inspired by Chinese military philosophy. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the origins, history, gear and popularity of the ninja in this episode. | Ninja, Japanese warriors famous for stealth, deception and sabotage, were inspired by Chinese military philosophy. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the origins, history, gear and popularity of the ninja in this episode. | Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:18:24 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=17, tm_min=18, tm_sec=24, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=26, tm_isdst=0) | 31752996 | 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 housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as Charles W. Bryant. Hi, Josh. Chuck, I'm going to tell you something that you might not know about me. Oh, boy. As a youth as a youth, an older boy in the neighborhood named Tommy Roper trained me as a ninja. An altar boy or older? Older. Okay. Yeah. I'm a trained ninja. Right. Yeah. This encompassed, generally sitting on top of a storage shed in my backyard, right. Quietly for hours on end, waiting for somebody to walk past so that we could find out whether or not they noticed us. That's where you started smoking because you were bored? Not yet. That came, like a year or two later. You did not adhere to the bushido? No. I don't know if smoking is outlawed by the bushido. I just meant the way of the ninja. No, that's the samurai. Well, no, the ninja, though, shines the bushido. Right. Okay. I got what you say. Yeah. So, Chuck, I thought I kind of carry that with me my whole life. I'm sure. Like, I'd see a throwing star every once in a while and be like, I know how to throw that. Did you have any of those, Tommy? Did. I never had any. Those were big in the 80s for little nerds to collect. Totally. I found out, though, when I read how ninjas work, I am nothing more than a dill tant. Really? Yeah. I was surprised to find that out. I believe you said ninjas. That is not correct. Right? No, it is. It's ninja. It's like fish or deer. I know. We've been drilling that into each other's head, and I'm still seeing ninjas. Yeah. So if we slip up, then give us a break. Right. So, Chuck, Josh, one of the first things I noticed from this article was that ninja, although Japanese in nature and origin, actually can trace its roots back to the Chinese. Yeah, very much, because it's kind of what I was just talking about with the bushido was the samurai code, where you very respectfully would face one another, face your enemy one on one, and do battle. And the ninja subscribe more to the art of war school of thought. Right. As espoused by Sun Zoo which was a little sneakier. Right. And smarter, if you ask me. It is smarter. That's how the American colonists won the war for independence. The British were all like, hey, we've got a bunch of Hessians here, and they're ready to fight you on this field. And our guys were jumping out of trees and bayonetting them. Very ninja esque. Very sun tzu. He wrote The Art of War back in the fourth or fifth century BC. And, yes, it kind of went against the grain, as it were. Yeah, big time. Where you could I think there is a chapter, chapter 13, where he specifically said that you should use people to spread confusion in the ranks and paranoia through sabotage, spying, spying, espionage, that kind of stuff. Pretty cool. Yeah. Just basically underhanded stuff. Disguise was okay. Yeah. Deception. I love it. Right. So that is actually where that's pretty much the basis of ninja, isn't it? Yeah. From what I gather. And what is it? The art of ninja. The art that ninja's practice. Yeah, that ninja practice, ninjutsu. And it is not a martial art, but it is an art of war, is what they call it. It sounds like a martial art. Yeah. But it's not. Okay. That's because it's utzu it sounds like jujitsu. Right. Okay, we've got this first seed of the ninja planted by Sun Tzu. Right. And it takes a little while to catch on. And actually, strangely enough, we can trace back to some of the first ninja stories. Right. Some people who were thought to be among the first ninja in Japan. Right. We've moved over to Japan now, by the way. Yes. Right. Tell me about Prince Yamato. Yeah, prince Yamato is in some halls called the first ninja because he was the first person that we know of to blatantly use deception in disguise by dressing as a woman and to attract this word gets a little hanky to literally physically attract to barbarian chieftain. So apparently he was a goodlooker as a woman, androgynous as the lead, he actually gained their confidence and lulled them into a sense of security, a false sense of security, and killed them. Yeah. Then he butchered them. Yeah. That's not a bad one. Frankly, I like that first ninja story. I like yours, though. The 13 year old kid. Yeah. Kumawaka. Yeah. He was, I guess, kind of a little shrimpy. Right. But he had some pretty good legs on him. He traveled a really far distance to visit his father, who was ailing right. But his father is being held prisoner by a monk in his family. Apparently monks did that back then. I didn't know. That what we do now. Right. So little 13 year old Kumawaka was turned away after traveling this long distance, wanting to see his father, who is dying. Sure. And before he gets a chance to see him, his father dies. So the kids like, you know what? I swear vengeance. Right. Here now. Right? Little 13 year old vengeance. Right. So I think possibly not so much that he'd read The Art of War, but just that, being 13, he wasn't aware of pitched battles or really didn't care about them. He was like, you know what? I'm going to use a little bit of deception myself. Plus, he wasn't big enough to just fight them straight up. Right. He started kind of, I guess, staking out the monks home, and this kid was awesome. He opened a window to the monk's bedroom and let a bunch of malls in, and they flocked to a lantern, blotting out all the light. Right. Whereupon he snuck into the room, got the monk sword, and butchered him. Yes. Have you noticed that most ninja stories end in butchery? Yeah, that's a good point. The story is not over, though, right? I don't think so. Well, you should also point out, though, he was actually in their home. He faked an illness. Remember? That's how he got in there. That's right. He faked like he was sick, so they brought him in and took care of him, and he gained their trust and then did the old moth trick. Right? The old moth trick. Right. That's like Ninja 101 right there. So after he butchers the monk, he flees, and he's being pursued, so he climbs up a huge length of bamboo until it tips over a river, and he jumps off the other side, and he's gone into the annals of ninja history. That is serious ninja stealth right there. Yeah. Little 13 year old. Right. How many times can I say a little 13 year old? I don't know. We could go back and count. So, yes, even though these are cool stories and they are thought of as may be practicing the first ninja practices, they aren't really believed to be the first ninjas. Right? No. I mean, they're kind of legend. Exactly. And there's a lot of lore surrounding ninja. It's really tough, as the Grabster who wrote this article pointed out, to kind of separate facts from fiction. Sure. And in some cases, Japanese historians just have omitted ninja altogether because they're so secretive. Right. Or exaggerated and glorified it to the point that it's misinformation. Which is part of the whole ninja lore as well. Right. Which apparently the ninja were perfectly fine with. Of course they were, because it freaked people out. Yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. Right. The supernatural stuff. Yeah. Okay. So, Chuck, what was the true birth of the ninja, then? Well, they think that the regions of IGA and Koga or is it EGA? IGA and Koga? You know what I think I have no idea for those two, because but you were getting good at the Japanese, and let me tell you, you have what is called purapura. Pura, which means you're very fluent. It's Japanese. It describes very fluent. Japanese is a little easier to pronounce, I think. Than some, because usually it just kind of pronounced like it reads. There's just a lot of letters sometimes. Yeah, there's a lot of vowels together that don't make any sense, but we're doing our best. Yeah, you're doing a great job. We're going with IGA and Koga, and they are considered to be the birthplace of ninja as a major force in warfare. Right. And here's why. There's a bunch of clans in these two regions, and the guys who were members of the clans tended to farm themselves out as mercenaries, which we've talked about before. Absolutely. And they actually adopted a lot of the ninja attitude. The ninja tude, the ninja tube. Right. Nice. They adopted a lot of it, serving as spies, saboteurs, and assassins. Right. I love that word, by the way. Saboteur. It's a pretty cool word. That's why firefly is one of my favorite GI. Joe's, which we'll get to in a minute. Wow. It's all coming around. Yeah. So in egy and COGA Right, basically, this region, rather than turning to brewing or grain production, they turned to ninja production. Yeah. And they protected. They were hired out by the daimyo, which was another word for a lord, a feudal lord. And basically, like mercenaries, whoever had the most dough would get hired. So they were not known as loyal. They would go where the money was. No. Which, as you said, is completely contrary to the Bashito code. But the samurai, I guess you could probably make a case with a rival faction in Japan at the time. Right. If you wanted somebody who would be willing to die for you, you had your samurai. If you wanted somebody who you could pay to go do horrible things for you, but then may eventually come back and kill you after he was hired for somebody else with the ninja. Yeah, right. Good point. So one of the cool things that the Grabster mentioned was that the reason Ego and Koga were, I guess, these hotbeds of activity for ninja was that the art of ninja was passed on from father to son, generation after generation after generation. Right. And we're talking sneaking around, from what I gather from reading, is that the lowly ninja were the ones that were slinging the swords around, and the true skilled ninja did not do a lot of face to face fighting. They were sneaking around. They were gathering information. Like you said, they were sabotaging. They were spying and giving misinformation. Right. And apparently, since castles, they figured so largely into feudal Japan, the ninja became especially adept at infiltrating castles and escaping from castles that were under siege. There's the story of one ninja who was hired by a damn who owned a castle that was under siege, and one night he slipped out, went to the enemy encampment, stole their flag, and then when they woke up the next morning, they saw their flag, like, on the embattlements of the castle, which you can imagine, you just might like. Right. Don't we have a sound effect? Yeah, I think so. Or did they wake up and think, did we already capture this castle? What were you doing here? That's what I would think. Did we already capture it? Because their flag was flying, but apparently it was a mocking thing, right? Yeah. It was going to take the wind out of their sail. And there was also another story legend, ninja lore of a group of ninjas, actually, a group of ninjas, sorry. That captured the I guess the badge, a paper lantern badge identified, like identify with a castle and a domeo. Tell that one. Okay, I'm going to knock your socks off right here, Chuck. So they stole this lantern, reproduced it, reproduced the badge, put them on other lanterns, and then just walked right into the castle. Right. Butchered everybody like they do. Yeah. And then walked back out. And when everybody woke up the next morning and found the people who were not butchered, found what was going on, they had created paranoia. Right. Which, as we said, is another thing that ninja like to do. Absolutely. Disruption. Yes. They were very sweet. Are your socks knocked off? These are actually new socks, and they are still on. Yeah, I can tell. Did you know that George Hamilton once said that he wore a new pair of socks every day? He never wore the same pair of socks. I can see him doing that. My good friend Andrew told me that once. Really? Moving on. The ninja, Josh, you know what their main deal was? They were best at what? Assassination. Yes. Sneaking in in the dead of night and killing you in your sleep sometimes. And my favorite story was, and this one is not verified, but the legend of the ninja who hid beneath the outhouse. And you know what goes on beneath the outhouse? Yeah, he hid in the pit. Hitting the pit. And then the daimyo came in, obviously sat down on the john and then just struck from below with the sword, which is just not comfy. My favorite part of the story, though, is probably not true, because historical records show that the dimension on question probably died of a stroke or brain aneurysm. But I think maybe if you had a sword stuck up your butt, then maybe you might have a stroke or brain aneurysm. I would have a stroke for sure. So maybe that did happen. Plus, also, I could see his family trying to keep that hush hush. Yeah, I would say so, but it made the dime. You're very paranoid. Right, yeah. And actually, they took a lot of measures to protect against these ninjas Athens that they always figured were coming for them. Like, there was one clan where at their castle, everyone had to wear long, I guess, bell bottoms, basically. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. That made noise whenever you walked. So anyone who was in the castle had to wear these kinds of bell bottoms. Pretty much. And I can only imagine that they had an ample supply for visitors if everybody had to use them. And not everyone was walking around with bell bottoms. I imagine they had them for you. Right. Like, drop your keys in the bowl and put on these bell bottoms. Sure. You're going to stay here. Right. The other one cool. One was in Kyoto. They had the nijo castle had what they called nightingale floors, and they were purposefully squeaky the way they made these wooden floors. So they were people counterbalance. Right. So anyone walking on them, even a ninja, could be heard. Yes. And also the daimyo would spend more and more time away from their home at what they called secret springs, basically little hidden resorts at natural springs. So it sounds like out of ninja, the vacation resort, bell bottom jeans and squeaky floors were born. Nice. Pretty cool. You wrapped that up very nice. Thank you. So, Chuck, the whole, I guess, samurai sword up the bottom story was probably a legend because the guy probably died of an aneurysm or a stroke. Right, sure. That kind of reveals that lore that has surrounded ninja forever. And one of the things that they've been attributed with or bestowed with are, like, supernatural powers. Right? Yeah. Of course. That's not true. No, but it's fun. And like you said earlier, the ninja loved it. They were like, yeah, we're 7ft tall, and we can fly and become invisible. Those are three. They could also walk through walls, which I imagine it would really come in handy for a ninja. Oh, sure. But I mean, if you think about it, if you're penetrating a castle that no one else can get through, it probably seems a lot like you can walk through walls. Exactly. And then, of course, there's the real basic go to one that they're ghosts. Yeah. Shapeshifters. Did you ever read commando comics? No. They were from the think. They were like, this black and white comics set in world war II. And in one of them, this guy had to fight ninjas in ninja in Burma, and it was pretty cool. Do you ever say I was a little worseboy with the comics? Were you? I was like I was into Archie and Richie Rich. What? I know. What? Isn't that awful? And then, like, the Star wars comics and stuff like that. But don't try to cool it up now. It's awful. What? I was a big Archie guy. I was a little baptist boy named Richie Rich. Yeah, Richie Rich was great. I liked the cartoon. Never read the comic. I was a little worse. You're into ninjas and stuff? Smoking cigarettes. I was reading Archie in the bible. Yeah. Good for you, Chuck. But here we are years later. I know the same. We're both as twisted. I've been trying to get better. You've been trying to get worse. Yes. We met in the middle. Yeah. Where are we now with their gear? I would say we're at ninja gear, actually. Cool part. Chuck has several large printout pictures of ninja gear I do. That are just bitching. Yeah. Let's go ahead and talk about some of these. Well, first let's talk about their clothes, their uniform, the ninja yori. Yoroi. Yoroi. Yo. Roy it is also called ninja armor, and it's like the black jacket, black trousers, hooded cowl, and light sandals. Not a lot of protection with that. Right. Word. Well, they said some of them were light armor under. That right. But it's not much, trust me. No, it's cloth. Well, because they wanted to be sneaky sure. And not make a lot of noise. So armor probably wasn't the best way to get around. And traditionally the yoroi was black. Although apparently there is some historical evidence that they wore all white Eurooi, which is pretty cool, too, in the snow. If it were snowy. Yeah, sure. They're like, oh, it's snowy. I got to put on the white. Europe today. Go kill people. However, Josh, most of this is fanciful lore, although they did have these costumes, what they mainly wore. They wanted to blend in. So they mainly just dress like you and I. Yes, that's an excellent point, too. If you're going to be an assassin and you're in a public place, if you're dressed like a ninja, people are going to be like, look out for that ninja. Right. So, yeah. A lot of times they were apparently masters at hiding in plain sight. Yeah. Disguised as priests and merchants and farmers. Right. Which makes sense to me because what was it that Henry Hill said? He said, when you get killed, it's somebody's coming at you with a smile. Who's your friend? Right. That's who kills you. Sure. Yeah. Henry Hill, he comes up a lot. It's funny, I never thought he would come up in a ninja podcast. What else did they use? Josh the ninja toe was the short sword that they were on their back, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Used to butcher people. And then here's what I have the pictures of. The chuko is this cool little claw hand. It's like claws on your palm you would wear as a glove. And it says you can use to fight or to climb trees with. Tommy Roper had one of those. Oh, really? He tried to climb trees once in a while. He could when he didn't have those on, like he could just climb a tree. But just climbing like that, it didn't work. And this is the Tiger Claw. Those are cool. Yes. That looks like Freddy Krueger wolverine or something. Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like. And it would butcher you if put to your jugular. And what are these? And this is my favorite. These are the Caltrops, and they look sort of like little metal sharp origami razor things. I was just about to say origami you got to leave it to the Japanese. They have great design with everything. Yeah, they're beautiful. Including little tanks meant to puncture your feet. The soles of your feet. Yeah, that's what you would do. You would throw these on the floor for your enemy to step on. And they apparently wore, like, the sandals and the thin shoes, so that worked. And I wish this were a video podcast because Chuck gave Jerry and I a demonstration of what that would look like when people were chasing the ninja. Yeah. They also used smoke bombs and what else? The coolest thing. Small one person boats that were collapsible. So they were highly portable. So ninja would just be running away from people. He's thrown his tax what was the tax call again? The cow drops. Right. He's thrown his cow drops and they didn't work. A couple of guys got around and he's reached a river. There's no bamboo in sight. He just whips out his little boat and sails across like so. Long jumps. Pretty cool. I'll be back to kill you when you're sleeping. The other thing that has been refuted by the Mythbusters I read was the Mizugumo, and they were wooden shoes to walk on water with. They kind of look like snow shoes, actually. Big, round things, and your foot goes in the middle to disperse the water. And those Mythbusters guys said, yeah, this doesn't work. Did they try it out themselves? Yeah, of course they did. Doesn't disprove anything. They should be called too fat to be Ninja. We should call that show the Fun Killers instead of the Mythbusters. All they do is destroy fun. Nice. But they said they could work on marsh, is what they said. We'll give them something. Yeah, of course. There's the throwing star, aka the Shuriken. Yeah. I didn't know this. I thought that when you see in the movies, they clearly always fling these and embed them right into somebody's forehead, right between the eyes. That's really not true, is it? No. Apparently they were just kind of a distracting weapon. Yes. Like it was meant to look like it was about to hit you right between the eyes. But the chances of it actually hitting its target are pretty low. So they would turn around when being chased, throw a star at them to distract them, and then drop some cow chops on the floor in a smoke bomb, maybe. Right. And then use a grappling hook and a rope ladder to escape. That's what they call the skin entity shuffle and ninja lore. That combo right there. Really? Yeah. So, Chuck, there's the grappling hook. Right. Which we can't leave out. Sure. Basically, if you have all this stuff, you are a little white kid in suburban America trying to be a ninja. If you're a stealthy guy and you're infiltrating a castle, you're not going to have all this stuff except maybe your collapsible boat, your cow chops, and your little sword. Right, right. But other than that, it seems like this was more the arsenal that no ninja at any one time had all these things on them. Right? Yes. But in the movies, of course, it's how it's portrayed because it's more fun movies like Enter the Ninja, maybe. Enter the Ninja. American Ninja. Did you see that one? Did you watch Ninja movies as a kid? No. Where are you, Chuck? I told you I was reading Archie. American Ninja was awesome. I was watching Escape from which Mountain and Archie. That was a creepy movie. No. Was it escape. From which mountain? Well, it didn't age well. You should go watch it now and not the credit remake. No. Is it like the rock in there? Of course it is. It's. Dwayne Johnson to you, buddy. Okay. What was the first movie, though, Josh, credited as being the first movie with the Ninja. You only lived twice. James Bond movie. Yes, sir. When the movie came out in 1967, ninja just exploded in Western culture. Of course, because people that go to see the James Bond movies are looking for any cool new thing anyway. So imagine when they saw the Ninja, they were like, oh my gosh, that's the coolest mercenary I've ever seen in my life. They're like, look at those guys butchering everybody. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Of course, I never got into them. Not me neither. And then Chuck, of course, you probably haven't heard of this, but there's this thing called GI. Joe. I know the early GI. Joe. We've been over this. The twelve inch GI. Joe with the Kung fu grip. Not the dolls, the tiny ones. They're not dolls, they're action figures. What, you played with their dolls? Yes. Like you can hug them and cuddle them. You can't cuddle an action figure. And they had bendable elbows and stuff like that. Did your twelve inches have kung fu grip? Little action figures did too. Did they really? Yeah, that's where it started, buddy. Okay, well, in the 1982 series, a little Ninja was introduced, known as Snake Eyes. Right. He worked on the good side. Oh, really? I thought Snake guys was bad. No. You're thinking of Storm Shadow. Storm Shadow is a Cobra Ninja. And actually, I was looking on Yojo.com today. Have you ever told that site? No. Oh my God. It's like nostalgia central. Right? I did see that new movie, though. The Go Joe movie? Yeah. Is it out? No, it's out on video now. Was it in again? No, not really. Okay. And I love the cartoon, though I don't think any animation had more of an impact on the development of my personality and the GI. Joe cart. Really? Yeah. Every time it came on, I was just like, thank you, God. Thank you for letting me be alive and at an age where I can fully appreciate the GI. Joe. Cartoon. So I said the same thing about Tom and Jerry. So that's where we were. So well, again, let me go back to Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. Storm Shadow is clearly a ninja. Snake Eyes is listed on his file card on the back of the package as a commando, although he is proficient in bladed weapons and martial arts. Several martial arts. Right. Okay. So I'm thinking, why would he be called a commando? Is he not a ninja? And I was going to totally throw the SmackDown on the grabster for calling Snake Eyes a ninja in this article. I did a little more digging. It turns out that Snow Job and Snake Guys were once brothers in arms for the same clan. And actually, Snake Guys is a trained ninja, although he's also a commando. Really? Yeah. And then they went their separate ways. There was a little bit of a falling out. They went their separate ways. Storm Shadow, the Cobra ninja, actually went to work for Cobra as a disguise to find who killed the clan leader. Wow. Yeah. And once he did find out he was actually brainwashed, he was discovered as a spy. He was discovered brainwashed, and then actually did start working for Cobra. Snake Eyes, he always was on Joe's side. Dude. I did not know that there was that much real information out there about GI. Joe. So this is all in the history someone's actually written that? Yeah. Again, there's a comic series you're probably not aware of. Yeah, it's pretty storied. See, I was confused when I watched the movie. I kept waiting for Joe, kept waiting for Franco Harris to come out with a beard. Yeah. Joe. I look like Franco Harris to me. The Pittsburgh Steeler running back. Wait a minute. I'm trying to think of who you're thinking of. Duke was the closest to the well, there was no joke. That was the collective name of them. Yeah, see, that just confuses me because back in the day back in the day, GI. Joe was a dude, a single dude. Right. But then they just kind of said, that sucks. Let's go with the better version here. Let's go with action figures. Let's make you do the collective thing. Right. Did you see that link to the stop action Vietnam movie? Full link. Vietnam movie? Did you see my reply to that? Yes. You made a movie? I did. My brother and I, when we were six and nine years old, respectively, made a stop motion super eight movie with GI. Joe dolls. Had a little plot and everything. What was the plot? We had this little shiny button, and the button represented, like, a microfilm disk, and they got stolen, and Joe had to go retrieve it from the bad guys. Nice. We shot it in the woods near our house, and it was pretty cool. Do you have it? Were there explosions? No, there were no explosions. I think we might. Have lit something on fire. You're in the woods. I don't know if it still exists. It's got to be somewhere. But if you find it, I want to see it. So, Scott, if you're listening, if you have that, we would love to see that. Agreed. Scott, but I don't think he has it. We should probably get back to ninja. Right? Is there anything else? There are a couple of things. Of course. Ninja exploded in popular culture recently to kind of rival pirates and Chuck Norris, right? That's what I hear. I didn't know about that, though. So there's, like, that site I just showed you, real Ultimate Power, about how ninja flip out and kill everybody. They're awesome. And by awesome, I mean totally sweet. It tells a story of one ninja who was eating in a diner and some guy dropped a spoon and the ninja flipped out and killed the whole town. Oh, really? Yeah, just stuff like that, right. What's the whole pirate versus ninja thing? Someone wrote in about that. That one? I don't know. Okay, I know that Asking Ninja Took on Escalatingja.com is another site where you can ask ninja practical questions, like how to work a new iPhone app and stuff like that. But he does actually take on the pirates on Pirate Talk Like a Pirate Day, which we mentioned as well. So apparently there's some bad blood between pirates and ninja. My money is on the ninja. Well, sure, because they could sneak into a pirate ship pretty easily, I would think. Pirates are all brash. A ninja just comes up, puts the blade at the base of your skull, inserts it into your brain, scrambles it's, dead pirate. The pirates are all drunk on rum and ninja. I don't think they drink. No. They might have to soccer every once in a while, but that's about it. And then one last thing. If you're a true ninja lover, there is one place you have to be first week of April, and that is in August at the Haku Hojo White Phoenix castle known as the Ninja Museum. Yeah, they've embraced, I guess, really embraced their ninja roots. And they try to capitalize on that, obviously. Yeah. For money. Well, why not? It's the route of all ninja. Yeah, I went to that website. The museum website is pretty cool. But they have a festival, a ninja festival, every year, including a ninja parade. I'm going to see that. I can see ninja, like, driving around in a little shriner's car. So that's ninja. That's it. Yeah. Great. We covered just about everything. But if you want to see some boss picks of ninja hiding in trees and ninja weapons and stuff like that, you can type in ninja and the handy search bar@houseupworks.com. And I guess now it's time for listener mail. Yes, Josh. I got a short one. I call this our influence on the world. This is pretty cool. I don't know if you read this one or not. You're going to love it. It just came in today. Chuck and Josh. I'm a geologist in Columbus, Ohio. Go Buckeyes. And I often stumble across geoc. Is it cache? I always say cache is cache. I think you can say it either way. And I often stumble across Geocaches. When I'm out in the field doing research, I always follow all of the Geocaching rules and sign the log book along with usually leaving something behind for others to find. This time, however, I was a little different. It was a little different because when I opened the sealed plastic container, I found a keychain, a deck of cards, bottle caps, and two Carlos Santana CDs. So awesome. I thought, this is a little odd, until I remembered your podcast on Geocaching Caching from last year when YouTube joked about putting Santana CDs. So, wait, should we go back and listen on part? Sure. So, like, if your average hiker happened upon this box full of Santana CDs, and they're thinking, wow, I can just take these CDs. Someone let these this is awesome. So there it is. And apparently, and that wasn't the only time we mentioned Santana City several times. Yes, several times. Sure. And JD from Columbus says, I thought I would let you know that at least two Geo catching fans in Columbus listen to your podcast, and it was awesome to sort of meet one of them. That's cool. I don't think that's coincidence, do you? I don't see how it could be. A santana CD and a geocache. Are you joking? Yeah. I think that was our influence directly. I agree. Pretty cool. We've had another influence on somebody in, I believe, Slovakia. Not sure. I think so. There's a guy who wrote in and he founded a site called Weird Worm and actually started a podcast, and it's pretty good. You should listen to it. I did. Did you? Yeah. And he attributes it directly to being inspired by us. Okay, cool. Yeah. So you should check out Weirdworm.com in their company and Podcasts watch. They're going to overtake us in the ratings immediately. Yeah, probably. Josh. Sorry. Thanks a lot. At least there's people out there trading Santa CDs. That'll be our legacy show. Right. Well, if you have any story about how Chuck and I have impacted your life, influenced you in any way, or got you to do something really bad, we want to hear about it in an email, which you can send the Stuff podcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housetop works? Check out our blog on the housestepworks.com homepage. 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 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." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2009/1236194096581hsw-sysk-alien-hands.mp3 | How Alien Hand Syndrome Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-alien-hand-syndrome-works | When a person has alien hand syndrome, his or her hand can move involuntarily, and seemingly of its own volition. Tune in and learn more about this misunderstood syndrome in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | When a person has alien hand syndrome, his or her hand can move involuntarily, and seemingly of its own volition. Tune in and learn more about this misunderstood syndrome in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=64, tm_isdst=0) | 14983917 | 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, friends. Dating is a journey with ups and downs, for sure, but all the effort is worth it when you meet someone special, right? And when you decide it's time to find a meaningful relationship, eharmony is here for you. Eharmony is passionate about creating real love for all. Rooted in compatibility, Eharmony's process reveals truths about yourself like, I don't know what you want in a relationship. And it helps you connect with a uniquely compatible partner who is right for you. Don't believe it? See for yourself. So start for free today, because every 14 minutes, someone finds love on Eharmony. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from houseofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. This creepy, creepy podcast. I'm in. Halloween still coming. I'm Josh. That's Chuck. This stuff you should know. How are you doing? I'm well, sir. Good, chuck, it's going to sound like a bad edit. I'm sorry to our producer Jerry for that one, though. It's just weird. Chuck, I think I speak for everybody when I say I want to hear about one of your favorite movies. One called Doctor Strangelove. Yes. Subtitled or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. Great film. Do you like this one as well? I've only seen parts of it here. I've never seen the whole thing. You continually disappoint me. I can't help it's. All I ever do. Chuck. Yeah. That was Stanley Kubrick's. Awesome movie. I did like Eyes Wide Shut. I made my entire family go to the theater to see it for my birthday. You're kidding. There was a row of uncomfortable people seated on either side of me. It was hilarious. Wow. I like that movie, too, but I can't imagine taking my mother. Anyway, getting back to Kubrick, doctor Strangelove starred Peter Sellers in three different roles as Doctor Strangelove, as an army officer in England, and as the President of the United States. That sounds familiar. Yeah. Tour de force performance. It was awesome. The parts he was born to play. But I know why you bring this up. Because Doctor Strangelove, the character of Doctor Strangelove, was a Nazi who us used to like to poach Nazi scientists after the war. True. And that's exactly what happened in the movie. And he has a condition, even though they don't speak of it in the film, it's pretty clear once you know something about it. It's alien Hans syndrome is what's going on there. And he loses control of his arm, and he does the Zeke Highlee and beats his arm into submission. And it's really funny. He has some real trouble with it, I remember. He does. Yeah. So I think that's very appropriate that we just talked about that movie, Chuck, because this very podcast is about alien hand syndrome. How nuts is that? I know. It's almost as if we planned it. Yeah, kind of. So, Chuck, this one's yours. I would like everybody to go ahead and read this. It's called how Alien hand syndrome works. It was written by my colleague and love of my life, Charles W. Bryant. Go on. Who I could never do without. Go on. And basically, alien hand syndrome was first recognized in true. It was first described by the Germans, and it wasn't until 1972 that it really became part of the medical lexicon or accepted by the medical establishment. Am I correct? Yeah. Okay. So since it was first noticed, there's been 50 cases or less. Yeah. Documented. Right. I mean, that's the definition of extremely rare. So what is it? Are these people just crazy? What's the deal? Well, I should point out, though, that there are possibly a lot of other cases that have never been officially diagnosed, but it's still really rare. Is it because they were mistaken for crazy? Maybe. Yeah, I would say so. Because what happens when you have alien hand syndrome is your hand one of your hands will involuntarily start doing something right, and you don't know what's happening until you look down and see your hand. If you're asleep, you might even know what's happening. Wait, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry because I wasn't aware of this. This can go on while you're sleeping. Yeah. I did not know that. Yes, it can go on while you're sleep. Wow. So what happens is your hand just starts doing things, and it's all purpose oriented, which is one of the most fascinating parts of it. Like, your hand will grab the remote control and change the channel or tear at your shirt or unbutton your shirt. Yeah. And it seems like something out of a movie, but it's real. It is real. It's crazy. But there's some science behind it, which I know you're into. Well, first of all, what I understand, there's four main hallmarks to this. I guess disease or disorder. Yes. One is that the offending limb feels like it's foreign. Right. Another hallmark is that when you're not looking at it for alien yes. That's an even better way to put it. When you're not looking at it, it doesn't feel like it's a part of your body or that it's attached, maybe. And that people who suffer from alien hand syndrome have trouble distinguishing between what's voluntary movement right. Like, I want to grab that cup of coffee, and what the alien hand is doing. It doesn't seem to them that it's coming from the same place. Although it is, which I know we'll get to in a second. Right? Sure. And then the fourth one is that the limb is often personified like it has its own personality. Maybe you call it Roger. Well, a lot of people do name the limb. Is Roger a popular name? I bet it's number one. Roger the hand. So those are the four hallmarks, Chuck. Yes. All right, but let's talk about the aspects of the brain that are thought to be responsible for this. Yeah, we've learned a lot about the brain ourselves from doing this podcast. I know. It's pretty amazing. The number one thing I've learned is that we know almost nothing about the brain. I know. Yeah. We can put man on the moon, which happened supposedly, and we still don't even know exactly what's going on with brain function. They do know that there are certain things like two hemispheres, four lobes, lateralization of brain function, which we've talked about. Explain that real quick. Well, lateralization of brain function is, say, the left side of the brain being more detail oriented, while the right side of the brain evaluates the big picture. Very nice. So the brain functions are lateralized. One side is responsible for one thing, and the other is responsible for the other. 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. You do it all without breaking a sweat, and you do it all in style. That's why Infinity fully reimagined the QX 60 to help you take on everything with ease. A luxury SUV as functional as it is stylish, as versatile as it is serene. Available features like a panoramic moonroof, ample cargo space, and massaging front seats. Introducing the all new 2022 Infinity QX 60, designed to help you take on life in style. Visit infinityusacom to learn more. Now, with extremely limited availability, contact your local retailer for inventory information. You did such a good job there. I'm going to ask you to explain alien Han Syndrome with the brain, okay? And actually, I have to tell you, I went behind your back and I did a little additional research. I came up with a couple of other things, too, okay? Will you forgive me? I can take it. All right, so there's one really clear way that alien hand syndrome is created, and that is usually a lesion on the corpus. Colossal, right? Which, as you so aptly put it in the article, is like the brain's email server. It's a bundle of nerves that are important in communication between the hemispheres in different regions of the brain. Right. You need the key to the brain is to have the lobes and hemispheres all working together. And that happens thanks to some corpus callosum. Right. So when that doesn't happen and the regions of the brain aren't communicating with each other, specifically, say, the frontal lobe, which is involved in planning and organizing action, when that happens, say, you can't send a message to the motor strip, which actually carries out those movements. Right. Right. When that happens, the motor strip isn't dead. It's still functioning. So it may just be sending random messages to your RN to say, grasp that shirt and pull at it. Oh, it's your shirt, but do it anyway. That kind of thing. So whenever there's a malfunction, again, usually caused by lesion on the corpus colossum, where the frontal lobe and the motor strip are engaged in telling each other what's going on, there is this purposeless motion, which is alien hands syndrome. And really think about it. Purposeless motion is basically just motor activity out of context. There's no context to it. So, I mean, like, all of a sudden, your hands grabbing a coffee mug. Right. But it seems foreign and weird because you don't understand why you didn't form the thought that said, I need that coffee cup. Right. Which I guess makes the whole thing kind of chilling. It is indeed. And even worse. Chuck, there's no cure, is there? No, there is no cure. They've done some studies as recently as 2007. One of the reasons they haven't done that many studies over the years, just because it's so rare. Yeah. I just say that. And I guess you could say it's not dangerous. It's more of a nuisance than anything. There have been really rare cases where someone's, like, choked themselves to death? No, not to death, but they found their hands, like, creeping up around their throat, which is really creepy. Yeah. But since it's so rare and since it doesn't do any real damage to your body, they haven't really been interested in studying it that much. But they did in 2007 a bit and put people in an fMRI machine, and they basically said what you just said, which is the motor strip has been singled out as a center of activity. Even though they don't know what triggers it, it's still shooting messages, but it's not taking orders any longer for that one side of the body, that one limb exactly. From the frontal lobe. Exactly. Also, there's another thing. It's kind of a variation on alien hand syndrome, which, by the way, is also called anarchic hand. Yes. And Doctor Strangelove syndrome. Yeah. Is that for real? Yeah, I think that's probably like a more casual term that doctors use when they're playing golf and stuff, especially if they're Kubrick fans. Right, right. So it's kind of a variation on it. It's caused by damage to the parietal lobe. And usually what it results in is basically a levitation of the hand. And I can't tell if it's dominant. The dominant hand, like with corpus colossal damage. Corpus colossal damage. Usually that is the non dominant hand. So if you're right handed, your left hand is going to be alien hand. Okay. Yeah. If you have actual damage to the frontal lobe, that usually results in the dominant hand. If your right hand would have alien hands syndrome, damage to the pariahal lobe doesn't go one way or the other, necessarily. But what happens is, especially when you close your eyes, the hand will start to levitate because they're no longer in sync, and it makes dressing kind of difficult, that kind of thing. Right. So parietal lobe damage. Since the parietal lobe is responsible for sensation and sensory input, when you close your eyes, your hand just kind of goes a little wacky. Interesting. Like you said in the article, visual cues kind of are very important in associating your hand with your body when it's dissociated like this. Right. And like you said, there's no cure. I think you said that. I think you said it. Either way, you said it. There is no cure. A lot of times this seems humorous, but people will do things like wear an oven met or keep their hand occupied by giving it something to hold onto. And some cases it's so severe that they've actually tied their hand behind their back. Wow. I know. Wow. 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. You do it all without breaking a sweat, and you do it all in style. That's why Infinity fully reimagined the QX 60 to help you take on everything with ease. A luxury SUV as functional as it is stylish, as versatile as it is serene. Available features like a panoramic moon roof, ample cargo space, and massaging front seats. Introducing the all new 2022 Infinity QX 60, designed to help you take on life in style. Visit Infinity usa.com to learn more. Now, with extremely limited availability, contact your local retailer for inventory information. But Josh, we're not done yet. One of the things I thought was interesting was all the different times that alien hand syndrome has been portrayed in somewhere and other in books and TV and movies. Yeah, I like this point. You made as many as there have been real cases or more. It's been depicted on the silver screen and small screen, and it goes back all the way to 1935. The film mad Love followed an obsessed doctor who replaced the hands of a wouldbe lovers husband with those of a knife wielding murderer. Yeah, I looked this movie up because I hadn't heard of it before, and it was actually the Mad Doctors, played by Peter Lori. And he's totally bald. Peter Laurie is not creepy looking enough. His head is bald as a baby's butt, and he looks really creepy. Interesting. I'm sure he played the part very well. The Adams Family. Josh. Actually, I watched, well, two of those movies recently. They're actually really good movies. Yeah, my brother worked on the second one. Did he? Good stuff. Younger Sinarichi had a crush on him. Really? It is true. Wow. Do you think she remembers him now? I bet she does. She sent him Christmas gifts for a couple of years. What? And Angelica Houston had the hotspurp, too. What? My brother is a handsome guy. I guess so. Off track there, but interesting nonetheless. Adams Family had the thing which wasn't quite alien hand syndrome. It was like a detached hand. Exactly. But doing its own thing. Purposeful thing. Yeah. It was also very helpful. A lot, too. Drove the getaway car for Fester. True. Yeah. So, Chuck yeah? I find it interesting, too, that Hollywood has this fascination with it, well, so creepy and cool and unknown. It is. But at the same time, apparently, modern medicine doesn't have as much of an interest as Hollywood does. This is sad. So get to it. Physicians and medical researchers of all stripes. And while you're doing that, we're going to do some listener male josh, you know what we're doing? Hike to theater. I'm ready for this, Chuck. I've been waiting for this. I'm very psyched about this. The Haiku is rolling in at an unprecedented rate. Veronica 13. It's hot in winter. All the people start to melt. Welcome to Texas. No. I'm guessing she's from Texas. Yeah. This one is from Crystal Duplic. I found your podcast. I just could not get enough. Told Chuck I love you all. He sent me a pic, which I added to my shrine. Just kidding, not nuts. Keep up the great work. Can't wait to hear the next one. Why Chuck Love Haikuz? That's an excellent question. It is. Diego Garcia. Philadelphia city of brotherly love. Glasses caked with filth manners. Yogurt. Strawberry smoothie aftermath. Yes. So you must have made one of my smoothies. Yeah. Andy 16, from Idaho says, I want to suggest a podcast about Greek myth. That would be so boss. And I love the use of the word boss there. Yeah. And we have two more. Sandra Thompson of Irvine, California. I learned neat things when listening on the train. Then the song. I'm sad. And I guess the music that she's talking about is the outro music. Sure. The end of the podcast. Thanks for that. And then we got one from Bob. Capital B-O-B. Exclamation point. Bob is how he says his name, apparently, and he wrote us a limerick, but explained that he would do so in the form of a haiku. I'm not sure that's possible. He said. It ain't a haiku, it's a limerick, you see. Hope you enjoy it. And now the limerick. The edited version. It's Friday the 13th, the day a day for bad luck, so they say. So I'll damn Josh and Chuck because they have all the luck. Let's keep out of misfortune's way. Fantastic. Thank you, Bob. Bob and thanks to everybody who wrote in. Whether you send us a haiku or otherwise and if you have not done so yet, you can send us something. The email is stuffpodcast at howstepworth. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Let us know what you do. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun 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 music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today are the best pet mom. When you growl back during play time, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients plus probiotics. For Digestive Health, find us at chewy amazonandhalopeets.com." | |
43caf566-53a3-11e8-bdec-c3850f874f81 | Flagpole Sitting: A Real Fad | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/flagpole-sitting-a-real-fad | The 1920s were just absolutely nuts. People got into weird fads really intensely and one of the strangest of all was flagpole sitting. It’s just what it sounds like – sitting on top of a flagpole for as long as you can. One man sat above them all.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | The 1920s were just absolutely nuts. People got into weird fads really intensely and one of the strangest of all was flagpole sitting. It’s just what it sounds like – sitting on top of a flagpole for as long as you can. One man sat above them all.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 14 Jul 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=196, tm_isdst=0) | 48568190 | 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, like, 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 and 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@stuffyureshareadbooks.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 right over there. Jerry's out there somewhere. And this is stuff you should know. You know, Chuck, I have to say yes. Every once in a while, the amazing theme song from our short lived television show comes into my head and it's just a complete earworm. Yeah, because I just hear the end of it over and over and over again and it's actually pretty pleasant. It doesn't bother me. I love it. I haven't heard that song in a while. Well, you need to go listen. That was the Henry Clay people, right? Yeah, our buddies, Joey and Andy. Sierra California boys. Southern California boys. Men. Didn't they go to Harvard or something crazy like that? Joey ended up going to Harvard, and then I think Andy went to AFI. And then Joey, I think, went back to film school and they're both screenwriting, man. That's great. He wrote this Andy Samberg movie that's coming out soon. Really? What's it called? It is called Palm Springs, I think. Well and he wrote it? Yeah. Dude, that's fantastic. Congratulations. And he wrote on the TV show Lodge 49. I haven't seen the Springs but that guy Kurt Russell and Goldie Hanson. I love that guy. Yeah, I think he's one of the coolest people walking around on the planet today. Yeah, I haven't seen Lodge 49. It's supposed to be awesome. And Andy was a writer's assistant and then ended up on the staff. And they're both doing great, man. That's great. Congratulations to both of you guys. A little baby. Now they're both married. Nice, man. That's nice. And that's an update on the Sierra Club as I can let's see what else how did that come into your head, though, the song? What made you think of that? Nothing. I was just out back, like, mowing the lawn with my big old lawn mower, and it just popped in my head. I was probably thinking of something I had to do that had to do with stuff you should know. And I thought stuff you should know. And when I thought it, I thought it as stuff you should know. Didn't it? This is the plate on the loop. This is the second time that you mentioned the size of your lawnmower. Now you just got to send me a picture. Is this one of these things that you stand? No. And it wheels you around like some weird land speeder? You mean like a skag or something? No, this is just a good old fashioned Toro. That is because it's gas powered. I got it, like, on Super Discount because everybody's making really good electric lawn mowers. But this one, it was on discount and I liked the look of it. Yeah. Good looking mower, huh? Yeah. I was like, I like your style with me. Is it red? Yes, red toros. Yeah. It's nice. Takes you back to days of paper routes and stuff like that, doesn't it? I thought you were mentioning the song because you were thinking of the song Flagpole Sita by Harvey Danger. No, I wasn't at all. Okay. But that's a great segue, Chuck, because it just so happens, and you may be aware of this we're talking about flagpole sitting today in this episode. Right. And I've been singing that song in my head all day now. I don't know that song. You know, it was a well, maybe not. It was a Top 40 hit in the 90s during the Grunge era. It was a power pop hit that kind of oh, from Heart Attack? No. My band actually covers. Flagpole said It's a fun song. Okay, that's great. I'm going to have to go listen to it because I feel like I'm missing out. But is that song about flagpole sitting? Is it about shipwreck Kelly in particular. No, it's not. But it does have one line that says, run it up the flagpole and see, that's the only time it references flagpoles at all. C's. What? Who salutes but no one ever does, I think, is the next line that rings a bell. I bet I was looking into the mirror bit clearer. Sure. Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes but no one ever does. Yeah. I'm not sick, but I'm not well, who is that? Harvey Danger. Harvey Danger, okay. Yeah. It's a great song. I love it. Yeah. Who a fellow podcast and friend, john Roderick. Actually, Sean Nelson was a friend of his in Seattle. He played bass for a little while in Harvey Danger. Oh, very wow, man. I got one more for you. I used to have that song, and I don't know where I downloaded it from. This would have been probably back in the napster days or something, and it was mislabeled as Brian Jonestown Massacre. And I was always like, this does not sound like Brian Jonestown massacre. Now I know it most definitely wasn't Brian Jonestown massacre. Wow. All right. We haven't even talked about flagpole sitting yet. No, we haven't. Which is a crime because it's actually one of the more interesting, weirdo fads that's ever come this way in America in the 20s. We know who Patient Zero was a flagpole sitting. And it's easy to tell because it is such a bizarre thing to do, that if you can find the person who did it first, who claims to have done it first, they're probably correct. And in this case, you can trace it back to sometime around January of 1924, supposedly potentially in Hollywood, California, part of Los Angeles, and there was a man named Alvin Shipwreck Kelly who supposedly climbed up on a flagpole as part of a promotion for a movie and sat there for a full 13 hours and 13 minutes to help draw a crowd. And, boy, did he ever. Yeah. Which sounds like a long time to sit on a flagpole, but that is kid stuff compared to where this is. Yes, for sure. That's an aperture, but it's a good first attempt. Yeah. And so it sounds strange because when you think of a flagpole, you're like, what are they sitting on? It's a modified flagpole that basically there are different kinds, but usually it's sort of like a bar stool at the top of a flagpole, and it's that low phi, and you climb it up there and you sit, and that's all you do. I mean, whatever else you want to do. Well, sure you do use yourself or whatever. Yeah. That's up to you. But as far as being considered a flagpole sitter, that's it. You sit on top of a flagpole for as long as you can. All right, so let's talk about this guy, because Shipwreck Kelly was a pretty interesting character, and I have to say there's a memory palace episode about him that I specifically didn't listen to beforehand because I didn't want to unconsciously rip it off. Go listen to that. Yes. Roddy Nate. I'm going to check that out for sure. So Alvin Kelly, he was born aloacius Anthony Kelly in New York City and Hell's Kitchen in a tenement in 1893 and had a very sad start to his life and that his father had already passed before he was born. His mother passed in childbirth, and that basically meant he was shuttled around to relatives and orphanages from the minute he took his first breath. Yeah, and apparently from a pretty early age, he would do things like climb flagpoles and other tall stuff, and working at heights became kind of a recurring theme in his life. Supposedly, by age seven, he was climbing flagpoles within a few years after that, he was starting to scale the facades of some of the buildings in his neighborhood, and by the time he was 13 bear in mind, if this guy's biography seems a little thin, he just came out of nowhere in 1924 for sitting on a flagpole. So all of the info about him came from him to reporters were reporting in the 1920s. So just fabrications are flying around left and right. Sure. But supposedly he ran away at age 13 and ran off to join the crew of a cargo ship and start his life sailing the seas. Yes, and he did a lot of kind of odd jobs or maybe not odd jobs, but just jobs that didn't have anything to do with one another over the next couple of decades. He was in the movies as a stand in and a double. He was a stunt person, a stunt pilot, a high diver, a boxer. This part I love. There's actually a name for people that repair church steeples. What is that? Steeplejack? He's the Steeple Jack. That is definitely a band name. For sure. Steeplejack. Oh, yeah. It sounds like maybe an industrial ban, but, like, on the light side, they're technically too melodic to actually be considered industrial, but they still call themselves industrial. It's become my favorite part of this whole band name thing is you describing what kind of band it is. Okay. I love it. Well, thanks, man. That makes me feel warm and pleasant. So World War One comes along, and he was in the Naval Auxiliary Reserve as an ensen and served on the USS Edgar F. Lucanbock during that war. Yeah. So he did have some sort of well, I should say I don't know if anybody has corroborated that, but we'll just take all that at face value because it doesn't really matter at this point. But he eventually picked up the nickname Shipwreck, and there's a lot of different explanations for this, and he's given or he gave multiple different explanations depending on what reporter he was talking to. But one of the numbers that gets bandied about pretty frequently is that Shipwreck Kelly was so named because he survived 32 different shipwrecks at sea, which is where shipwrecks tend to happen. Those are the good old days. Yeah. You just make up stories about yourself. Do you remember when we talked about we did an episode on the world's, either luckiest or unluckiest people. And do you remember that one guy who was like, I survived a car that fell off a cliff, and I survived a train wreck and all that. He was doing his gym in, like, 2005. Remember? How was he? Yeah, he was pretty recent, if I remember correctly. Remember his son came out and was like, everybody, this is not true. Right? None of what you're talking about is true, and I just fooled you all. We don't know if Shipwreck Kelly actually survived the Titanic. Like, he claimed. But we do know that he was not on the roster on the Titanic. So I am going to venture to say that he made that one up. And there were three Kelly's on board who were survivors, but all three of them were women. So, yeah, he probably wasn't on the Titanic. Maybe he did survive shipwrecks. He was at sea, most likely. But the point is, they called him Shipwreck Kelly. And I guess somebody went to the trouble of digging up that. Some reporters who covered his boxing career are probably the likeliest, source for where he got his nickname, Shipwreck. Right? Yes, which I love because I guess he wasn't a great boxer because they said that he was often adrift and ready to sink. Isn't that great? Shipwreck Kelly. It's a great nickname and an even better origin story than surviving 32 Shipwreck, if you ask me. Yeah. And the other thing we don't know for sure is even if that Hollywood movie premiere story is correct in his first major outing as a flagpole sitter, because yet another story says, no, this is actually in Philadelphia at a department store, and he just did it on a dare. And the department store got a lot of business because people are standing around looking and then doing some shopping. So they're like, hey, stay up there and I'll give you some extra dough. Yeah. So either way, it's pretty widely held that Shipwreck Kelly was the guy who started the flagpole sitting craze. Right. And it was a craze because this is a time where you could go sit on a flagpole for 13 hours and 13 minutes and newspapers around the country would pick up the story and write about it, and you would suddenly become famous overnight. And that's exactly what happened to Shipwreck Kelly. So that's prong one towards this becoming a fad in the 1920s. The other criteria is that people have to want to topple that record. And that was very widespread at the time, too, because the 1920s were actually really big into fads. Like, people would take up weird fads and just go nuts over them for basically the whole decade. Yeah, people had time and they had fewer distractions. Yeah. No TV. So like someone doing a dance athlete for 28 hours or sitting on a flagpole for a day. It's an interesting story back then. It's sad, but that was interesting. But it was. So we'll talk about dance marathons and then we'll take a break. Okay. Okay. Oh, wait, I got that backwards, Jack. I just realized, hopefully Jerry figured it out and there was an ad in there somewhere. I think we should just leave it just like that, though. That'll be fine. Okay, so we're going to talk about marathons, dance marathons now after the ad break, despite what I said before. And dance marathons are a super 20s example of a crazy fad that kind of came along and got everybody by the hackles. And people across the country started entering, basically, dance marathon competitions, all because of one person, one woman, a dance instructor named Alma Cummings. That's right. 32 years old. She danced for 27 hours at the Audubon Ballroom in New York in 1923 with six different dance partners. And it was a weird time because it wasn't just dancing. It was endurance challenges as a whole. We're just all the rage and punishing your bodies in all these weird, random ways, from yoyoing to hula hooping to rocking in a rocking chair or skipping rope to dancing. Dancing was the big one. That's where, if you see these videos of these marathon dance competitions, it looks like hell on earth. It looks awful. Yes, they didn't seem very fun at all, but Alma Cummings just kicked the whole thing off. And again, just like Sherry Kelly, who would follow, I guess a year later, or even about a year later, she got a lot of publicity. There's like a famous photo of her with her feet in a tub of water, soaking at home. She's holding up her shoes and they have holes in the soles where she wore holes from dancing for 27 hours. And I guess, like you're saying, people were bored or there wasn't as much to do. But also, there really seems to just be a profound hunger for celebrity, however you can get it. And that seemed to really drive people who wanted to be like, well, if this lady got this much attention for dancing 27 straight hours, maybe I can get even more attention for dancing 30 straight hours. And so within just like, I think, three weeks of Alma Cummings setting this record for dancing, it had been broken nine times at least, from people trying to seek the same kind of publicity she got. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny, like, we talk about these days, how everyone wants their ten minutes or they want to be reality show famous or whatever, like being whittled down to ten now. I thought it was like 15. Well, that's something new and it's really not. This is sort of the version of that back then was, I want to be famous, I want my names in the papers, but I'm not particularly skilled enough to do anything to do that. So I'll rock in a rocking chair for three days and hopefully they will come. They will come. That was a pity laugh at best, but I appreciate it. Well, it's a bad joke. Admittedly. We should shout out a bunch of great websites here because this next bit came from Atletus Obscura, one of our favorite sites, and also our dearest of old sites that we always have Love, Mental Floss, Ripley's History, Daily, J. Mcpowell and Historic Palm, which is great, but Atlas Obscura talks about the in the thirties and this is really kind of depressing during the Depression. It's very appropriate, is that sometimes people would enter these dance marathons because it would be somewhere they could sleep and eat for a week at a time when they didn't necessarily have a home or food. Yeah, it is extremely depressing. Or just the prize money that was offered in the Depression might be enough to keep your house from being foreclosed on. Yeah. The thing is, you can blame promoters for continuing this long beyond the fad. But the promoters wouldn't have been putting these on and offering this prize money were it not for all the crowds that would show up every day to watch these people get increasingly closer to catastrophic exhaustion from dance marathons. Because there were rules where probably early on in the dance marathon, you could sleep and rest for 15 minutes of every hour. And then after a week of this dance marathon going on, the promoter might be like, okay, well, we need to step things up a little bit. And you will now have three minutes per hour, every 24 hours period in a day to where you can rest. And then towards the end, they'd be like, no rest. I think I read about one where the last 57 hours of a multi week dance marathon had no rest. So these people dance for more than two straight days constantly. You have to constantly be in motion and your knees couldn't touch the ground or else you'd be disqualified. Yeah. And if you look at footage of this stuff, I mean, it's charitable. What they're doing is dancing toward the end. It's just hanging. It looks like two corpses hanging on each other, sort of swaying back and forth. Yeah. I mean, any of these things, even the modern day versions of these contests where you have to keep your hand on a car or whatever body oh, man. Or sit in the car. I knew a guy that did one of those where he tried to win a Volkswagen Beetle by sitting in it with four other people in a mall. And I'm just like, oh, yeah, you told us that story before. Did he win or not? I think he did, but there's just no way. Kill me. Yeah, it would be really awful, for sure. Because let's say for one of those contests, let's say you don't win, then you've just sat in a car with three strangers for a week and you didn't even get the car. But even if you did get the car, imagine yourself five years on and that car is like, curse. There are tears in the seats or something like that. The glove compartment won't close. I mean, I guess you got a story to tell at cocktail parties, but even that would wear thin after a while. Yeah, but Chuck, we need people to do stuff like that because there's something about contests like this. There's something about fads like flagpole sitting that keep humanity from becoming too cerebral, you know what I mean? From just becoming like computers. Basically, we need people to do stuff like this because it brings out some juvenile something in us that makes us want to find out about it or learn about it or talk about it. And I think that's good. I think that's healthy for our species. All right. It's my take it's genuinely off the cuff. I'm actually just surprised at myself that I just said that out loud. You're just riffing. So shipwreck Kelly back to flagpole sitting. That initial 13 hours, 13 minutes sit, like you said, inspired so many others to break it, and it was getting broken in pretty short order. Kind of like the dance. Athens. There was a woman named Bobby Mac from La. Who did it. A guy named Joe Holdham Powers who did this in Chicago for 16 days, another guy for 51 days named Bill Penfield. Yeah. Let's point this out. Take a second here. Shepard Kelly did 13 hours and kicked off a national fad. These people are now into weeks at a time. 51 days is more than seven weeks up there. Yeah. Are you bucking the cerebral? Yes. Right now, can you tell? Let me see here. In the 20s, there was a 15 year old boy who set the kid record for ten days, 10 hours, ten minutes and 10 seconds. I think that was planned. Yes. If not, then, but see, there you go, Chuck. We're thinking about that. It's making us think. This little kid is making us think. We got to avoid that. It needs to be random combinations of numbers so we don't start thinking about it. We should also point out that not everyone was like, oh, this is the best thing ever. In Cosmopolitan magazine, Cosmo called it competitive embassy. Yeah, this is fine. We need that too. Say something here. It's a little PSA. This might not even ever make it in the final edit. No boy. So I'll just say it to you. How about that? I would say the last few weeks of episodes, there's been some good ones here there, but overall, I find that they've been less good because I am so sick of myself because we've been so entrenched in the book right now. So it's like living, breathing SYSK, which is us, and having to confront, like, myself and my own personality and sense of humor and whether that's actually funny. And just constantly thinking about this on top of doing the podcast, on top of the other stuff we're trying to do now too. And I am so sick of myself, I can barely tolerate listening to myself talk. So if anyone's picked up on the last few episodes, like, in the last few weeks, just being a little hom, that's why, and I apologize. Maybe we'll go back and redo them one day. Wow. News to me. Okay. You've been great. Hey, thanks a lot, man. That's ultimately what I was fishing for. All right, well, if you want to cut that part out. Let me pick this up by saying and I'm sure you've made a great point, Josh. Nice. So back to Kelly, right? Yeah. You got all these, I'm sure, Shipwreck Kelly deemed slackjawed, yokels, hohomes, that kind of thing, who were out there trying to topple his record. And they did. Some of them did topple his record, but nobody had turned this into a business like Shipwreck Kelly had. He was a one man money making machine who made his money just by sitting on top of a flagpole. Good money. Because he was really good at self promoting. Like, there wasn't a reporter who's here he wouldn't bend if he got the chance. And in these reports or these articles, he would say things like, yeah, I'm in town for this, but if anybody has any other offers, I'm wide open and I'm staying at, you know, the Cambridge Arms Itinerant Hotel for the next few days if somebody wants to get in touch with me there with a job offer. He was really good at attracting job offers specifically for flagpole sitting. Yeah. And he made good dough. I mean, this is good money anytime. If he made $100 an hour like he claimed to, other people said, no, it really wasn't that much. It was probably closer to anywhere between 100 and $500 a day. Still a lot of money. Sure. And like you said, he was almost like a celebrity version of a sign spinner. Like, if you could pay George Clooney to sign spin in front of your mobile phone store, that was sort of what Shipwreck Kelly was. That's a great one. I got one, too. It's almost like if there was a cult of personality built up around, like, the flapping dancing windsock guy that they put out in front of mattress stores in 2005. Yeah, I love those dudes. Okay. Those are fun. I think both of those are high quality analogies. We'll see which one Jerry uses in the edit. Okay, let me see here. Here's some of his longer sits. He did 146 hours at the old West Gate Hotel in Kansas City. Not bad. 312 hours in Newark, New Jersey, atop the St. Francis Hotel. That's pretty good. Sure. I don't know what that is in days, but 312 hours? Let's see. If you divide that by 24, as you should, you would come up with something along the lines of 13 days on the nose. All right, well, how about 22 days? And this was in conjunction with the dance marathon at none other than Madison Square Garden? Yes, because I don't know if we said or not, but there was a dance marathon at Madison Square Garden that was actually shut down by the Health Department because they decided it had gone on too long. Ten days. And that it deemed a threat to the health of the participants. That wasn't the one that he sat in, but there was one the following year where for what was it? 22 days. Yeah. That means that the dance marathon went on for 22 days. But imagine that. So you've got these two endurance fads just interweaved in this way that the universe almost like collapses in on itself because they're put together too close together. Yeah. And here's how he would do it. He would sit on that bar stool like thing and it was padded and he would eat and smoke cigarettes and shave, apparently. And they would send the stuff up with a bucket and a rope and tell him how he would sleep. Because this is what I really kind of wanted to know. So you said his seat was like a bar stool, round bar stool, basically. Right. And it was on a flagpole, appropriately. And then in the flagpole you'd have two holes drilled just beneath the seat. And now that I'm doing it, I'm like that's really hard to reach. So now I'm questioning whether this is true or not. He might have long arms, so he would plug his thumbs into those holes drilled into each side of the flagpole so that when he started to lean forward, the pressure from the flagpole on his thumbs would kind of cut into his skin and wake him up just enough that he would adjust himself. And apparently he got so good at this that he would adjust himself to sit back up so he wouldn't fall over off of the flag pole while he was still sleeping. He wouldn't wake up. He could just adjust himself in his sleep. That's right. And he'd have his little I don't know if they're little, but he would have his ankles locked around the pole and apparently it would tether a leg to keep him from catastrophe. But I think it's very dubious that that was a solid life saving rig. Yeah. And I mean, like some of these flagpoles are sitting on 30 ft. 50ft. One of them, I guess the impression I had, the one that you mentioned on Kansas City's Westgate Hotel, that the flagpole was on the top of the roof of the hotel. So I mean, he was up there for sure. And if he had something gone wrong, he would have yeah, that tether probably would not have done terribly much or it would have done a lot to keep his leg hanging up there, but the rest of them would have kept going to the ground. How did he pee? Pee and poopoo. He had a little contraption for that with the tube that went down. Okay, but here's the thing. So you're a traveling flagpole sitter. You're relying on the help of other people on the ground. You need food when you pee and poop into that contraption that leads to a tube that goes down to the ground. You don't want that just leaking out for the spectators to see and smell and experience. You need to go into a. Bucket that somebody's going to go take away and dump. So you're relying on this kind of group of assistants in hands that probably the promoter may be helped hire for you. Maybe you make a friend along the way who just kind of travels from town to town with you for a little while. That's what I think. Chipper Kelly had an assistant. He had a boy. That was the worst job in show business, right? He had a lad who would help him, but it would be a pretty bad job. But anyway, he had to eat, and he didn't eat much. He would apparently just kind of almost do a broth fast augmented with cigarettes and coffee. He would stay up for four days at a time because living on a flagpole is not exactly like the most comfortable place. You can exist for 22 days or 13 days or however long. No. And it eventually turned against him and that the money dried up after he did this sort of big Atlantic City stunt that we talked about, and it was the Great Depression, and eventually people were kind of like, I don't really care so much about this dumb stunt because I'm starving and I'm broke and I'm homeless. Right. And the kind of tide of public opinion turned such that in 1935, he went to do this in the Bronx, and he was actually arrested for public nuisance. Yeah. And I'm sure he was like, but I'm shipwrecked Kelly. But I mean, think about it. That's like, everybody's sick of you now, Kelly, and you're sick. We're all just depressed in the Depression, so maybe we'll do a dance marathon, but we're not going to watch you sit around in a flagpole anymore. And there was a contemporary article that was written at the time that said that he attributed the decline of flagpole sitting directly to the stock market crash. And he said that people didn't want to see anything higher than their securities, stock securities at the time, which were not very high. And everyone went, It's just not even a joke in good taste. And he would punch his human familiar in the mouth and say, you told me to tell that joke. Man, that was gangbusters. Chuck. Do you watch that show? What we do in the shadows? I've seen some episodes of it. You know, we were talking about it, and one of the Pas, I think, wrote in to say that they were just blown away that we were giving such big ups to their show. I think I remember that if you talked to Matt Barry telling me he's a comedy genius, I never heard anything back. Have you seen An Evening with Beverly Lufflin? No. How do I know that name? So it's Craig Robinson. Yes. From the office, right? Yeah. He plays a guy named Beverly. Left, Lynn and Aubrey. Meadows Plaza. That's right. You're great with first name. Okay, so she's the main character jermaine Clement. I know him. You got that he plays well, you just have to see it. Anyway. He lives in what we do in the shadows. The movie. Right. So I think he cocreated it, too. This is what all ties into this. He and Matt Barry are also in this, too. Matt Barry's in the TV version of what we do in the shadows. Yeah, clement helped create it, but it's definitely worth watching. It's purposefully very bizarre, which can get really annoying really easily. But this movie pulls it off very well. Like, purposeful bizarreness for humor. And it's a good movie. It's worth watching. Okay. It's worth watching. I'll leave it to you to decide whether it's a good movie or not. Well, I love everybody in it. That's a great cast. Yeah, it's worth watching. How about that? All right, should we take a second break here? Can you believe we have it? Yes, I can. All right, let's do our other break, and then we're going to talk about we're going to wind up this flagpole sitting thing right after this. Okay. So Kelly, when we left off, the public turns on him. They don't care about him anymore. He's probably drunk in some hotel room somewhere with his human familiar, talking about the good old days at this point. Yeah, it is kind of sad. I get the impression that the Memory Palace episode really focuses on the sad decline of Shipwreck Kelly, because he was a national probably an international celebrity for a decade for sitting on flagpoles. And then all of a sudden, he's just done, like society drops him like a hot potato and he's penniless and on public assistance, basically. Yeah. And he died a very sad death. He did in I think his final flagpole sit was all the way in the 1950s in Orange, Texas. In 1952. He was almost 60 years old at this point. And he had, during the publicity run up to this, had two heart attacks. Well, was he sitting on his pole for publicity, or was this part of the pole sitting when he had the heart attacks? He had the heart attacks on the pole during the publicity. The actual sit was another publicity stunt for some place, right? Yeah. I don't know what business it was for. I didn't see that. But I did see that the promoters are like, come down right now. We don't think you're going to survive a third heart attack. So stop. Which is crazy. Only 59 at the time. Yeah, but 59 in the 1950s, I guess. So that's a tough when your name was Shipwreck. Yeah. But he did die of that third heart attack, like, a week after that, right? Yeah, he was walking around New York on 51st street, and he dropped dead on the sidewalk from a heart attack. And he was found holding a scrapbook of all, like, clippings of newspaper articles about him during his heyday. Oh, man. Isn't that sad? It's like a movie. Yeah. I can't believe this is a movie. He's a goldmine just waiting to be gold mined. Wait, there's one other thing about him before we move on. What do you got? After he was done with his flagpole sitting career, or the heyday of it one of the jobs he had was as a gigolo a male escort who would dance with whoever wanted him to dance at the Roseland Ballroom near Times Square. He was a private dancer. A dancer for money. I've been to Roseland. Seen some good shows there. Yeah, well, you were where Shipwreck Kelly danced for a diamond dance because he was jiggler. I would have paid for that dance. Sure. Tell him to sit on my head. Hey, he'll do what you want him to do. Oh, boy. So we looked, or rather you look because you put this one together and you found one death from flagpole sitting. Isn't that right? That's all I could turn up. Surely there were more, but I could really only find one. And this guy was wonderful in every way. Dick Blandy. Dixie Blandy. Richard Dixie. D-I-X-I-E blandy. Dixie Blandy. Sure. So Dixie Blandy, he was a flagpole sitter who is contemporaneous to Shipwreck Kelly a little bit. Surely he was directly inspired by Shipwreck Kelly. He came along and started in 1929 which is almost the worst year you could join the flag pole sitting movement because just the next year, Shipwreck Kelly had his triumphant sit aboard like or above two. What? Triumphant sit? It's just great. Yes, well, it was triumphant for a couple of reasons. One, it was as long as sit, I believe 22 days, 23 days, something like that. And secondly, it's above the top. A 200 foot flagpole. For weeks he sat up there. That's triumphant, if you ask me. But he did his in 1930 and everybody dropped him right after. Dixie Blandy just started in 1929. But even though people said flagpole sitting so out we're not going to bother even looking up when we see somebody on a flagpole. Dixie Blandy said you know what? I'm not giving up on this. And he continued to make a career out of it wherever he could. Yes, until he died from flagpole sitting at the age of 71. In 1974, he fell off of his flag pole. It was a 50 foot pole. Where was this? In Harvey. Yeah, I get the impression in Pennsylvania. Harvey, Pennsylvania. Yes. Because the article that reported on it as if it were something of a nearby event was called the Reading Eagle. And reading is in Pennsylvania, right? Yeah. Is it Reading? Whatever. I can't tell you how many times I've been told that since I was a child playing Monopoly. And it's just never stuck for some reason. Is that the titular railroad? Okay. The Reading Railroad. We said Reading. Yeah, that's right. That's what I said, too. But apparently it's Reading. Well, I didn't know. I didn't know it's the same thing, but either way, this is where Harvey and of course, it's always like the grand opening of a shopping center or something. Yeah. And that's what was going on here. It's a four day promotion. And he basically said, I think this pole was attached to a trailer and the trailer moved. Is that right? Well, he asked a security guard to move the trailer so they can make room for what I took to be a cherry picker that could go up and get them. This is hours before the end of his four days sit. And when the security guard, I guess, who had never tried this before, moved the trailer, a guy wire that was stabilizing the pole became taught and actually pulled the pole, snapped the pole in two with Dixie still on top of this 50 foot pole. And he landed skull first, from what I can tell, on to the asphalt below. That's not what you want to open your grocery store with. No. Or to close your flagpole sit with. No. Either way, it's a bad jam. You're going to fall early. This is not his only accident, too. This is the one that got him. But he had fractured his skull before when he was thrown off a pole in a storm in 1955. And then this is heartwarming. In 1961, he was doing a poll set for a promotion dressed as Santa Claus, and he was shouting, Merry Christmas. That was his job. Sit on the top of the flightpoint and shout, Merry Christmas. And apparently it got to the point where he finally yelled down that he was getting numb and he had to be taken to the hospital, which this is what I'm talking about, man. Just no thought. It doesn't take thought to just think about flagpole sitting, and I love that about it. Yeah. Merry Christmas. Hi. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. I think there's something wrong up here. I got to go to the hospital because I'm sitting on top of a flagpole. Just to Santa Claus shouting Merry Christmas for three days. And it's December in Pennsylvania. In Reading. It's Reading. Right. These were definitely the waning days. This was in the 1970s. There were some other stunts throughout the years. Here and there, a couple got married atop a flag pole. Let me see here. A 17 year old in 1963 named Peggy Townsend spent 217 days on a pole for a contest for a radio station. Yes. And then the granddaddy of them all, this guy, Ken Gidge, 248 days in 1971. This guy would later on be a state rep for New Hampshire. Reading his account, he was basically like it was terrible. Right. And I hated it every month. Not only that, he had his parakeet with him named Nixon, and he said that his parakeet came to hate him, like, despise him. He said he didn't think any animals ever hated somebody more than that. Parakeet hated him, probably because he made them stay up there in this little tiny house, the top of fiberglass pole that was generous sway back and forth. He couldn't lay down straight in it because of the pole, so he had to lay wrapped around the pole. It sounds really horrible and terrible. And he did it to get publicity because he was an out of work actor, I guess, at the time. Yeah, like I said, it's called the thing a house is generous. It's this little you can see a picture of it, but it was some sort of shelter. At least he wasn't just sitting, like, on a bar stool like Shipwrecked Kelly for 248 days. Sure. But it was bad. And it's just funny reading these quotes from him. He did not have a good time, and he just basically kind of talked about how awful it was. Yeah. They said that he lost \u00a315.03 inches from his waist and 13 days of sleep just within the first three months. And that when people would come out, like, when the weather is nice, people would come out and shout questions up to him and talk to him. And he said the men usually asked if he sleeps and how he goes to the bathroom. And then women asked if he was lonely, which I find very sweet. But, I mean, remember, we started out here at 13 hours is what kicked this off. And this guy, Kenneth Gidge has brought it up to 248 days. But, Chuck, that does not seem to be the record any longer. In fact, the record may never be broken, ever. What do you think? Yeah. H. David werder of Wikiwatchy, Florida. Man, this is unbelievable. Sat for 439 days, 11 hours, six minutes. Yeah. His set went from 1982 to 1984. That's amazing. Yeah. And it was outside of an appliance center in Clearwater. And he didn't do this as, like, a publicity stunt for that Appliance center. He did it to protest gas prices at the time. Yeah, that's how you see these days sometimes, is protests. Sure. But gas at the time was $99 a gallon. That's cute. So his protest didn't work at all, but he spent 439 days of his life on a flag pole because he was mad about the price of gas. Wow. No thought whatsoever to a Zen, like, beautiful state is what this man achieved. Is that the overarching theme? Yes, I think so. Man all right. You got anything else? Yeah. We should mention David Blaine. He very famously did this standing in 2002. Remember that? For how long? No, I don't remember that at all. He stood atop a 90 foot pole for 35 hours in Bryant Park in New York. Wow. And this is when he was doing those. I love the guy as a street magician and give me a little levitation trick, but when he was like, I'm going to hold my breath or I'm going to be encased in ice or stand on this thing. That's when I lost interest. Oh, yeah. I like street magic, too. It's pretty great stuff. Yeah, but yeah, it's tough to stand. I mean, sitting is hard, but standing is a whole different deal. Yeah, for sure. I wouldn't want to do it. No. So you got anything else about flagpole sitting? I don't. Well, then, Chuck, that means, of course, it's time for listener mail. Oh, this is just funny. Remember in breakfast and I talked about my doctor taught this comes from Joe in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He said, hey, guys, thanks for your entertainment knowledge. Your discussion of doctor names at the end of the breakfast and podcast reminded me of two anecdotes. My ex wife had a dentist in San Francisco named doctor drilling. No. Pretty good, huh? Sure. And this is even better. He said, second, this one never gets appreciated as much by others for some reason. Hit me the right way, but I'm with you, Joe. It hits me, too. She worked in medical administration and her boss at one point was named Dr. Walkder. W-A-C-H-T-E-R pronounced Walker. And he said, I can just imagine her submitting daily reports using baby talk going here. Doctor walked up. Here your reports for the day. Man, this guy is our new mascot here on the show. I think we need to actually get him on here. What's his name? Joe in Gettysburg. I love it. Yeah, Joe. Way to go. This is one of the best listener males I think I've ever heard. Chuck doctor Walker. Well, if you want to be like Joe and try to topple his record as the greatest listener mail writer of all time, take your best shot. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it at stuffpoadcast 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." | |
86e37b34-3b0e-11eb-9699-a305dc1a1a54 | The Statue of Liberty | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-statue-of-liberty | You've seen her there in NY Harbor, standing tall. But do you know the story of how she came to be? Learn all about the Statue of Liberty today. | You've seen her there in NY Harbor, standing tall. But do you know the story of how she came to be? Learn all about the Statue of Liberty today. | Thu, 23 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=266, tm_isdst=0) | 46248092 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk, and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. 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 a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, and there is a certain lady no. Holding an open flame and wearing sandals, so this must be flames sandals. Are we at a Fish concert? Yes. She has an app that has an open flame on her phone. Does she have a whippet balloon at her feet? Yes, that's exactly right. You can't see it from below the pedestal, though. Oh, that's very nice. So Chuck no, it's so wrong. I wasn't talking about someone at a Fish concert. I was talking about the Statue of Liberty. Good, because that's what I researched. Same here. Same here. Because if we had just both happened to research the wrong thing, but it was the same thing, we could have still just pulled it out like we are right now. Maybe, but we both researched the Liberty Enlightening the World statue. That's right. Better known as the Statue of Liberty to joylui. But for those in the know, it's really Liberty enlightening the World. And hypaloy is Hawaiian for huddled masses. That's right. Yeah. It was wretched. You're cold and tired and wretched. Were they wretched? That's how Emma Lazarus put it. And, I mean, I don't think she was being mean. I think she was saying that the state that they found themselves in was fairly wretched. She called them your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. And she was talking to continental Europe, but she was also basically saying, like, you guys suck. You send us your worst. We're going to turn them into our best. Right. And like you said, we're talking about the statue that, if you have been to New York City, sits there in the harbor, looming large at the time, the largest statue, and clear up one misconception before we kind of get to the history. You often hear like, it was a gift from the French government to the American government. Not true. And I always sort of thought that. But as we will learn it's an even cooler story because real people paid for it with oftentimes very small donations, much like Bernie Sanders was building this statue. I was just about to swoop in with that. Nice work, man. Thanks. Yeah, it was paid for by hard fought funds that came from the people. I love that, too. But there was one guy who came up with the idea. This is one of those things where it's like there was a dude walking around and the idea for the Statue of Liberty popped into his head. And I love stories that start like that. Some guys just walking down the boulevard and his name happens to, in this case, be Eduard de la Boule. And he was walking around France in 1865 and saying, this place used to be a lot better when it was a democracy. Right. And now we're under the rule of Napoleon III. Things aren't so great. And you know where things are looking pretty decent is over there in the United States where they have just lincoln has come along, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and they're trying to do things right over there. And I think we should recognize them and also sort of say to our own French people, hey, look at what they're doing over there. Not bad. Yeah. By honoring America. And in this case, it was going to be giving America birthday gift from France on her hundred th birthday in 1876. Yes. It would kind of shine a light on France and be like, hey, look at how great things can be. They ratify the 13th Amendment over. There is no slavery anymore. Like, people are free. They're taking immigrants. And it's like a beautiful place. Let's be more like America. The irony is abound. Right? Yeah. So he started asking around and sharing his idea and it actually kind of caught fire in a lot of ways. It wasn't like a whole home idea by any means. There are a lot of people in France who supported it. And one of the people who joined on board very early on was Federico Goose Bartoldi, who ended up being the sculptor who sculpted the Statue of Liberty. And he came up with the idea really fast, almost suspiciously fast. And when people grabbed him by his lapels and said, how did you come up with this beautiful idea so fast? They shook out of him a piece of scrap paper that he had submitted elsewhere. Yeah, he did what any great designer does, which is kind of sifted through his bag of used tricks. Right. Because he was on a deadline. He actually wasn't on a deadline, but yeah, he had, in the 18 and 50s, gone to the Middle East and was inspired by the Sphinx and the pyramids and said, I'd like to do something really nice like that. And he got his chance when Egypt said, hey, we want a big lighthouse in the Suez Canal here and he came up with this cool, large, tall lady with a lamp to guide the people's way through the Suez Canal. And then they said, no, we don't think we're going to do that anyway. Right. And instead of just being angry and upset, he said, that's fine, I'll just repurpose it. Yeah, he said it's like water off a duck's back Egypt. I don't care. I've got other things to do. And I like to think of it as not that we got a second hand design, but more like the design was so great that it must come into existence and that it came into an even better existence in the harbor off of Manhattan rather than the Suez Canal. Yeah, he worked smarter, not harder. That's right. That's another way to put it to your landscaper. He had to change a few things. Yeah. That in greenside up. Those are the only two things you have to remember. Those are kind of the rules of thumb. Yeah. So he changed up a few things from his initial Egyptian design, namely the Egyptian look. He changed that up and instead of Egyptian headdress, came up with that cool spiky hat. Yeah. Hey, I didn't realize this, did you? That crown against her forehead, that's a crown, but those spikes coming off of it are like reflections of rays from the sun. They're not meant to be. It's not like a structural part of the crown. It's not meant to be. Oh, so that's supposed to be interesting. Yeah, it's seven rays of sunlight shining out from it that I guess is reflecting off. It's meant to be like the light of the sun reflecting off. Yeah. You think it's just like almost like, I don't know, like a guarantee kind of thing. Yeah, like a spiky, cool crown. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'd be interested. I wonder if anyone has done a little photo shopping without that, to see the true nature of the hat, the ground. I know a few people who are good at photoshop, but you're going to get your face and my body. That's right. In our worst pictures. The other thing they changed, or one of the other things he changed was the original statue had a lamp and he said, the lamp is nice for the Suez Canal, but let's go with the torch for the United States. And because it symbolized enlightenment, it was liberty enlightening the world. I guess you could enlighten the world with the lamp, but the lamp is more like showing the way. This is like casting the light of enlightenment out in every direction. Metaphorical. Showing the metaphorical way. Sure. Almost in metaphysical. Then there was also that tablet she's holding at her side, the tablet of law with July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals. They're inscribed on the side. That was a new addition because the original one progress carrying a light to Asia in the Suez Canal. Just head her hand like cup by her side, not even doing anything. It's kind of like hand on the hip, right, or no? Yeah, when I dip, you dip. We dip, right? And then to call back your very sly little joke that you stuck in there at the front of this podcast, you cannot from the ground level because the pedestal is so tall. See what's going on with the feet? And I had never really looked, but right there, if you Google a picture of the lady's Statue of Liberty's feet, there are broken shackles and broken chain that represents the abolition of slavery. And I never knew that was there either. Yeah, and so after Bertoldi said, listen, guys, look, I made all these changes, they flattened out a suit and straightened his tie and put his glasses back on, and then they lifted him up on their shoulders and they said, bear told E and they carried him down the avenue as kind of an initial parade. There'd be a lot of parades surrounding the Statue of Liberty and its development, never to be seen again. He disappeared. It was an accident, man. It was an accident. The group agreed never to speak of it. But regardless, what I'm trying to say is Bear told me he got the contract to be the guy who designed this wonderful statue for France to give to the United States. Right. So he hops on a plane. No, not a plane. I would guess a steamer ship or something. I can't imagine how long that kind of stuff just took and how patient, you know? But it's an ocean voyage. There's like a sense of adventure, definitely, but also, after you do it, like, for the umpteenth time, it's probably like, come on. Although if you don't have any frame of reference of things going any faster, maybe it doesn't seem quite as long. Like you and I having flown, taking a steamer. It's just like oh, my God. It's not like someone would have said, you know, what else is a sense of adventure? The Concorde. That's right. A lot quicker, too, but very adventurous. I heard they're bringing that back. Yeah, I think we talked about that in an episode. Didn't we do it on the Concord? Yeah, but I don't remember us talking about it coming back. I think we did. I think we mentioned I mean, there needs to be something super fast, like, at this point. Yes, agree. We're there. We're at teleportation stage. We're definitely lagging behind. I think. So that's like the seinfeld gag when they talk about we're going to try and, like, make up some airtime or whatever. And he was just like, why aren't they just flying as fast as they can every single time? Does it? That's a very good point. It's a mind boggling seinfeld. All right, so in 1871, he gets on that steamer ship, he comes over to travel to the United States to try and get some support because this is going to be a very expensive project and maybe just kind of scout out some locations. And boom, right there, as he's pulling into New York Harbor, he sees the light, the metaphorical light, and sees Bedlo Island, B-E-D-L-O-E right there in the harbor. And he was like, Wait a minute. What is this place? And everyone said, oh, it's nothing. It's a hunting and fishing ground for the Lenape Native Americans here before us. And then the Dutch settled it, and now the US. Military owns it, and you don't really need to worry about it. And he's like, no, I do, because that, my friends, is the perfect spot. Yeah. It was perfectly situated to watch over the ships coming into the harbor, and that became the spot for the Statue of Liberty. It really is a great spot for it. And it was renamed Liberty Island in 1956 by the Eisenhower administration. That's right. So Bertoli, he goes back to France, and he's met some Americans and drummed up interests among Americans. He's found the site for this amazing place that he's going to build the world's tallest sculpture on, and he ends up helping found the Franco American Union, which, as you said, this wasn't a gift from the French government to the American government. And as a matter of fact, I think that was the first thing that Bertoli and his friends tried. The friend said, no. The Americans said, no, that's just ridiculous. It's going to cost too much, and it'll never work. So they started trying to cobble together, like, private support for it, and the results of that was the Franco American Union. And I have one thing to say about the Franco American Union. Chuck I was like, Franco American sounds really familiar. And then I realized Franco American spaghetti. Remember that? Spaghetti in a can? Yeah. Makes zero sense. The French aren't well known for their spaghetti and spaghetti sauce. Their spaghetti, right. The Italians are. And I think it was an Italian company. I think they took that name on because they were founded around the time that the Franco American Union was trying to drum up interest in the Statue of Liberty project. I couldn't find support for that, but that's my new hypothesis. All right, I'd say we take a break and ponder that, maybe have some of it, all right? Because that's not Chefa Rd. That's different, right? I like both, but yes, it is different. All right, well, we'll go do a sample of each, and we'll come back with our winner right after this. 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You can learn more at city comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. Who won? They were both winners. All right. I love that ravioli still. I never get it. Like, once every three or four years, I'll get that tangy, what kind of meat is in that ravioli? And I'll eat it. I know I haven't had Franco American spaghetti since I can't even remember, but I do remember it being the sweet spaghetti that's what we need. Right. Have you ever been to the Statue of Liberty, first of all, like, in and traveled up and done the whole thing? I was hoping you weren't going to ask me that. No, I haven't. I haven't either. It's Liberty Island now. And there's Liberty State Park as part of the grounds. And I went to see radiohead there in late August 2001, right there with the Statue of Liberty looming and the Twin Towers right across the water at night. Wow. And of course, it was just a couple of weeks after that that the Twin Towers were gone. It was very surreal to have gone to that show at that moment in time, not almost 20 years ago. Almost meaning, as we record, just a couple of days away. Right. So, Chuck, you haven't been to the Statue of Liberty either, I guess, is ultimately the point of your story. No, just a Radio head concert. Okay. So I don't feel particularly bad because I was reading a 1986 piece of contemporary journalism, contemporary to, when they restored the Statue of Liberty, which we'll talk about for a second later. And they were talking to the foreman, one of the foreman on the job, and he was saying, like, I've lived in New York for 48 years, and it took me getting this job to come out here. I've never been here. So I think a lot of people, including people who I think tourists are the ones who have been to the Statue of Liberty. Not to say, like, I'm not a tourist when I go to New York, but it just makes me feel a little less bad. That's not like, what kind of an American are you? You haven't been to the Statue of Liberty. You call me yes, and it kind of feels like and I'm completely wrong here, but it kind of feels like one of those where you're like, no, I get a nice view of it from New York, and when I fly in and out, you get a really nice view of it. Like, why do I need to actually go over there? But I should probably make the journey over there. We'll do it together. Holding the hands of Fraternity Liberty egality and podcastery. That's right. So Bertoli comes back to France. Oh, yeah, I forgot about him. As the story goes, he attends a wedding and sees this young woman and is like, whoa, who is that holding that hat? Everyone said, yes, she had a hat box. And everyone said, that Jean Emily, how do you pronounce her last name? Bahu behoo bao. Baju. You were doing so good with the French. Bajo. B-A-H-E-U-X-I know. That last part would have to be EU, right? Yeah. Or go o Bahou bah. Baho. Who's going with Ms. B? Yeah, let's call her Ms. B. And he said, I have finally met my Lady Liberty. He goes on to marry this woman. And as legend has it, and I don't think it was ever confirmed from him, but his legend has it he used her as the body model for the Statue of Liberty and supposedly his mother Charlotte's face, which is, you know, it introduces a certain level of Freudianism. Yeah. Paging Dr. Freud. Big time. My mom's face on my wife's body. Dave helped us out with this, and he says that apparently his mother struck a sternimposing figure, so that's why he chose his mother's face. All right, we're just going to go with that and just kind of slowly back out of this room. That's right. The next thing he needed to do after he had his artistic inspiration and his model was to he's not a builder of things. Well, he is a builder of things, but he's not an engineer and an architect on that level. Yeah, he was very much interested in that kind of stuff, but it was way beyond the scope of what he was capable of understanding himself. Yeah. So he needed some help, and he figured that, first of all, this is the tallest statue in the world at the time, so it's going to be a challenge. And then what I want to do is build it in France and then take it apart and then rebuild it in the States. Yes. Dude. I kind of get this in a way, but I almost think that they could have gotten all the parts and shipped them to the United States to build on site for the first time. I mean, I kind of get where he was coming from, though. You don't want to send everything over. And it ended up being like Mr. McCrae with a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg or something like that. You want to make sure it works first before if you ask me, that shows it demonstrates the level of dedication that the French had to this gift to America. And my chapel is off to them for it. Well, and I guess he figured because my whole logic was like, and you could do it in America and solve the same problems here as you could have solved there, it'd just be more embarrassing here in America. Well, that but I think he was working with his people there, and you can't bring all those people over. So I'm sure there was a comfort level and a language issue or barrier, potentially, that he wouldn't have to overcome. So I succumb I also think probably that he was also using it as a way to drum up interest and therefore funds for it as well. True. Because he had to raise money. We'll get to that. So Bertoli talked to a couple of architects. The first one he spoke to was Eugene VLA. Le Duke. He was the greatest architect in France at the time. And he basically said, look, you want to use this technique called ray pousse. And it's basically what you're going to do is build a skeleton or something of some sort, some sort of structure underneath that you can then attach thin sheets of copper to. So the sculpture is going to be made of copper, but it's not going to be like cast or carved or anything like that. It would just be impossible to do. Instead, you're just going to fix copper sheets to it to make the thing out of. And I guess VLA le Duke suggested making a concrete structure underneath. And Bertoli was like, okay. I like you a lot. We've had a lot of great basketball games together, and you're my friend, so I'm going to go with your recommendation. But then VLA le Duke died. And then came another guy from our podcast history, gustav Efel, or Eiffel there he is. Created the Eiffel Tower. And he said, yet this is all wrong. He said, why are you speaking Russian? Yes. He's like, I'm trying out some new things. He said, yes. I totally agree with VLA le Duke's idea to use ray pooch, that was a stroke of genius. But the idea of creating the structure underneath out of concrete, that's way too heavy, way too rigid, and it's just totally unnecessary. Try out my new technique of trusses and girders made of raw iron. It's going to be way lighter and it's going to give it a lot more flexibility. Yeah, I think it was probably right. It was the other way, was a little more old school and that he saw the future pre Eiffel Tower. He was the future is wrought iron, I guess. So he was in love with those iron girders. And so he said, here's what we'll do. We'll design this giant 92 foot pylon, and that will be the central point from which everything will spring, right? And there'll be this more lightweight kind of grid of girders and trusses that's going to form that skeleton from that central pylon and then a secondary another iron frame, even. And that's what those copper sheets are going to be riveted to, one at a time. And he said, this is the way. Like he said, it's going to have a little give. And today, even the Statue of Liberty can sway a bit, as all great tall structures usually are made to go a little bit with the wind. She can sway about three inches, like herself, and then the torch can sway up to six inches. You should see she sways even more if there's a good Calypso song playing nearby. Right? Or you should have seen her. That radiohead show. She's getting down. I love this song. No booze at that show. That's what I remember. Does radiohead ever get booed? No, booze is an alcohol. It was a big surprise because it was a state park. So 15,000 people show up and we're like, Where's the beer line? And they're like, oh, there is no alcohol here. You can stand in line, but there's nothing at the other end of it. We're leaving then. Did everybody go booze? No. Yeah, there were booze. After all, we all lived for 2 hours without drinking. It was fine. That's amazing. Wow. That story just keeps getting more and more amazing. I know. I'm trying to think of some more fine points. I'll see if I can think of any giant snake that wound its way through the audience and everyone thought it was going to attack everyone and kill them, but instead it bounced people up and crowd surfed with them. No, actually, I did remember the end of that story is I happened to bump into my good friend Bill from college, who I didn't even know was there, and he had snuck some booze in. Oh, boozy Bill. Was there. Boozy Bill? Like a pint of whiskey or something. Fake binoculars. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man, I remember those. Those are great. Yeah. All right, so Iifel says, this is the plan. The plans are approved. Eiffel himself supervised the construction of this tower and the extension tower that is going to end up being that right arm with the Torch. And that took about two years, and they wounded up in 1883. But that was just Eiffel's contribution to stuff. Yeah. No copper at this point at all. At this point, they're like doing some cutting edge stuff. But one of the reasons why it's cutting edge is because no one's ever tried any of this before. Again, they're making the tallest statue in the world. They were using engineering techniques and structures that were unproven. This is like Eiffel completed as part six years before the Eiffel Tower debuted. So this is new stuff, unproven and introduced to the world. It's pretty cool that they were doing that, but one of the first challenges they ran into was figuring out how to make the little proof of concept tabletop sculptures that they created, how to turn those scale models into the actual thing. Because nowadays when you design when you draw it's on computers and the computer button exactly. Yeah. With your elbow go, come on, stupid. Computer in BigAnt. Right. These guys did not have anything remotely like that at their disposal. And when we tell you about how they went from those tabletop models to the actual Statue of Liberty yourself, it's going to blow your mind. Yeah. What they did have was brains and math and string and stick to it. If right. When it occurred to me, Chuck, if I were leading this thing, the moment it occurred to me what we had to do, I would just start crying. Yeah. Or we would just do our best and the proportions would be all wrong. It would come out like Mr. Mccreg if we were lucky. Who's Mr. Mccreg? What is that? Doctor Nick is talking to somebody and one of his old patients shows up and he's. Like Dr. Nick. Do you remember me? He goes, oh, well, if it isn't my old friend Mr. Mccragg with a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg. This guy got an arm for a leg and a leg. It was just demonstrating how bad Doctor Nick was at his job. I love it. Hi. Frozen body. Yeah. All right, so they need to ambiguous thing and there's Simpson stuff flying all over the place and they've got the little tourist model like you said, and they're all sitting around with their hands on their chin and they said, all right, why don't we do this? Why don't we gradually make it a little bit bigger? I think we can handle that. And so they have this thing called a pantograph. If you look it up online, it doesn't look like much, but it uses these little mechanical arms on boom, like a boom to basically you can make something bigger or smaller from an original using this thing. Yeah. It enlarges the movements of the pencil or pen you're using to the pen that's attached on the other end of the boom. It just makes a bigger exact copy. Yeah. So it's genius to use this and they use bigger and bigger ones until they got up to about a one quarter size, which is really big and impressive. But that's at the point where they're like, hey guys, I hate to break it to you, but that's it on the Pantograph. Like this is as big as we can go. So from this one quarter size we're just going to have to guess, right? We're going to have to wing it. No, they figured out another really ingenious way to kind of measure up from there and they took that finished quarter size version. The Mackette. Yes. That's the final scale model. The biggest that it got was a quarter size of the final version. They built a structure like a frame around the maquette and then they basically attached plumb lines from the structure to the model at different points. Yeah, they use string, basically, but in much the same way, like those cop procedurals like CSI or whatever, they'll have like the red dowels sticking out of bullet holes to figure out the trajectory. They basically did that with the Statue of Liberty, but in 1000 different locations. Every fold, every toenail, every eyelash, everything, all of that stuff was plotted out in real life in three dimension, using plumb lines to basically create these points of reference. And then they went back and they measured all of them and they figured out where all these points would go x four. And then they built another structure and went from there and then went backwards. Yes. I really feel like I had it until the end there. Yeah, you kind of petered out at the end. Well, no, they multiplied it by four, built the structure that could accommodate that and then brought back down plumb lines to those four times larger points of reference and then started building from there. Yeah, it's a technique called pointing up. And all told, there were 9000 measurements, 300 main reference points, and then thousands of these pieces of string, because like you said, they can't just get it close. It's every fold in her gown, every thumbnail meeting the thumb. It's all very specific because they had to get it just right. So then they have to start out building this thing, and what they decide to do, obviously, is build it in sections because they're going to have to take it apart and put it back together. So they built it in very large sections, starting with wood scaffolding, and then eventually plaster, because you're sculpting it can't just be wood and copper hammered on there. There's got to be some fine detail and some really rounded, smooth edges and stuff like that. Right. So they made, basically wood molds, molds out of wood, sculpted the plaster in it, and then they had a plaster mold. And then they could take the plaster mold, which was basically a negative, and then they put wood into the plaster molds and warped it so that it fits the plaster perfectly. Kind of like the techniques that you would use to make a boat hole smooth and folded. They did the same thing with these giant plaster casts, but they did it with wood. And then you think, okay, great, wood, what are you going to do with wood? Then with those wood molds that they made from the plaster cast? They took those thin sheets of copper that were about the size of two pennies held together. That's what the outside of the Statue of Liberty is. That's the thickness of her skin. They put those copper plates into the wood molds and then hammered them smooth. And now all of a sudden, you had the final pieces of the exterior of Lady Liberty coming together. Right. And several hundred pieces in the end. I mean, it's a big project, and if you think, Boy, you better label that stuff good, fellas, you're right, because when this thing was eventually shipped over, it was a little bit annoying in that what happened is what you think would probably happen. Some of this stuff gets mislabeled. And it wasn't quite armed for a leg territory, I don't think, but it was like, all right, now I got to sift through this and kind of refigure it all over again. Yeah, I can't imagine. So I say we take a break and come back and we got to talk about money, everybody. So just sit tight. 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. 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, wreck cards and destruction. Witnesses claim an unknown assailant left from the tram and evaded the scene after a high speed car chase. The identity of this man still unknown. 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And the cityadvantage Platinum select card is your ticket. You can learn more at city comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. Okay, so all this is going on copper. By the way, I feel like this guy's name bears repeating throughout the story, or any time the story is told. Pierre Eugene Secretan was an industrialist in France who donated the copper. Really high quality copper, we hear to the project, and there were other donations and there was other funds raised, but it was hard going. They found out. I get the impression that the French had an easier time because that Franco American Union came together and they said, okay, how about this? The French will raise about 250,000 francs, about $6 million for the statue itself, and the Americans will raise about $250,000, about $7 million today to create the pedestal. And they basically said, Ready, break. And the French went off and started fundraising. The Americans went off and started fundraising. And I have the impression that the French had a little easier time of it than the Americans did. Yeah, it seems like it. I think the Americans probably thought at the beginning, like, hey, they just want us to pay for the pedestal. This is nothing. It ended up being a little more expensive than the statue itself. So we were kind of left holding the bag a little bit. Or the Americans were like, oh, so this was a gift, right? Yeah. You want to go Dutch? Great. The Dutch are like, what does that even mean? Yes, the check comes. So, yeah, that base is called the truncated pyramid, which basically means a pyramid that doesn't have the pointy top. It gets smaller as it goes up. And that itself is 89ft tall and 62ft wide and about 40ft wide at the top of that thing where she stands. And it is mostly concrete, and it's got a facade of Connecticut granite. But that was a big project in and of itself. Yes, Chuck. Also, I was researching the pedestal. I found out there's eight beams in there, eight structural beams poured into the concrete, poured around it. Four of them are horizontal, but then four towards the top are vertical, and they actually break the top of the pedestal. And that is what the interior skeleton of the Statue of Liberty is affixed to. She's, like, solidly affixed to that pedestal. It's pretty cool. That's awesome. So, like you said, the French, I think, are raising money at a steadier clip. They're selling tickets to lotteries schools, were chipping in a little bit. I think there were descendants of French soldiers, supposedly, who had fought in the American Revolution that were sending in some money. Yeah, that's old school right there. Big time. This is kind of a good idea, actually. They started having fundraising banquets as the structure was growing inside it like, they had one in the knee cap, one in the thigh, one in the stomach, and then finally one inside the head. Great way to raise some money. Right. Which is why I was saying, I think that's one of the reasons he built it in France first. Yeah, it makes sense. Sure. And then they did in turn, eventually, when this thing gets to America in pieces, they start doing that here. They start trotting this around. First they had, I think, the right arm and torch on display in Philadelphia for the centennial celebration. And then that same torch and arm at Madison Square Park. And you could pay money to climb up in it and take pictures, or you couldn't take pictures and sketch pictures of it. And the Americans held prize fights, and they held auctions and stuff like that. So they were doing their best, but they were about 100 grand short in the end. And that is when a man by the name of Joseph Pulitzer stepped up very nice, really liked this idea. And he was like, you know what? We got to get there. I had this rag called the world. It's got great circulation. And Dave points out he's dead right. That this is kind of one of the biggest and first crowdfunding campaigns, and that he launched this big thing of where he was like, listen, this isn't the government. We don't want rich, the government doing this. Or the millionaires of France giving a gift to the millionaires of the United States. This is supposed to be for the common person. And so give a dollar, give twenty five cents. And that's what happened. All these people stepped up and gave little tiny increments of money, and they fundraised about $1,000 over their goal using that little crowdfunding technique. In just five months, they've passed the goal. Yeah. The whole hook was, if you give anything, I'll print your name in my newspaper. And it worked. Yeah. If you want to get anything done, offer to print people's name in the newspaper in a positive light. That's a big caveat right there. Right? Exactly. And there was one other thing. Well, there's a lot of stuff that came out of the fundraising effort, but one of the most notable things that came out of it, Chuck, was the poem by Emma Lazarus that we were referring to earlier. She wrote this poem called The New Colossus as kind of an homage or tribute to this Statue of Liberty idea in order to help raise funds for it. And then it ended up being engraved on a plaque on Liberty Island at the base of the Statue of Liberty, I believe, where it was installed. And I think, yeah, that's when it finally was inscribed. But I think that's kind of cool. She just submitted this as part of the fundraising auction, and it ended up being those immortal words. So the hat is off to Mlasprese as well. Yes. Spiky crown. That's right. Okay. We get to the point where the pieces have been made. They've been assembled together in France. Fundraising banquets have been held in them. They had to get all the old cigar butts and everything out before they put them in shipping crates. Mislabeled shipping crates, no less. Yeah. And Bertoldi goes to help oversee the reassembly himself, and it's put up, and I believe 1885 to October. June of 1885 is when the shipping containers show up in the harbor in new York. And then on October 20, 1886, is when the statue is dedicated. And in between, 350 massive sheets of copper that make up the external skin of the Statue of Liberty were put together using 3000 copper rivets, lots of steam shovels, tons of labor. It was just a huge effort. That was probably the fastest part of this whole project. Yeah. And once they figured out those mislabeled crates, it took a while, but it seemed to go pretty smoothly, at least from there. Well, I saw Chuck, they figured out very quickly that the arm holding the torch and the head were misaligned, and they're not sure what happened. One of the theories I read is that Bertoli was not happy with how the statue looked or was going to look based on creating it in France and had it purposely misaligned to basically change its look a little bit, its appearance. Interesting. Yeah. All right. So on October 28, despite it being a rainy day, they had about a million people turn out for this parade down Broadway and then this eventual dedication ceremony there, still known as Bedlow Island. And Bartoli was the guest of honor. And this is just kind of a funny way to end this story, is he was up in the crown, and he has a big French flag covering up her face. And at the right moment, he's cued by someone down below. He's supposed to whip this thing off at the end of the big speech from the chair of the American Committee. And he was signaled a little bit early. And the chair of the American Committee was still giving that speech when Bartoli dropped his flag and no one cared. The cannons went off, everyone went crazy. Steam whistles are blowing in the harbor. Brass band goes off. And the chair of the American Committee was like, all right, I guess. Who cares? I'll just finish that later. The confession I had prepared will just go unheard, I guess. But nobody cared. And it was a big, grand success. Yeah. And I believe from the time that it was dedicated in 1886, just to 20, 414 million immigrants passed by Lady Liberty. So she definitely did her job right out of the gate. That's right. They passed by that copper colored structure. Yeah. At least at first. At first. And that was all planned. Copper is going to oxidize, and it's going to form that patina to protect that copper. And everyone knew that she would eventually turn green. Did everyone know that? Well, everyone who knew anything about copper, the builders knew it. And that was part of the whole thing, was that copper, once it gets his patina, will last forever. Right. But, yeah, there probably were some Schmo's in New York that were like, Why is it turning green? And it happened. There's no direct date, but there are photos from as early as 19 six, which is only about 20 years later. Where that patina is, where she's pretty green at that point. And I think at this point in places on that statue, that patina is as thick as that copper. It's two pennies deep now. It's four pennies deep in some places. So do you remember when we were younger, in the mid 80s, there was, like, the restoration project of the Statue of Liberty. I was under the impression that they were going to clean the green off of it. Were you not? I don't remember, but I don't think I was under the impression. There's a reference in Seinfeld, really, about how member George goes to work for Kruger Industrial Smoothing. And they referenced that Kruger was the company that bought the the Statue of Liberty restoration job. So I have the impression that other people think that it was supposed to be cleaned of its green color as well. But regardless, I think so, too. I think seeing the Statue of Liberty is anything but that aged copper green is weird. That'd be so strange. But during that restoration, whether they were trying to clean the green off or not, they found a few things about it. They found the torch was irreparably weathered. And so the torch that she's holding now is new. It's the second version. I think it's created using the exact same methods as the original one. But they replaced the torch, and then they also found that a lot of Eiffel's wrought iron structure, a lot of it was rusting and falling apart. So they replaced all of those with stainless steel. So she got, like, a really good refresh and update in 1986, thanks to a committee led by Leigh Coca, who was appointed by President Reagan, very few, very few sentences that are more 80s than that. And then also we know that the restoration worked at least until the year 39 78, thanks to the Planet of the Apes movies, or 39 55, depending on who you ask. You should lob that spoiler in there, dude. It's a movie from 1968. I know. Can you really spoil that? Sure. One of the great innings now, about three to 4 million people a year visit Lady Liberty and you can get in an elevator there on that ground level to the top of the pedestal, and you can go all the way up to the crown, even if you make a reservation, apparently. But the elevator doesn't go that high. There are about 162 steps that'll get you there, and you can look out of that crown. I imagine that's quite a sight. And time was that they would just sell tickets without reservations, and you just buy your tickets and stand there in line to wait for the people who went up to come back down because there was not a lot of room on that staircase. And now at least, they're, like, really innovating since 1986 by offering advanced reservations, apparently it was miserable. Right. So one other fact about the Statue of Liberty truck that stuck out to me was she started out as the world's tallest statue when she was built and dedicated, but today, she's just number 47 among the world's tallest statues, which means we've built a lot of really tall statues in the last 100 years. It's something that humanity has been really interested in, apparently. That's right. And if anyone ever says, yeah, I've been there. I stood climbed up right next to the torch. You call that person a liar? Because no one's been allowed in that torch since 1916. They may be thinking, crown. Yeah. You won't be allowed in the torch again until the year 39 78. Then you can do whatever you want, because the torch is just laying there on the beach, basically. You finally did it, you darn maniac. Okay, well, Chuck has nothing else. I have nothing else. And since I just said, you darn maniac, it's time for a listener mail. We call this short and sweet. Oh, I like that. From a younger, like Humpty Dumpty. That's right. Hey, guys. I am 14 years old from northern Utah, and I've been listening to you guys for a while and really enjoy your podcast. It's really fun to listen to what spunky things you have to say. I love the use of spunky there. I listen all the time during car rides, are doing crafts and art. If you wouldn't mind, I would love it if you read my letter for my siblings and say, Sheesh, during listener mail, we usually don't honor requests. I know my socks are just down around my toes right now, but Alyssa Stewart just sounded like a nice kid, and sometimes it's good to kind of one up those siblings. Yeah. So to the siblings of Alyssa, who Alyssa didn't include, I'm just going to say one thing to you, Sheesh. Wow, chuck, I think you just fundamentally altered Thanksgiving at that house. Yeah. Birth order out the door. Cool order reset. Well, if you want the cool order and your family reset, take your best shot. I'll be surprised if we do it again. But then Chuck's always full of surprises, so you never can tell. Can't get a beat on that one. You know what I mean? Yes. In the meantime, you can send those requests 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 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 the Neogen device developed by Rst Syndicates, 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 Neogenrelievespanecom Now for Provider benefits. About the Neogen system, come chat with us. That's Neogenrelievespane.com. Your patience will thank you. Hi, 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. Air Cover for Hosts." | |
What is biospeleology? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-is-biospeleology | Biospeleology is the scientific study of cave organisms and ecosystems. In this episode, amateur biospeleologists Josh and Chuck explore the dark, dank world of caves and the weird and wonderful creatures that live in them. | Biospeleology is the scientific study of cave organisms and ecosystems. In this episode, amateur biospeleologists Josh and Chuck explore the dark, dank world of caves and the weird and wonderful creatures that live in them. | Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:04:42 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=16, tm_min=4, tm_sec=42, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=259, tm_isdst=0) | 28301496 | 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. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's an echo. Yeah. And it's dark and dank. Dank creepy. Remember that word, dank? I do. Is that not a word anymore? Not really. Okay. Hi. How are you? Thanks for meeting me here. Of course. I got the invitation. I couldn't resist. Did you like the fact that I gave you the invitation and cut out letters from magazine sealed with a kiss? It's very nice. So, Chuck, we are here in cave. Yeah, man. And the reason why is because we are talking about something called Biospeleology. That's your big word? It is. Say it. Biosphereology. Biospeeliology? Yes. You've heard of spelunking? Yeah, I've done minor spelunking. Nothing big, not deep. But I love caves. I think they're really cool. So have you gone caving or spelunking? Probably caving. Were there, like, harnesses and ropes and helmets with lights on the top? No. Okay. You went caving. Yes. It was me and my brother poking around. Spelunking is like where you go into a cave and you go into a cave and you may die. Yeah, but it's recreational. Yeah. That's what differentiates it differentiates from split, which is cave research. Right. And Biospeleology is cave research on the life inside that cave. Bingo. And there is actually quite a bit of life. We only figured this out as recently as 1700, but once we did figure it out, we realized that there's some really awesome creepy, creepy life in caves. Like, you sent me a cool picture of basically a faceless salamander. Right? Yeah. That's the proteus salamander. And that was the one. Yes, that's 1700s. They saw this thing and they were like, Whoa, something's different. Well, the first thing that I think they noticed that was different was that it was a foot long. Yeah. And that's a big salamander. Can you imagine seeing that thing there with no eyes? No face? Yeah, no face. It's just like a head. Did you ever see I think it was A Twilight Zone, the movie, one of those you remember the kid who created this whole cartoon world and his sister he didn't like his sister talking back to him because she was missing the mouth, and she just sat there and watched cartoons the whole time. It is creepy. And the salamander is creepy in much the same way. Yeah, slightly less, because it's not a human. We're not hardwired to really be disturbed by faceless salamanders. Like, we are mouthless humans. But it's along the same lines. Right? They did that in the Matrix, too. Keanu had the no mouth in that, but you could sort of see the makeup, and that always bugged me. Yeah, it wasn't that good. There's also plenty of slightly less exotic life in caves. You've got beetles, you've got worms, crickets bats, of course, are the stars of caves. Right. And it turns out, from reading this article, how cave biology works, I guess most, if not all, of the life in caves is based on well, basically, they're descended from above ground dwelling species. Right? Yeah. I was kind of surprised. I was also surprised to learn that there were shrimp in caves for some reason that just I don't know, I could see, like, cave shrimp being some exotic thing you would find at a four star restaurant. Because it tastes different. Because it's never, like, seen the sun they wear over the shoulder furs. Very big wooden club. Yes, you're right. They weren't necessarily born there, but they made their way down there and in a process called regressive evolution. Right. Fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy will recognize this. How so? Because it's pretty much what Gollum did. Oh, yeah. Remember that's? Pretty much regressive evolution within a single organism, which never happens, my precious. Right. But this is over the course of many, many generations. Right? Yeah. They would, like, not devolve it's called regressive evolution. They would actually lose features to adapt to the environment rather than gain features. Right. Well, if you think about it, the faceless salamander that had no eyes, if it was in complete darkness, constant darkness, there's no reason for it to have eyes. So it might as well just not have them and maybe put its effort and energy elsewhere. Yeah. You've seen one of the common pictures of aliens from outer space. You always see is the sort of the big head, the huge eyes and the little nostrils without a nose. The Whitney Stryber. Communion alien. Right. And then the holes for ears, but not ears. Right. My buddy Jerry always thought that these were, like, super evolved humans from the future and that we don't need the structure of the nose, we just need the nostrils. We don't need the structure of the ears. We just need the whole and eventually and our brains are getting bigger. She was like, that's why they got the big heads. That's why they don't have nose. They just have nostrils. And kind of blew me away. I was like, wow. Right? Maybe they are, like, humans from the future. He's like. And George Washington grew him. Exactly. You guys are laying on top of your car, right? Speaking of aliens, have you ever seen Bad Taste? And speaking of Peter Jackson crazy. No. You haven't? No. So Peter Jackson, the guy who did Lord of the Rings, he directed this horrible, schlock, graphically violent movie called Bad Taste in 1988. You have to see it. Well, he did another one too. I can't remember the name of it, but the same thing. Yeah. He started out doing, like, schlockey horror movie. It's worth seeing. What does that have to do with this? Aliens and Peter Jackson got it. All right. Full circle. Thanks for that. We haven't gone off on a good tangent in a while. No, that felt good. Thanks. Well, you know what, Woodsman? This is very nice out here and all, but I feel like we should get back to the office. Yes, you're right. Let's go, Jerry. So, Chuck, we talked about regressive evolution. Right. And it's not just the loss of eyes. You lose skin pigmentation. And we found that among cave organisms, cave dwelling organisms, their metabolism is super efficient because there's so little food down there that they have to make do with what they have. It's like if you have to have a section of your intestine removed, you basically spend the rest of your life malnourished. Because our metabolism is used to taking its time, absorbing nutrients. So if there's less place for it to go, we become malnourished. These guys are like the exact opposite. It's like hyper metabolism. Right. And so as a result, we're figuring out that we can really learn a lot by studying freaks of nature. Right? Well, yeah. And they said they look at fish, because I didn't know that. A lot of our water passes through a cave ecosystem at some point. And so they'll study, like, fish and how they live in the water to study water quality that we end up drinking, which is kind of crazy, too. Yeah. You're drinking stuff that cave shrimp has been in. Wow. Cave shrimp has pooped in the water that you're drinking. Monkey meat. Push meat. Dead alive. I think that was the movie. I think you're right. It's funny how it comes back like that. We also can learn a lot from studying the lack of eyes of normal eye development. Right. Remember the Asian Orange podcast? Remember those kids that were born without eyes? Yeah. How does that happen, exactly? What genes are responsible for that? Well, you learn it by comparing, say, an eyeless produce salamander to a regular salamander and figure out what genes they lack. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Humans are smarter. So, Chuck, we started to go into the caves. We figured out why people are going into caves when they started going in. What do we find in there? Well, you find one of three categories of species in a cave. Notice it didn't say species. People often say species. Yeah, species or wars. Have you ever been one to say wars? No. Me neither. The first one is it troglosine. Yeah. Triglycein troglozine. And troglos is Greek for cave. Xenos is Greek for guests or stranger. And as you would imagine, this is a cave visitor. And the three branches here, of the things you'll find there, they categorize them depending on how much time they spend in the cave. So they spend the least amount of time, and they can come and go when they want to. And they go in there for specific reasons, like a bear to hibernate or to nest or to give birth. So probably for shelter. We're talking bears skunks, coons moths. Right. So that's number one. Bats as well. Make that list. They make that list as well. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Because they hibernate in there. Right. And poop, which will get to in a little bit, because that's important. So what's number two? The next one is Chocolate Files, which means cave lovers. Yes. I like that name. It's just like, hey, cave, how's it going? They just like, you looking good. They love it so much that they actually enjoy being in there. Right. These described species that are capable of living inside or outside of caves, but they love the caves, so they decide to stick around there. So you've got, like, beetles, worms, frogs, that kind of stuff. These things could live outside of the caves, but they tend to spend their lifetimes inside of caves. Right. And they'll go out to get food a lot of times and then bring it back in. Right. Which will also get too that's a good thing to do, that. Yes, it is. Man, there's foreshadowing going on all over the place. The third one, Chuckers yeah, that's the creepiest one, obviously, is the troglobites and BIOS for life, obviously. And these are the ones that never leave. They can't leave. They will die outside of the cave. Yeah. I thought that was a bit of a stretch to go from BIOS to bytes now. Well, I mean, you got Latin files. Those were good ones. And then bytes. It should be truglobios. It's good. And these little guys have adapted so well. Like I said, they can't leave. These are the ones that either have eyes that don't work well or don't have eyes at all. Not much pigmentation. Like the salamander we talked about was sort of almost translucent pink, pinkish hue. And they have adaptive metabolisms, so they don't have a lot of food and nutrients down there, so they don't need it to live. Right. They're the ones with the hyper metabolism. Right. And what else? The legs and antenna are longer to help them find food when there is food. Right. So let's talk about food then. Well, let's talk about the different places you're going to find these things. Right. Okay. So I think one of the reasons I like this cave biology article, or cave biology in general, is that everything's divided up so neatly and cleanly. Right. So we've got the three different kinds of organisms. You've got truglozenis, right? Trugglophiles. truggle of bites. There's also three different segments of a cave. Right. And they all fit in each one. And the second one is a great name too. Yeah. The first one is the entrance zone, and you still obviously will have some sunlight coming in and out, recessive sunlight. And that means you can have some plant life a little bit. You got bears sleeping, you got bear sleeping, you got coon sleeping. They're nesting, laying eggs and what have you. You got some moths, snails, owls, and this is a cool picture, too. It really is kind of creepy looking. That's like a Lee Dempsey picture. Yeah, I'm sure it is. Lee. So that's the first one, but the second one is the really good one. The twilight Zone. Yeah. That's cool. What it's called? Yes. You're about to enter the twilight zone. Exactly. And you mentioned twilight zone earlier. Did I? Yes, with the kid who you didn't even pick up on that, did you? I feel like I'm about to wake up. Really? Yes. This didn't happen in the twilight zone. This is the middle zone and there is a little bit of light and there can be a little bit of plant life, but don't count on it. No, but there's going to be plenty of mushrooms and probably some albino mushrooms. Well, that's plant life, right? Yeah. Well, it's fungus. Okay. So yeah, it's in the plant kingdom. And the temperature there is we should mention that the temperature in the entrance zone varies, obviously, according to the weather outside. Right. But it gets a little more static in the twilight zone. I just love saying that. And it's very moist and very cool. And that is where the trocolacine lives. Spiders, millipedes, bats, moths. Right. And I think trocolophiles, you'll find those here as well, hanging out, too, and I guess don't you imagine that this is where Rod Serling got the name for twilight zone? No, because think about it, he was talking about this place between this world and another world. That thin fibrous transition place. This is that we have to look that up. I can't believe we didn't already. What's the third one? The third one is the dark zone. Yeah. This is the creepy slag tight. This is where you're going to find no light whatsoever. Hitch dark, no change in temperature, no weather and definitely no vegetation at all. Right. Yeah. Creepy, but lots of trigger. Bite it. Yeah. You're going to find lots of foot long salamanders that have no faces. Did you see the descent? That movie kind of a not too great horror movie. I know what you're talking about. These girls go caving deep, deep. And there are these, like I think they were humans from way back when that never left the cave. But they're basically like human troglobites. That sent trampoline got you. It was in the woods, sort of, maybe. So the Ozark, maybe. We're going to get some mail for that one, I think. Yeah. The problem with the dark zone is there's organisms running around that are alive and healthy that kind of flies in the face of this rule of thumb here on planet Earth, that everything is kept alive by the sun. Right. Right. If there's no light whatsoever, how are animals in the dark zone allowed to live? Food chain. Which I guess, though she didn't really draw the conclusion that the food chain depends on the sun. But I guess that's what it means. Right. The sun still comes into play, just not deep down within there. Right. They benefit from photosynthesis distally rather than proximally. Look at you, fancy boy. How do you get food deep down in the cave? One way is, and I didn't even consider this, is by flooding. Right. When the waters rise, it will just wash things in there that the animals can eat. Right. And rather than a food chain, I mean, a food chain is actually a good way to describe it. It's almost like a food bucket brigade, you know what I mean? Yeah. So, like, you have food maybe washed in leaves, twigs, sticks or actual food, maybe a dead raccoon, and then things feast on it in the entrance zone. Right. And then things that are living in the twilight zone can feast on those things that aid it in the entrance zone. And then it just kind of goes and goes until you finally reach the dark zone, and then they're eating maybe four times removed what washed into the entrance zone. Right. Yeah. Well, and that's just one way to get in washing another way is your favorite thing. Guano bat poop. This is a really good fertilizer. Is it? Yeah, you can usually buy it at nurseries. Oh, really? Yeah, well, there's lots of it because I've seen the specials where there's mounds like mountains of bat poop, because they're there for months on end. Right. Hibernating. And they're all just pooping. That's all they're doing, eating and pooping. Yeah. And it stinks, too. Oh, I bet you can't eat it right away, though, isn't that right? Or like, they can't just feed on the poop initially. Didn't have to decompose. Well, it depends. You've got decomposers microorganisms that are actually eating the poop. Right. So bat guano is a food source for these organisms at the very bottom of the Biospeleology food bucket brigade. Right. The unsung heroes. So they decompose it, they break it down for themselves, turn it into food themselves, but they're also leaving nutrients as byproducts. And these decomposers and microorganisms make up food for slightly larger organisms like millipedes and centipedes and other small insects. Right, right. And then it just kind of goes up from up to the apex, which is the predators. Yeah. It's a food pyramid, essentially, which really all ecosystems are at the top, you have predators and there's going to be the smaller well, the larger the animal, the fewer there are of them. If you compare sharks to plankton right. There's a lot more plankton than sharks in the ocean. Yeah. Good. .1 of the things that really creeped me out and this one's going to keep me awake tonight, the insects get bigger and bigger. Centipedes, spider, salamanders, and then apparently some centipedes are so big that they can feed on bat. That's what I want to see. I do, too, actually. And it's kind of like, why mess around with guano and wait for the whole food chain thing to happen. Go right to the source and eat the bat. Yeah. The heck of a centipede. Yeah, I'd like to see that, too. We're going to look for some video of that after this. Okay. So how do these guys get in there and gals these researchers? Very carefully. You got to look out for crazy hillbillies who have regressively evolved. Right. You have to not fall off of ledges. Sure. You have to go through very narrow crevasses. Watch out for bears initially. And I'm sure the entrance zone can be a little dodgy. Definitely. And I guess we said that Biospeleology or speleology in general is a pretty recent field of science, a couple of hundred years old. And we figured out pretty quick, though, that these are almost pristine ecosystems, and when we show up and we're covered in fungi or bacteria or whatever, we introduced that to that ecosystem and can cause it to collapse pretty quick. Yeah. Debbie Bronco, my buddy who you met as well, who wrote this, pointed out that even just, like, shedding, like, lint off of your shirt or dandruff or dandruff off your head, off your scabby head can start a reaction that can destroy the ecosystem, potentially. Right. Creepy. There's nothing sadder than seeing a foot long faceless salamander die. And you know that it was because of your version of smallpox. You would know. It was sad, though. You wouldn't be able to tell. It would just look like the faceless beast as it was. Are you happy? Are you sad? Yeah. I have another point to make, but I can't remember it right now. Were you going to make the point about the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988? No, but go ahead. Well, the US passed an act that said if you go into a cave and you spray paint a cave, go to jail. You go to jail for that? You can't spray paint in a cave. Well, maybe that was my point. That's pretty recent. Like, I get the feeling because they didn't explore caves until sort of recently, as far as if you talk about how long science has been around. Right. So I think caves have kind of just been ignored or maybe hundreds of years ago, they were like, aint going in there. No. Or maybe they didn't think there was a reason to there was anything worth finding in there. Plus, they're just really scary. I think that more than anything that's kept us out, I ain't going in there. Right. I would like to do this, though. Like, the caves and the cenotes. Is that what they're called? Yeah. Those are so cool. Those are really neat. Yes. The underground water, it's fascinating to me. Yeah. I want someone to email us and say, hey, guys, I do this, and I'd love to fly you down and take you spelunking. I think coolest stuff may have done something and say no to really? Maybe. We'll see. So you got anything else? No, sir. I guess the one thing that we took away from this is that instead of stranger danger, you could also say Xenos danger. If you're in Greece and they'd be like, we get the Xenos part, but I didn't catch the second. If you want to learn about cave biology or biospeliology, you should type in cave biology or Biospeleology in the search barhousefours.com. There's some pretty cool illustrations in there. Or Google Proteus. Salamander too. Yeah, that's pretty cool. It's creepy for show. It's creepy, like, ten times. I wonder also, we were talking about guano and being a fertilizer. I wonder if the back guano fertilizer market is contributing to declining cave ecosystems. Got to go in there and harvest it in the Dark zone, right? I know. One thing we did forget was she made a point that they are concerned that climate change oh, yeah. Is not going to be too good for what's in the cave, because it kind of depends on that constant temperature in the Dark zone, right? Yeah. We can get used to changes in temperature. These organisms literally don't experience the temperature change in generations and generations. I would imagine even a couple of degrees could wipe them out. Sure. And plus, also we've got the white nose syndrome facing our bat populations. Yeah. What is that? We talked about it before, remember? I can't remember how it came up, but we were talking about bats with, like, little fungus on their nose, and it was killing entire populations of bats, and they're dropping by the millions. And our, I guess, bat researchers are like, we have no idea what's going on. We don't know how to fight this. And it's actually a big problem because if you hate mosquitoes, brother, you better like bats. Really? They can eat up to 600 mosquitoes in an hour. I need to get some bats in my yard. You do? It's awful. Yeah. You can actually put up a bat house. Really? Yeah, they sell them usually at nurseries. Again, you know a lot about bats. We had a bat in our chimney, and we did a little research and found out it's like, one of the worst things that could happen to you as a family. Bad luck? No, just, like, health risks. Oh, really? If you wake up in a bad luck to have a bad day, it probably is. It's bad luck to run over graves. Really? I heard good. If you wake up in a room and there's a bat in the corner, you have to kill that bat and go right to the hospital. Really? Because people are often known to sleep through being bitten by a bat. Right. Bats carry rabies, so if you wake up, you might not know that you were bitten. You need to go get checked out. I wouldn't sleep through that, buddy. People do. Well, I'm a light sleeper. There's no way are you really? Big time. Oh, my goodness. I'm a heavy sleeper. Really? Yeah. It's like I got hit in the head with her shopping in there. I think she's recalling her Guatemala experience. The Snoring. That's right. Is that it? I think that's it. I think that's it, man. Yeah. Okay, well, then let's just go right to listener mail. There's no listener mail. This is plugfest. Okay. Yes. Help. Let's do it. Chuck, go ahead. I guess we should start with Atlanta. Yes. October 13. The time is still being worked out, but we're going to do like a doors open at this time and then trivia starts at this time. It will be in the evening hours, of course. Yeah. At a place called Five Seasons Brewing Company. They're on the west side. They have a few locations, but the one we're going to be at is on the West Side, not too far away from downtown by Georgia Tech boo. And we're going to be playing trivia. Anybody who wants to come play us, we're taking all comers. It's free. Yeah, you got to buy your own drinks. I imagine we'll have some Sisk swag and some House to Fork swag. We definitely will. There'll probably be some other podcasters, some other House to Fork podcasters there. We're assembling our team right now. Yeah, we're more on that later. But we're sending out emails to some people that may or may not want to join us. Yeah. So please come. October 13. That's a Wednesday, right? Yeah, it's going to be awesome. It's not to be missed. They got a cool scene there on the roof. It's going to have the downtown be nice and cooled off by then. Yeah, it's going to be nice. Yeah, it's going to be way cool. Yeah. So that's that plug, bud. And we welcome our friends from Florida. We've already gotten some guff because I said floridians will be turned away at the door. Well, maybe we should say University of Florida people aren't welcome. If you show up with the Florida Gator shirt, you're just asking for it. That's all I'm saying. Okay. There you go. Yes. Anything else? Well, we're going on our trivia tour after that to five or six cities going to end up in Austin, and the other cities are kind of being worked out. And we appreciate those of you on Facebook who have lobbied for your city. We're taking that into consideration, of course. And Facebook is a great place to interact with us. Yeah. We've got a fan page, Facebook stuff you should know. We also have a Twitter feed. It's hit or miss and how funny it is good at S-Y-S Kpodcast. One word. And we also have a Kiva team that's closing in, and we just hit $230,000 in donations. Really? Yeah. We are trying to hit the $250,000 mark by our one year anniversary. I will make that for you, which is October 6, I believe. Kiba 7th. Org. Kiba.org. Teamstepychinnow, team, singular, not plural. And finally, our friends in Guatemala and co ed, they have left the campaign open. If you still want to text $5 to 20222. Isn't that how it works? Yeah, you text the word stuff to 20222, and you can donate $5. And by I think we've raised over $15,000. Now, the stuff you should know, army, it's a good cause. Yeah, it's a way good cause, and that's a lot of dough for them. That's like three computer centers in full or textbooks for life for thousands and thousands of kids. So we appreciate their work, and it's an ongoing campaign right now. And we have a super cool blog, too, Chuck, so people don't go to the blog. It's all happening on Facebook these days. You know how it works. I like the blog, too. You know these kids. Well, your blog posts are awesome. So are yours. All right. Well, yeah, that's another thing, too. I don't know if anyone knows. Every week, Mr. Charles W. Chuck Bryant does a little roundup, little additional info about whatever podcast we released that week on the blogs@housesteporks.com, so you can check that out every Friday. And that's that. Man. If you want to get in touch with me, Chuck, Jerry, or this chair all right. Yeah, let's name this chair Frank. If you want to get in touch with me, Chuck, Jerry, or Frank the chair, you can email us at stuffpodcast@howstoughfirst.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blog on the housetofworks.com page brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you." | ||
Little, Fluffy Clouds | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/little-fluffy-clouds | Today every schoolkid learns a fair share of facts about clouds and the water cycle, but this wasn't always the case. Join Chuck and Josh as they break down the history behind the classification of clouds and the way they form, all in one handy podcast. | Today every schoolkid learns a fair share of facts about clouds and the water cycle, but this wasn't always the case. Join Chuck and Josh as they break down the history behind the classification of clouds and the way they form, all in one handy podcast. | Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:54:18 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=18, tm_min=54, tm_sec=18, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=11, tm_isdst=0) | 32039152 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, chuck Brown. Right. We're going to talk about clouds. And we just had a parade of producers in here today. Yeah. We're recording two podcasts today, and we're on our third producer. Yeah, Jerry is out. So we had guest producer Matt, and then we had the head honcho. Well, during some time during the podcast, they switched without telling us, and Matt became Roxanne. And now we have Tyler. And Josh made a really funny joke, which is we just need to get one of those birds that has the water in it or something and just have it set over the R button so it can record. Right. Or a baby that can press R. Right. That's what we need. You toddler's laughing. That's good. Yeah, that is good. It was like a rock name. Tyler. Yeah. Well, she probably thought correctly. Like I shouldn't make any noise, right? Tyler is not thinking that. Yeah. Chuck? Yes. Have you ever seen a cloud? I have. I love clouds. I got one for you. Have you ever heard of a man named Luke Howard? I have indeed. Spell it. It's a good name, isn't it? Luke Howard? Sure. Especially for the late 18th, early 19th century. That's a good name for that. It's kind of like somebody our age would be named Luke Howard. It just doesn't seem old timing to me. Sure. Well, okay. This guy named Luke Howard. Young Englishman, right? He's walking around planet Earth, and everyone around him is calling 1800. Yeah. He was born 1773. Got. You didn't live to see the American Civil War come to a close, sadly, but he probably figured it would eventually, possibly didn't predict the following year, but who knows, right. Well, back during Luke Howard's time, before he was aged 20, right. He was walking around and people were calling clouds essences. Really? Like idiots. That's what we call clouds, essences. Like, look at that beautiful puffy essence in the sky. Well, it's not even that. Just like, look at that essence. It's probably going to eat us eventually. It's going to eat the Earth. We didn't understand gases very well. Yeah. We didn't understand different states of solidity, liquid, gas. What a time to be alive it was. There was a time of ignorance and profound fear and wonder. There's a lot left to discover, right? Yeah, sure. Well, Luke Howard helped put the kibosh on that discovery by classifying clouds. First of all, he started calling them clouds, not essences. He actually thought of the name Cloud. He was the first to call him Clouds, as far as I know. Wow. At age 20. I called him Luke's or Howard. He missed the boat there. Look at that. Beautiful Howard, right? Little fluffy Howards. Anyway, Luke joined. He was a pharmacist. Okay. He joined a group called the Eskezians, which means secrets of knowledge. And basically to entertain themselves. Every week or whenever they met, each one would present a scientific paper like one would present for that night. And finally, when he's 20, Luke gets his turn to present a paper that he prepared. And it's called on the modification of clouds. And modification meant what we would consider today classification in parentheses, say Essences. So people knew what the heck you were talking about. Yeah. And that paper actually formed the basis of how we still classify clouds. Wow. This kid just kind of came up with it and it was just dead on. It just made such utterance that hundreds of years later we still use his classification system. I would say that puts him in the realm of some of the great unknown important people on the planet. I would say that you're right, my friend. That sounds like a genius episode to me. Yes, it does. So should we run down the four main types of clouds that he thought of? Yeah, he basically classified them. He modified them in the parlance of the day by their shape right. Or size and their altitude. And in a subcategory, their ability to precipitate on the Earth. Okay. All right. I'll go ahead and read these off because Latin is my thing. Cumulus josh means heap or pile. And those are the ones. Those are the money clouds. Those are the ones that are flat on the bottom and real billowy puffy. Fluffy clouds. Fluffy clouds. But usually big, not little. Yes. Stratus clouds means layer. And they are short and kind of spread across a distance. You got the cirrus, which means curl of hair. Interesting. Yeah. Wispy and thin. And then you got the old nimbus. And those are rain clouds. And it means rainy cloud. Right. Which, ironically maybe not ironically, it's probably a terrible word to use, but 808 State had a great song called Nimbus. And the Orb had the song Little Fluffy Clouds that this episode is named after. That was a great song. Little Fluffy Clouds. Yeah. We should get that in here somehow. I think we should. It appeared on the album the Orbs Adventures beyond the Ultraworld. Oh, really great album. The whole thing, from beginning to end, is awesome. It's like Dark Side of the Moon, kind of, except much happier and techno year. Really? Yes. Have you ever been to Montana? No. I've been to Idaho, so I kind of have an idea of what you're talking about. The big sky deal. Yeah. I had a guy when I was in Montana explain. Because I lived in the desert of Yuma, Arizona, for a while and you can see from horizon to horizon there, but a lot of times it's just blue sky and so it looks expansive. But then you go to Montana and they call it Big Sky Land and you get out of the plane and it immediately looks larger. And a guy that lived there said it was because of the clouds. He said they get these huge, long, billowy cumulus clouds. And it gives it a perspective that you don't get, like when it's just a blue sky in the desert. And so it gives the illusion that the sky is actually larger. Right. So it sounded good to me. I didn't paint it on the clouds. But you can tell there is a difference. It's just enormous. Yeah. All right. And for those who really pay attention to the podcast, there is no H on Yuma. It actually is pronounced yuma. Yes. Not huma. Right. Arizona. Josh, should we talk about types of clouds by altitude? Yes, I think we should. Chuck, we'll start with high. Yeah. So we talked about based on size or shape, right? Yes. You can take those shapes and depending on where they are in altitude, they have different names, different prefixes. The high level clouds generally have some sort of prefix, like zero. Right. So you got cirrus clouds, zero cumulus and cirru status clouds, and circle storatus clouds. They're usually very high, very thin, and sometimes they're such a thin layer that you can only detect them when they're juxtaposed against the moon. And you can see that it's creating a halo effect. That's actually a zero stratus cloud. Right? Yes. Zero cumulus. One of my favorites. Very high level puffy cotton balls way up there. Yeah. And then, Chuck, take it home with Sears. Sears clouds, Josh, are white and delicate and they're wispy and they sometimes have little swirls at the end created by the wind. By the end created by the wind. And you can detect air patterns a lot of times by what it's doing to these kind of clouds. Yeah. Or you can just lick your finger and hold it up. Yes. High level. We should point out the bottoms of the cloud. And it's always measured at the bottom because clouds can be pretty tall. Yeah. The bottom is usually between 20,000 to 40,000ft. Not usually. That's how it's classified. This is when you have to break through when you're reaching your cruising altitude in an airplane. Matt's in here. Now you're joking. Tyler's gone. Matt's in here. This is nuts. I have a feeling worthy victims of some sort of practical joke perpetrated by the woman who says that you're listening to we should have a contest. You, too, can produce stuff you should know. Just show up. Yeah, we'll let you in. If you have a working index finger, you can produce stuff you should know. All right, let's go down to mid level clouds. And these have bottoms that began at about 6500 to 20,000ft. Right. Take it away. Well, the mid level clouds are usually described by the prefix alto, which makes mid level clouds the Kenny G of clouds. So you got altocimulus. Altostratus. Is that written down or did you okay, it's written down. I didn't want to forget. Alto stratus. Yeah, altocumulus are like sheets of little round clouds and then they're kind of like zero cumulus, but they have shading. Right. Which I hadn't really thought about, but I've noticed the difference. I would encourage people that if you're at a computer and you're not just listening to this in the car or something, follow along, like type in Google Images. It helps. It does help, because this is really difficult to describe. Yeah, because you can very easily pick out the cumulus clouds, the fluffy ones, everyone's favorite. But once you start to get into croc, cumulus, that kind of thing, it just becomes a little harder to describe. Right. Well, imagine true alto status, though I will say you might know those because those are the really solid, thick ones. So much so that's when you're out on a sunny day and one passes over and it gets noticeably dark and you get shadows and things like that. Right. Those are alto stratus. And then the low level clouds, you want to talk about them? Yeah, below 6500ft. Right. So these are the ones that we would conceive of creating fog right. There's cumulus stratus clouds are the ones that resemble fog, that make the sky look overcast, where it's just like you can't tell if it's nothing but clouds or else if it's just kind of a great day or what's going on. Right. Did you hit your head? That kind of thing. Yeah. And there's also the classic fair weather cumulus. And those are the money clouds. This one is really bright and blue, big puffy cotton balls that look like bunny rabbits or Lyndon Johnson or whatever. Right. And then there's jet Accumulus, where you can usually pick those out at night as well. Most easily, because they're the ones that pass in front of the moon and there's like breaks in them and that's stratocumulus. So it's so strange to think because you've experienced in your 39, 39, 39 years walking around this planet, all these different types of clouds. Right. But you might as well have been walking around calling them Essences because we didn't really realize that they have all these different classifications. The ones that the moon breakthrough here, there are actually stratocumulus. Right? Right. The ones that are the big fluffy clouds are cumulus. The ones that rain are nimbus. Yeah. Cumula and nimbus clouds are thunderstorm clouds, basically low level. And nimbo stratus are also very the dark, low hanging clouds. Right. And those are attached into this kind of extra category called vertically developed clouds. Right, yeah. These things are so tall, so large, they form vertically in these piles that they actually transcend altitudes. They cross over altitudinal boundaries. Okay. So they creep into different, like, low level and mid level. Right, got you. So those are the types of clouds. Right. Are you still with us? I am, yeah. It would be bad if I was not in it. We got through the boring part. Now we're going to talk about how cloud form, right? Yeah. This is a good part. I agree. Evaporation and well, let's start this out with something that comes later in the article. Clouds are collections of little water droplets and crystallized water molecules. That's what a cloud is. Right. We should have led the show off with that. Basically, cloud forms. If you ever are wondering how cloud forms, if anyone ever asks, you just bust this out. Clouds form when warm, moist air encounters cooler air. Yeah. Simple as that. We can get into a little more complexity, shall we? Yes. Think about a hot day and you have, like, pour some water on the asphalt on a hot day, it's going to evaporate quicker. Right. And a dummy would just say, well, it's hot, right? Yeah. But the reason it's happening is because the water molecules are more excited, they're moving around more, they can spread out further. It can spread out from a body of water yes. And then basically bus free into water vapor more easily. Right. And Toothman, who wrote this article, uses the example of a bird bath, right? Yes. But you can use the bird bath is pretty much a metaphor for any body of water on Earth. Clouds ultimately form from the evaporation of water on the Earth's surface. So these water molecules become excited, turn into water vapor, which is capable of interacting with the air. They may rise up when they encounter cooler air. Higher up, they're going to condense all of a sudden and form clouds. Right. That's called a convective cloud boom. It can also happen when warm, moist air encounters a cold front, just a piece of cold air that's not necessarily higher in altitude, but it's coming in from the right or the left. Yeah. And then along that front, where the warm, moist air meets the edge of the cold, there the edge that's created that's going to cause precipitation. Boom again. And clouds. Clouds, Josh, also form a little easier if the water vapor that's evaporating has something to grab onto. So that allows it to change into a liquid or solid phase easier. And they call these condensation nuclei or freezing nuclei. Sounds fancy. It's really what we're talking about is dust, sea salt. There's like a wildfire soot from the wildfire. Yeah. Stuff in the air serve as particulate matter, and that serves to make the clouds form quicker. Right. Because what you have is something that it forms the nucleus of this water droplet, and it starts attracting more and more. And then eventually this water droplet gets so heavy that it can't be sustained against the force of gravity any longer, which pulls it down to Earth as a raindrop, or if it's cold enough, pulls it down to Earth as an ice crystal, which you might know and love as a snowflake meteorology with Josh Clark. Before we move on to that, which is awesome. I do want to point out, though, one of the other things that can serve as a condensation nuclei is bacteria. Plant bacteria in the air can help clouds form more quickly. That's right. Weird, man. Is it weird? I don't know. It is to me. Why? You can't see it. It's happening, right. But you can't see it. So anything I can't see is just weird. Well, not weird. Red light. Ultraviolet light. Yeah. Okay. All right. Microscopic stuff. I hate art. All right, Chuck. Clouds move around, we should say, because the difference in the air temperature within the cloud, then outside it, you can push it around here and there. Yeah. A good way to look at clouds that I realized from researching this article is that clouds almost follow the first law of thermodynamics, right? They can't be created or destroyed. They just change formation. Right? Yes. If you look at clouds as part of the rain cycle, that is basically this interaction between the water on the Earth's surface and the atmosphere. Right. And they're a reaction. They're part of this reaction. Different types of clouds. Right. Then they're constantly moving. This water vapor is either in the air, invisible as water vapor, visible as a cloud, or visible as part of the water on the Earth's surface. Yeah. Right. So clouds, like, turn into one another. It's not like I'm a cumulus cloud now, I'm just gone. Right? They'll usually turn into one another as they rise and fall. And then it's part of the big cycle. Right. So say that you have a big old cumulus cloud. Nice, warm, moist cumulus cloud. Right. Love them. And it hits a wedge of coal there. That cold front causes precipitation. Right. And it's actually usually when a warm cloud meets cold air, the warm cloud is forced up, heat rises. Right. And it's going to cool, which will cause precipitation, but it's also going to cause that cloud to just rise further and further, and it's going to evolve. So it'll hit that middle altitude and become like an alto stratus or alto cumulus cloud. It's going to break up a little further. Finally, I'll probably reach into the upper atmosphere and become a cirrus cloud. And then jazz hands, or what are those hands called? Dream hands. Dream hands, okay. It turns back into water vapor, possibly just kind of drifts along until it reaches the right conditions to become a cloud again. Or it might just travel back to Earth and condense into a body of water. You could do a little one man show. Josh explains clouds through beats and physical movements. Have you seen the dream hand video? And now I have to show you this. I thought you were talking about the rainbow guy at first. Which one is that? Full double rainbow? No, it's very similar to that. That guy, he's full of wonder. He's like, look at those essences. He's full of something. So we talked about rain a little bit. We talked about snow a little bit. This is what I found most interesting. What? What about the others? What about sleet, freezing rain and hail? I found this endlessly interesting. Did you really? I did, because freezing rain I mean, I didn't know how any of this stuff worked, and I took a meteorology class in college. I guess it just sort of left my brain space at some point. But freezing rain, Josh, is when it's a snowflake at first falls down through the atmosphere, gets a little warmer, melts, turns back into rain, continues to fall, passes through another layer of cold air, becomes super cool, but it doesn't refreeze, hits the ground and hits something so cold on the ground that it freezes. Right. That's freezing rain. Yes. That's different than sleep. Sleep is sort of the same thing, except it actually has enough time to refreeze. The melted snowflake refreezes before it hits the ground. The cold air right, that's on the ground and up is big enough so that as that droplet is passing through, it refreezes and then take it away. Hail. Well, hail is particularly interesting. That's because it's associated with severe storms that have a lot of updrafts and gusts within it. Right. So the ice crystals or the rain droplets are being kicked up and around, and it's freezing and thawing and refreezing and more water vapors being attracted to it. And the gusts are strong enough that this can be prolonged so that it turns into ice chunks, collect like a Volvo. It collects more stuff. Basically, it's going down. Then the wind says, no, you're going back up. And it goes back down, then it goes back up, and then you have, like you said, damaging hail. Right. It just can't be sustained any longer. It's just too heavy. That's the story with all precipitation, right? Yeah. It's the stuff forming up in the atmosphere out of water, and it's either cold enough to freeze or it's not. So it's rain or it's snow, and then it becomes so fat that gravity can't support it any longer. The wonders of the earth. Chunks of ice can form out of invisible nothings in the air and fall on your car. Isn't that awesome? It is pretty awesome. Like, this kind of stuff I used to sit on my roof in college and talk about with my friends endlessly. Really? Yeah. I used to talk about the Illuminati. Oh, yeah. Well, that too. My friend Jason, actually, that lives in Japan now, he was my first friend to turn me on to all these stuff they don't want you to know type stuff. Everyone had that first friend. I was like, what? Secret societies? Tell me more. And I was like, clouds are cool. Yeah. I have to say, I was a little disappointed. I thought this ended up being more of like, well, we got to understand this to understand everything. I see, I was blown away. Were you really? I'm glad, man. Childlike wonder. Josh, let's talk about why clouds, what they do? One of the things they do is move dust. Yeah. It is mind blowing. I think it is. What is it, 13 million tons? Well, that's just between Africa and a certain spot of the Amazon basin. I know. Moving it from it is kind of cool, at least certification. Well, it can. One of the cool things about clouds is that if you have particulate matter, whether it's plant bacteria or sip from wildfires, it's going to cause precipitation a lot more easily. Which is the idea behind cloud seeding. Right? Yeah. Like the disaster by the Royal Air Force in 1052. They seeded clouds and like, 90 million tons of rain hit in a day and killed a lot of people in Great Britain. And the Royal Air Force is like, whoops. This is going to be classified till 2001. Yeah. And when I say it worked, it rained so much, it worked awesome. They killed people. China did their bid to control the weather by dissipating clouds, by impregnating them with silver iodide cloud seeding. Apparently, we're using this to control climate change as well. The problem is, if you have too much particulate matter, it's going to spread out, and the water droplets that are going to be attracted to it are going to be very small, because there's maybe one piece of particulate matter for every water droplet, rather than one piece for every million water droplets, which are going to form big, fat rain drops. Right. So therefore that leaves a desertification. Interesting. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. I wonder, since bacteria can serve as a particulate, I wonder if potentially you could have disease reigned down upon a nation. I would imagine so. There's a movie plot for you right there, buddy. Hey. It's going on all around us right now. Is it? Sure. All right, so let's talk about what else they do to the Earth. They serve as a barrier for heat, both coming in and out. They absorb about 20% of the heat, and they also reflect about 20% of the heat back to the sun. Well, it depends. If you have low level clouds, you're going to have a cooler temperature, because low level clouds are the best at reflecting solar energy back into space. If you have high level clouds, especially at night, you're going to have warmer temperatures, because the highest level clouds are the best at acting as a blanket around the Earth. Yes, they do both. They absorb some, they bounce some back, and then once it passes through, it can contain it within the Earth, or not within the Earth, but between the Earth's surface and the clouds. Like a blanket. That's exactly right. Which is why a cloudless night is always colder than a cloudy night, because that solar radiation that's reached the Earth is shooting right back into space. So that's not endlessly interesting to you still? Yeah. Okay. I wish it was Chuck. I really wish it was. How about that? Illuminati, though. Yeah, there's that. Should we talk about weird clouds? I think we should, man. We've got contrails, which I thought was just like, literally coming out of the exhaustive jets that's vapor being shot out by jet exhaust that's freezing. Or condensing into these little vapor clouds. We won't get into the whole chemtrail thing. Those are different. Well, that's just the whole controversy there, which is actually Maddie's in here, and if you want to know about chemtrails, they have the stuff they don't want you to know about chemtrails. So instead of us flopping our way through yeah, we'll just direct you that way. Lenticular clouds. Did you look up some of these picture wise? I wish you hadn't asked me that. I wish I would have printed them out. Lenticular clouds and cap clouds. Lenticular are layered and very swirly, and they look like a funnel shaped stack of pancakes. Very cool looking. Sure. Cap clouds look like a big disk on top of a mountain. Like, kind of sitting on the nose of a mountain. I've seen that one before. That's really cool. There's actually a really cool phenomenon. I can't remember what it's called, where if you're at a high enough altitude and it's cloudy, your shadow is cast upward. Oh, really? Yeah, rather than downward. And it makes you look like this huge giant, like, walking through the sky. Because usually it's so cloudy that you can't see any breaks in it. And it just looks like you're this huge thing just walking across the sky above you. So the shadow is above you? Yes. Wow. I can't remember what it's called, but it's a pretty neat effect. I did a hike one time in Big Sur where we hiked up above the cloud line and it's like when you fly above it in a jet, except you're walking and you feel like you can see nothing. It's weird, like you're on top of the world. That's pretty sweet. Yes, it is very sweet. That's a heck of a hike, man. Yeah, well, they were low clouds in big Surgeon, like the Andes or anything like that. I mean, it was a good hike. We were dropped off by helicopter. Exactly. I'm sorry. The mumatus clouds. If you live in New York City last year, or if you have an Internet connection, you might have seen these pictures of mamatis clouds. And it doesn't happen often at all. That's why people are like, what's going on in New York now? We're being attacked. But they're big billowy balls all clumped together, like hanging down from the underside of a cloud. And that's why they're called mamatis clouds, because it means, like, utter or breast. Oh, really? Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. The Internet is lousy with pictures of it last year. Really cool looking because the sunset hit it at the right time. And it was like these billowy fireballs, it looked like it's very intimidating. Cool. But no harm, no fireballs. Really? No, just clouds. Just clouds. Just essences. You want to cover any of those other ones? Well, the knocked a Lucint cloud is pretty interesting, I have to say. If you are on Earth, you would call it a non delusion cloud. If you are up in space looking down on it, you'd call it a polar mesospheric cloud. That's pretty interesting. This is a very rare cloud that at twilight, apparently, the makeup of these clouds that exist very high up in the atmosphere makes them glow blue, which is unusual for clouds. And they actually think that these clouds are new. They're not I don't want to say they're not naturally occurring, they're not old. They haven't been around since any time before 1883, which happens to be the year that Krakato, the volcano in Java, blew its top. And that's when people first started seeing these clouds, right after that happened. And apparently Crackatow sent remember the volcano episode? Yeah. Okay, what was that stuff called? Tefla. TEFRA. TEFRA. TEFRA. It sent TEFRA as much as 262,000ft into the air, which is 80 km into the atmosphere, and apparently stayed there and started forming these clouds. And well, the weird thing is they thought that this was just a temporary deal, but they've been around ever since, right? Yeah, they have. And they also think that possibly pollution, meteoroids and space shuttle activity are all contributing to the continued existence of noctilucent clouds, which means shining at night. Yeah, these are cool looking. These look like they almost look like nebula. They're sort of veiny looking and glowing. And nebula is like nothing more than a cloud in space. Right? It's a space cloud. Yeah. And there's actually one called the Smith Cloud, which is enormous, and it's headed for the Milky Way galaxy. And when it impacts in 20 million years, it's going to put on quite a show in the sky, apparently, and it will rain down. Well, we won't be around to see that there are clouds. I thought it was going to be cooler. It wasn't. I'm sorry, everybody. I thought it was cool. If you want to learn more about clouds, including a little shout out to the Cloud Appreciation Society, you can type in clouds at the search bar@housetofworks.com. It'll bring that up. And of course, now it's time for Listener mail. Probably the most interesting part of this podcast. It's definitely the most heartwarming. Okay, Josh, I'm going to call this we're thinking about you, Jody. Hi, Josh. And Chuck and Jerry. I know you don't do this kind of stuff much because you get way too many requests, which is true, but we had to make an exception here. Okay, this is from Brendan, by the way, and Brendan's fiance Jody, whose nickname is Frankie, has a rare form of leukemia and she's undergoing treatment. For that right now. The past couple of weeks have been really rough because she's been really sick, like to the point of not being able to get out of bed. And unfortunately, I'm over 1000 miles away finishing school and she really doesn't have anyone around to take care of her at this point apart from the medical staff. Well, very sad. Yes. One of the few things that's helping her to stay sane while she is in bed, trying not to be sick and resisting passing out from pain is your podcast. Your humor and unique fun information is a great distraction from all the stuff she has to deal with. And I cannot thank you enough for the quality show that you produce. I really appreciate it if you could somehow give her a shout out on the air even. It's very generic. Hello to anybody out there who is in pain. Hang in there. Yeah. Or if you could just plug the National Bone Marrow Registry@bthematch.org or something, that would be cool. So we're going to get specific and say Jody, aka Frankie in Utah. Hang in there. Yeah, really. And I told Brandon to keep us informed on Frankie's progress. And you guys are getting married and there's a lot to look forward to. So I hope you get better soon. And listen to us while you're getting well and getting hitched. And getting hitched, I want to hear about your wedding day. I want to hear about so that's for Jody. That was nice, Chuck. Hey, Jody, aka Frankie. And Brendan. And Brendan. And as Brendan suggested, everybody out there who is in a lot of pain and listening, it's possible that you're in a lot of pain because you're listening, but if you've tried that and you're still in pain and you've gone back to listening, hey, hang in there. We're thinking of you. Yeah. We'll have to tell him that this is going to be the end of the cloud episode because he probably wouldn't make it through it ordinary. No, that's a good point, Joe. Hang in there. Listen to it. It's going to pay off there in the end. Yeah. Well, let's see. If you have a pretty cool picture of a cloud, we want to see it go. Post it on Facebook. How about that? We have a Facebook page, facebook. Comstuffynow. We all have. And then you can also send us the traditional email at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseteporps.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 Reinvent to 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Yeah." | ||
d66ec7ea-3b0d-11eb-aa42-bbf9b05bd46c | Space Junk, Ahoy! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/space-junk-ahoy | The orbits hundreds to thousands of miles above Earth are littered with garbage. Space garbage, sure, but it’s still garbage. Littering in space is bad enough but it poses practical problems too – like space junk crashing into satellites or astronauts. | The orbits hundreds to thousands of miles above Earth are littered with garbage. Space garbage, sure, but it’s still garbage. Littering in space is bad enough but it poses practical problems too – like space junk crashing into satellites or astronauts. | Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=84, tm_isdst=0) | 46926854 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. Astro clarke and there's Charles, after Bird Bryant. Okay. And Jerry Goose rowland is out there. Wait, he called me afterburn because I'm gassy. Yes. Although we've been tooting for a year straight. No one knows except us. Have you ever set one of your ducks on fire? Have I ever lit a fart? I was hoping to not use that word, but yes. Yeah. There was a period in my youth where I thought that was just about the funniest thing ever. And I still think it's pretty hysterical. I just don't do it. I never thought it was funny. I've always just been more wowed by it. The notion of it now, as I've gotten older is more funny than the act itself. But the notion that we can expel flammable cats from our bodies. Exactly. It's pretty crazy. And then do you remember that cautionary tale that if you lit it, it could travel up into your rectum and cook your inside? Some sort of a reverse thing? Yeah. There must have just been, like some I don't know, some department somewhere, some obscure federal agency that was tasked with coming up with fake cautionary tales to scare kids out of doing things where they weren't behaving. Yeah. I think what my most cherished memories were the times where people swore that it wasn't possible or that you couldn't write it. They wouldn't work. Yeah, that was always sort of the most fun because it was just like, hilarity ensued. And also, you just got to be, like, in your face. Like, literally, come down here because I'm going to light this in your face if you're just so sure it's not going to catch fire. And I always had a theory that it would get rid of the smell kind of instantaneously, too. I think it just burned it up. I think it did. So it's really an efficient way of clearing the air. What are we doing? Well, we're talking, Chuck, about Space Junk and actually, not the band, the whole thing. What? Immediately, I had to look it up because I was going to say, great band name, but there's a band out of Buffalo named Space Junk. Yes. Out of Buffalo. Ford's being mentioned. Sure. Okay, so Space Junk not the band, the actual stuff. Stuff floating around in space. Yes. Turns out there's a lot of it. And I actually have a little bit of an intro here. I'm going to do a little it wasn't the cute lighting. No, that was a pre show tangent. Okay. I think it's that classification. Back in the 70s, there was a guy who worked for NASA called Donald Kessler and he was an interesting cat in and of himself. But one of the claims to fame that he has is that his name became synonymous with an unstoppable chain reaction of collisions of space junk called the Kessler Syndrome. And the Kessler Syndrome that Kessler came up with is based on this idea that if you get enough stuff floating around in orbit around Earth. Eventually this stuff is going to smash into other stuff up there. Because these things are traveling at very high speeds. And when they smash into one another. They're going to potentially break into more and more pieces. And then those pieces are going to go on and they're going to smash into other things. And so this chain reaction will begin to where there's just pieces constantly smashing into one another, and all of a sudden we're trapped on Earth because we can't make it through the debris field we accidentally created. Hence, the Kessler Syndrome has struck again, like a fart being lit in your face, but in the face of humanity as a whole. Yeah. And I think some scientists these days say that parts of our orbit are already like that, right? Yes. So Kessler was basically saying he made these predictions in the he said, based on the rate that we're going, it will probably will reach a critical mass in about 30 to 40 years. And a lot of people said, well, we've reached that point, and I think Kessler is actually right. The thing is, we can't really see everything that's up there, so we have to make guesses and assumptions. We actually track a very respectable amount of space junk, considering that we're just down here on Earth, that we actually can track things going really fast that are really small, traveling really far above the Earth. But there's a lot of it that's just too small for our current technology to track. So we have to make guesses about what all is up there. And it looks like there's a lot of stuff up there, and it's possible we have reached critical mass. And this cascading collision, the chain reaction just hasn't started yet. Yeah, I mean, I was just about to correct myself when I said some people say it's already there. I didn't mean it's all just so people understand it's already. Like, we can't travel through these places, but that process has started such that it can't be reversed. Like, even if we stop launching anything, they're like, it's too late. Yeah. Once that chain reaction starts, I mean, there's nothing we can do about it. I mean, we can't even get a lot of the space junk that's up there out now. I can't imagine when they've started on a chain reaction. That's got to make catching it even more difficult. So a lot of people say, well, let's do everything we can to avoid that cascade inclusion that Kessler Syndrome from ever starting. And a lot of people sitting out there, Chuck, I'm guessing, are like, wait, what are you guys talking about with space junk? What is the space chunk? Yes. I'm well versed with the band from Buffalo. I have all of their CDs. I got them all for free. Just walking past this one street corner many times over multiple years. But I don't know about the actual space junk. And it never occurred to me that the band space junk is based on a real thing. Right. So space junk, I kind of always assumed people knew what this was. But we've made that assumption before about things like, I don't know, trees. And people said, why don't you describe what a tree is? A parrot. By the way, thanks for all the parrot pictures from all over the world. Yeah, we've been delightful. But space junk, it can be a lot of things. NASA actually has sort of a list that describes it better than we could. A lot of it is abandoned spacecraft or spacecraft that doesn't work anymore. So we abandon it. This can be big full spaceships or it can be parts of spaceships because as we'll learn and as you know, if you're a rocket enthusiast like, those things break apart and we'll get to that. But there are many pieces that are quite large. They're just sort of left up there until they come back down or they hit something else. Some of this stuff is, like I said, parts of rockets that have broken apart, usually upper stage, because that lower stage stuff breaks off early enough to where it generally after a few years may tumble back toward Earth, burn up, hopefully, so where nothing actually hits Earth. But that upper stage stuff is kind of stuck up there. Yeah, that's one thing that you'll find out about things that we place into orbit, the further away from Earth that this thing is circling the Earth, the longer it's going to take to come back down to Earth. So that makes sense. Yeah, because it's the force of gravity that pulls these things in orbit back down to Earth eventually. Right? Yeah. What else do we have? Motor fluid. Yeah. So a lot of unspent fuel, a lot of rocket fuel is solid fuel. And that includes I was looking it up, that includes ammonium nitrate, appropriately enough, but it also includes an enemy, but it also includes gunpowder, black gunpowder. That's what they use as solid rocket fuel sometimes, which is like we've come really far, but also not far at all. So there's canisters of gunpowder floating around up in space, which are particularly problematic because not only can they break things apart, they can really break things apart because they may explode when they impact things going as fast as they travel. And then the last thing, and we'll get to all the detail about all this stuff and why it's dangerous, but little tiny things, little tiny flecks of paint, even millions of them can cause a lot of damage. I think there is reports from astronauts that say that work on the Hubble that are like, this thing looks like a car that's been through a hailstorm. It's just like getting constantly pelted, and you think A speck of paint, who cares? But when these things are going 20 something miles an hour, it can cause some damage. Yes. I think his famous quote back to ground control was, this thing looks like a 72 Nova. Yeah, no kidding. The Hubble. Yeah. So the thing about space junk is that you've to remember is every single bit of it used to be here on Earth, and every single bit of it was launched by humans. That's just space junk. There's plenty of other stuff out in space, like asteroids and comets and pieces of rocks flying around. That's not space. June yeah. ETS. Flying around. That's not space junk. Space junk is specifically things that humans have launched into Earth. So there's this whole kind of air of oh, I don't know the actual word for it, but we've done this to ourselves. Like, we've created our own problem and now we've made this bet that we have to lie in or figure out how to get out of. I think it's so human, isn't it? That like, let's destroy the Earth. Let's start destroying space because we may want to live up there, so we might as well predestroy it before we get up there to really destroy it. Right. And it makes sense, though, early on in the space programs, starting in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik, that's when the whole thing started. But it makes sense that we had the technology to get things up there, but not to get them back down. And we knew that eventually their orbit was going to decay. They would be pulled down into the atmosphere where it would probably burn up. So that made sense at the beginning of the space race. But as we got better and better at technology, the idea that we could just litter space became less and less acceptable. The problem is it didn't really go away. Like, there's still basically stuff that's being launched up there today that has no way of being brought back down. It's just like, we'll just leave it up there until it runs out of its useful life and then hope for the best. That's kind of how a lot of stuff is being launched into space right now. And it's particularly galling because we have the technology to bring it back down. It just makes the whole thing more expensive. And I think that that's why a lot of companies and countries don't include that. Yeah. There's a saying among contractors, a joke, if you will, among contractors who built houses and fixed up houses. If there's something wrong and that they're working on and the homeowner isn't around, they just say, can't see it from my house. I've not heard of that kind of what's been going on here for years with not only space agencies, but private companies. As we'll see, Amazon and Tesla and all kinds of companies have plans to put a lot more things into space, and it made me wonder, like, who's regulating this stuff? We'll get to all that, but what's kind of cool is since 1957, when Sputnik was launched into space, NORAD started cataloging this stuff and numbering them and naming them, and Sputnik is object number one, and they do a really good job of keeping track of a lot of this stuff. Like you said, considering we're down here and it's up there, it's not too bad. Things started breaking apart, though, and getting smaller and colliding with one another, creating hundreds and thousands of more smaller bits. But our technology progressed where we could go smaller in our tracking abilities. And so now the US. Department of Defense started cataloging anything basically larger than, I think, a softball. I've seen grapefruit, too, so, yeah, basically that size. If you're not familiar with softballs, but you're crazy for citrus. It's grapefruit size, too. If you don't know either one of those, I'm sorry. That's the best we can do. Yeah. Maybe two of your fists balled up, and I don't know how big your fists are. A good sized snowball. Okay, sure. But somebody's like I'm from the Tropics. I don't know any of this stuff. I'm from Buffalo. I know about snowballs and space junk. That's right. And that catalog, Chuck, by the way, is pretty awesome. It contains not just Sputnik and every satellite ever created and every grapefruit size piece of debris, but there's some other really interesting stuff in there, too. The cremated remains of the canister containing the cremated remains of Gene Roddenberry is one of them. The creative Star Trek. The Tesla Roadster that SpaceX launched is up. I was mad about that one. Yeah. Especially when you start learning about space junk, you're like, this is not a good idea. Yes. What we don't need to do is just do, like, PR stuff into space, and then astronauts have lost entire boxes of tools on spacewalks before, and they're just out there floating around, wrenches and stuff like that. They're all in the catalog, but they kept that stuff tethered. You got to tether it. Yeah. Sometimes it gets loose or they forget to tether it. Astronauts, they have hard days, too. That's right. They're b game on some days, but yeah, anything as small as a softball. There are about 20,000 pieces orbiting the Earth right now, and then there are about half a million pieces the size of a marble or larger that NASA is tracking. And then the paint flex just good luck with that. There's millions of that, and no one keeps track of it. Yeah, paint flex is well, just because we can't. We definitely would if we could, but we just don't have the technology right now. So there's three orbits I don't want to do an episode on satellites one day, but just briefly, there's three orbits lower Earth orbit, middle Earth orbit. Not to be confused with the Shire and Geosynchronous orbit, which is way up there, and that's where your communication satellites are. They're geo stationary. They basically if you stand in a spot and could look up and there's a satellite ahead of you or above you, it'd be there 24 hours a day, every day of the year. It's moving in line with one spot around the earth. And to do that, you have to be really far out. The stuff that's further closer to the earth travels the fastest, and it seems that lower earth orbit is the most crowded, too. So the things that are in lower earth orbit are traveling the fastest, and there's the most of them because it's the easiest to get to. Right. I feel like that's a pretty good set up if you include our two lighting stories. Sure. So maybe we should take a break and talk a little bit about some of the things they're doing to mitigate this right after this. 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 homepage and enter code stuff. All right. So there's a lot of space junk out there, a lot of collisions happening. When satellites collide, like I said, they can create just a very much bigger problem by creating lots more smaller pieces. And there are a few countries. The USA is one of them. China is one. India is one that we have used missiles before. They're called antisatellite weapons ASAP to physically damage a satellite. And basically what they do we all kind of laughed when armageddon came out about sending people up there to drill holes and then drop bombs in it. But when you look at some of these things that we've thought to do, they're all kind of rudimentary like that. Like, let's just send something in there and ram it into a satellite. You shoot a missile at that thing the old fashioned way. Yeah, that's called a kinetic kill model, which is exactly that you shoot a missile at a satellite or something up in space and you blow it into smithereens, as Yosemite Sam would say. Right. So you don't want to do this, but a lot of countries do, like you listed, they have not only just the technology, but have actually done this, have run these tests. And I think it's kind of a twofold show of force where you're showing that, like, I can launch really technically sophisticated stuff up there that I don't want anyone else to know about, and then I can destroy it before you could ever possibly find out about it. Yeah, or I don't like your satellite and what it's doing. I'm going to shoot that thing out of the sky. I just showed all of you that I'm capable of doing it. It makes sense. I guess. In a geopolitical way. But up in space. It makes zero sense because when you blow up a satellite or something. You blow it up into thousands of pieces of that grapefruit softball. Snowball size debris and then millions of smaller pieces. And all of a sudden the population. That catalog of space junk. Just increased by ten or 15 or 20%. Depending on how big the explosion was and how much debris it created. Yeah. And you might think because there have been satellites launched basically continuously for many decades now, that they're banging into each other at a decent rate. But that's actually not the case yet. As far as actual satellite collisions, in February 2009, the very first one happened, the Cosmos with a K. So you know where that one's from? Cosmos 22 51 out of Russia collided and it was defunct. Collided with, I think, a private one from a US. Company called Iridium, which sounds like a total Sci-Fi movie. Bad guy company. I don't actually know. It doesn't strike me like that. I get what you're saying, but I think it's a very pleasant word. Okay. It makes me think of the rainbow centrum Vitamin logo, kind of oh, yeah, I find it very pleasant. Well, one guy's evil corporation is another guy's rainbow flags. That's right. They were traveling at a speed relative to each other of about 22,000 miles an hour and blew them up into 2000 pieces at least four inches in diameter. And then, like you said, thousands and thousands and millions of tinier and tinier pieces. Right. So this is the first time, that was 2009, where two satellites rammed into each other, as far as we know. And I think it hasn't happened again yet. Right, no, but the thing is, because there's so many satellites up there and we're launching so many more, that it's going to happen again, it's just inevitable that's going to happen again. Because you'll notice while the Iridium satellite was operational, the Cosmos one was in operational, meaning there's no way to control it or move it. So the only way to avoid this collision is for the Iridium controllers to move theirs. And I guess they didn't have the warning or why they didn't move it because as we'll see, there's collision maneuvers where you just basically move your satellite out of the way if you think it's going to hit something. But that didn't happen with this one. And so because there's so many satellites that are defunct out there that are traveling in opposite directions at really high speeds, of course this is going to happen again. And the Union of Concerned Scientists says that there's something like 3300 I know they're great. 372 active satellites in orbit and at least 3000 more inactive satellites in orbit right now. So it's definitely going to happen again. Yeah, I think the Union of Concerned Scientist logo. I looked it up. It's just a silhouette of two folded arms with lab coat sleeves, scowling, scowling arms. Yeah, it's going to happen again, I think. There was one ESA official, the European Space Agency, and this is Paraphrasing, but said it's basically what we're doing is like every time a ship goes out to sea, just leaving it out there, eventually this is going to be a real problem. And I know that it's hard to imagine because it's in space, but let me liken it to the ocean and boats and it might get to your fixed calls, right? Yeah. So, yeah, it's basically a tragedy of the Commons that we're seeing right now. But the Commons are becoming more and more crowded as the days go by that 372 active satellites in orbit. I think that was as of the beginning of 2021, the end of 2020, that was 1000 more active satellites than there were in 2019. Yeah. The rate is picking up for sure, like exponentially. And one of the reasons why it's picking up exponentially is that a lot of companies, I think there's at least eight companies right now that have proposals to release what are called mega constellations, or swarms of satellites. And you would need a swarm of satellites because these things in low Earth orbit travel so fast that if, say, you're connected to one for your cell phone, it's suddenly gone. So they hand it off to the satellite behind them and behind them and behind them so that you could continue service. So the more swarm of satellites you have, the more connected you could be. And so some of these proposals, like SpaceX's Starlink Swarm, it aims to create a global coverage of satellite Internet service so everyone everywhere in the world will be able to connect to really high speed WiFi because of the swarm. So there's a benefit to it. But at the same time, the SpaceX Constellation requires 12,000 satellites. There's only called a swarm. There's only 3300 up there right now. And Elon Musk is saying that he's going to add another 12,000 just with his swarm. So all of these satellites that are going up in the process of going up are about to make the whole thing a lot more crowded. So, yes, the likelihood of a collision just is increasing by orders of magnitude every year, from what I can tell. Yeah. And obviously one of the big risks here, and we'll talk about all of them, something falling onto Earth and hurting people is one of the smaller risks, even though that has happened when Skylab very famously fell out in the Western Australian Outback. But we'll get to that. But that's not the biggest risk. The biggest risk is for damage and collisions up there. And we've got a lot of astronauts up there. We have people living on space stations. We have people working on that Hubble telescope. I mean, that was the movie Gravity, right? That was space junk that caused their whole thing. Right? Yeah. They basically depicted a Kessler syndrome chain reaction, I guess a localized one in that movie. I totally forgotten about it, but I kept seeing references to it. So, yeah, I kind of remember it now. Isn't that why she had to take shelter somewhere with the ghost of George Clooney? Hey, who wouldn't, though? Did he even exist in that movie? I don't remember. Yeah. Is there a theory that he was not real? No, I just didn't remember if at the end they were like and he never really existed. So he was there, she was just remembering him later or imagining him there later on, right? I think so. I mean, I only saw that once. Same here. Yeah. But even stuff, like we said, as small as a paint fleck, if it's going 22,000 miles an hour, a 1 CM paint fleck can inflict enough damage the same amount as a 550 pound object going about 60 miles an hour here on Earth. And if that goes up to 10 CM, it'd be comparable to a seven kilogram TNT blast. Paint flex. Paint Flex marbles. Yeah. Pretty amazing stuff, if you think about it. And actually, they've had to replace windows on the space shuttle back when the space shuttle was in operation in the US. And there used be to, like, deep gouges and streaks taken out of the windows, and when they would analyze, and they'd be like, that's paint flick did that. Yeah. And the ISS and a lot of our work happens below where most of this stuff is, but it's still a danger. It is a danger. So one of the reasons why it's a danger is because, again, the ISS, it's 250 miles above Earth, 403 km above the surface. It's in lower Earth orbit, but it is one of the most vital pieces of space technology that's up there right now. So we want to protect it, we want to keep the ISS safe. The problem is that there's a lot of stuff above it, and when that stuff eventually comes back down to Earth, it might pass by the ISS coming down, and then the stuff that's also in lower Earth orbit around the ISS could run into it from the side or from the opposite direction or like, at a 90 degree plane. So the ISS is constantly under threat, and NASA and I think the ESA, a bunch of different agencies that use the ISS have come up with procedures for basically moving it if there's a high enough chance that a collision will occur. And when we talk about high enough chance, we're saying, like, a one in 100,000 chance is enough reason to move the ISS out of the way. Yes. And they came up with a pretty I mean, it seems pretty obvious, but it's a pretty smart way to determine if it's dangerous or not. They said we need to get an area around these things where we can determine if it's basically a close call or not. And we're going to call it the pizza box because that's what it looks like. Sure. And everybody loves pizza. Everyone knows what pizza is. Do we have to describe that, please? No. We have an episode on pizza, so go listen to that. There's some guy eating a grapefruit who's, like, never heard of pizza, but it's shaped like a pizza box. It's flat and it's rectangular. It's about 30 miles across, a mile deep, 30 miles long. And the idea is that imagine the ISS or whatever important satellite in the middle of this pizza box in space, and they say, if we predict anything will come within the bounds of that pizza box, then that means that we have to get together and decide what to do, at least not necessarily take the action, because then you got to determine the probability of collision. But that's when it gets their attention, I think, right. So if they figure out that there's a one in 100,000 chance of collision and moving the ISS isn't going to just be like, well, the mission scrap now because we needed the ISS 3ft to the left and now we can't do anything. So just forget it. Just forget the whole thing. They will move the ISS if there's a one in $10,000 chance of collision and it won't jeopardize the lives of the crew, then they'll move the ISS, mission be damned. Right. They don't take that lightly. And then one other thing they might do if they don't have time to move the ISS, they'll put the crew into whatever capsule brought them there. If the Soyuz rocket that brought them there is docked, or if one of SpaceX's Dragon capsules is docked, they'll say, go in there and hang out until this predicted collision passes. But hang out there. It's like a lifeboat, basically, for them. Yeah, that's the one. The only one that confused me a little bit. I mean, I get the idea that that's a good idea to be sort of in the escape pod, but that escape pod can also be crashed as well. Yes. Good thinking. You would make. A very fine NASA flight engineer, because I was reading an account of Scott Kelly, one of the Kelly twins, the astronauts who are just so great. Scott Kelly was up on the ISS once as a commander, I think, when he was spending that year in space, and there was a predicted collision, that was enough to tell them to go sit in the Soyuz rocket. And they said, but don't close the hatch, because it's possible that the capsule could get hit, and you might need to get out of the capsule really quick, too. But then if the ISS is hit, you can close the hatch very quickly and disembark. I guess so, yeah. I wonder if they did that for the very first time. They said, just go get in the escape pod and simplifying things. Of course, for Star Wars fans. Sure. And they go, get in the space pod and close the door, and they go they go, all right, we're all good now, right? And then they look at each other like, not really. Yeah, we're just in another thing. It was an interesting account. He said it was a little tense, but then the predicted time of collision came and went, and they were finally like, okay, can we get out now? But he said it was very quiet, and they could just hear themselves and one another breathing, and that was about it. I mean, it's dangerous work, and they understand this, but the goal is to bring them all back, always. But when you go into, like, being a firefighter or something, you know that there's a risk that you might not come back. There's got to be. Yeah, for sure. I just want that to be as minimal as possible. Yes. And they take extraordinary measures to make sure that it's as minimized as possible. For sure. Should we take another break? I think so. Man. We're going to come back and talk about what to do about this space junk problem. 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, I think, have established that space junk is kind of a problem, and not just for the ISS, not just for satellites. I think one thing we kind of left out is if these satellites crash into each other, there's somebody's dish, TV gone, exactly. How are you going to watch the big game then? You're not. So space junk affects us one and all. There's all sorts of other things that could happen if our satellites start going out. It's not something we want. We also don't want the crew of the ISS to get hurt, but also eventually in the future when we go back to the moon, and then when we travel beyond the moon, we're going to be needing to go in and out of earth's orbit. And we don't want there to be some crazy debris field that we have to navigate around or wait to pass or whatever. So this is something we need to mitigate right now. And it is just beginning to be something that some of the space agencies not all, unfortunately in some countries and some companies are starting to take seriously and figure out how to mitigate. Yeah, I mean, think about space tourism and all these companies, they're like, hey, how'd you like to fly up there for $100,000 exactly and risk being plowed into by paint flex? Right? A paint flex being taken out by a paint flick is just undignifying. So the UN gets involved a little bit and they say, hey, how about everyone, all your companies sending satellites up there, why don't you promise to remove these things at least 25 years after the end of their mission? And everyone said, sure, we'll do that UN. How are you going to enforce that? And the UN says, I don't know. Yes. We're asking nicely though, right? All the space agencies kind of slowly encircled the UN and then grabbed it and gave it a wedgie. But people I'm kind of joking, but people in these agencies, they do know it's a problem and they are coming up with things kind of Armageddon style. I mean, literally, SpaceNet. What is it with you in that movie? I just always thought it was the dumbest thing. Like, how am I supposed to believe this, that this is how they're going to solve this problem? By just blowing this thing up, by drilling holes in it and putting bombs in it? And then the more I read about stuff like this, the more I think that's an actual idea that they could do. Yeah, we're like maybe a decade off from space mining, I would guess, like mining asteroids. I don't want to give Michael Bay credit, okay, for coming up with a plausible thing because I just still want to say he's ridiculous, okay? But it's not because they have spacenets and they have space harpoons and space magnets. And these are some of the things that they actually use to drag these things close enough to where it falls out of orbit and then ideally burns up. Yeah, like remove debris, right? Yeah, remove debris. It was kind of cool. The European Space Agency said you know what? We have this defunct satellite up there called the Envisat, and why don't we just put a bounty on this thing to see what people can come up with and just say, go hog wild and see what you can do? Bruce Willis yeah, you got to tell them about Envisat and what it is and what it's doing right now through space. Well, I mean, it's about the size of a school bus, and it's like it's being driven around by a drunk. Yeah, like Auto after he took some rooms or something. Totally spinning uncontrollably through space. It's like, actually one of the more dangerous things up there in the space debris fields right now. Yeah. So they put out this call, said, who's got a good idea? Feel free to try it on the Envisat if you want to get close to it. And in 2018, a group from Sur University came up with that Removed Debris System, where it was basically a ballistic module that attacked this stuff with a harpoon and a net and pushes or pulls it out of orbit and basically just kind of speeds up the process. It's not like they literally drag it back down to Earth and stand on it and get their picture taken, but they disrupted enough to speed up the process that would inevitably happen anyway. Yeah, it's kind of close to that, though. Like the test that they ran in 2018, like, the net was successful, the harpoon was successful, but then it's supposed to also deploy a dragnet to slow the thing down and then make it fall toward Earth. But the dragnet didn't go, but everything else did. And then there was another company, a Swiss company called Clear Space that was working directly with the ESA to launch claws, little claws that go seek and find space junk clamp onto it and then just basically drag it down to its own death. Kind of like the guy that you pushed off the cliff and he grabbed onto your ankle and then at the last second he took you down with them and you both go that's what this claw basically does to this poor space chunk. Yeah, the magnet thing. We did a show on magnets, and I remember it kind of broke my brain. But is there such a thing as a magnet that when it attracts things I'm glad there's more to that question. When it attracts things that stick to the magnet, those things also become magnetized? Oh, that's a great question. Got it. Because, you know, what I'm getting at here is basically a magnet that just keeps growing and growing and growing and just spinning through the universe collecting everything in its path until it's this giant thing. Chuck that is the very title of the third album by Buffalo Space Junk. It is a long one. Not as long as Fiona Apples but I think it's second place. Her new album is great by the way. I haven't heard it but I imagine she's a genius. But I don't know it's probably a silly idea or maybe just a magnet big enough to collect enough stuff and then blow that thing up I would guess. I don't think it's a silly idea. I think magnets probably are the wave of the future for this stuff because harpoons nets, claws, all of these things work for say intact satellites. Large ones. And by the way the ESA backed off of its Envisat bounty because it realized very quickly we're many years off from being able to take something that large out of orbit. So it's still going strong. It is. It's still hurling uncontrollably through space the size of a school bus but still like large pieces that these things take. And as we said smaller debris is a real problem up in space. So I could see it being something like magnets or a whale shark filter teeth kind of thing but up in space that somehow collects debris in a bag. I don't know. Exactly. Like Krill. Yeah. Basically like treating it like Krill. We need a robot space shark. Space whale. We swam with whale sharks 100 years ago. Of course. Can you imagine ever forgetting that? That was so long ago. Isn't that crazy? It really was. It was a good decade, right? No, it had to be. I would guess I'm just sort of marveling that we're still doing this. Got a long time left too. So wake up. I hope so. Are you telling me to wake up or everyone else? Everybody else. Okay. There are also deorbiting. I mean we have successfully and other companies have successfully deorbited satellites. It is a thing. We don't leave everything up there. SpaceX, I remember very famously they have the Falcon rocket that was able to come back down to Earth and be in docking again. It was super cool. Yeah. You thought that was actually reuse it. Don docking. Everybody was talking about him that day too and he loved it. Yeah, he made the news. Yeah. So that's actually a new best practice is basically reuse stuff. Just get it back out. And even if you can't reuse it again like SpaceX does with their boosters, at the very least make part of launching a satellite de orbiting the upper stage of the rocket. Like immediately. There's no reason to just leave your rocket parts up there anymore. You can attach stuff to it propulsion systems to get it back down into Earth's atmosphere to burn up if you're not going to reuse it. So that's a definite best practice that's emerging for sure. The falcon works though, right? Didn't that thing land safely? I saw it with my own eyes. Yeah, I saw the heavy boosters land with my own eyes. And he synchronized them. They came down at the same time and landed at the same time after launching a rocket. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's really cool though. I got to hand it to that guy. He definitely thinks of things that don't seem possible and somehow is able to make them possibly. I know. That's another thing too. There's a lot, a lot you can say about his personality, but some of his problemsolving skills make things seem like so it makes it look like you turn to everybody else and be like, why haven't you been doing this this whole time too? Like, for example, the starship things can start faring people to the moon and beyond. Eventually one of the things is going to be when it comes back down to Earth is to collect space junk on the way. Or the starlink satellites, SpaceX starlink satellites, they're all going to be able to autonomously move based on debris tracking data here on Earth. So they'll just be able to move themselves. Just basic stuff that seems like why have we been doing this all along? And it's a good question. It's been a while since you've fanboyed on Elon Musk. I know. I've had some ups and downs stuff then too. I mentioned earlier that in 78, Skylab fell in Western Australia and what we can't do is human to say, well, it fell in the Australian outback. It's very sparsely populated, so it's all good. There are people there and there are ecosystems there, and it is nature and the planet and it is a big deal. Just because it didn't fall on New York City or downtown La or something doesn't mean it wasn't a problem. It was a problem. And I think in 2019, NASA said that as much as 16% of that ISS is going to survive reentry when it eventually comes back down to Earth. 16%? Yeah. So when you have something like the ISS whose ultimate fate is up in the air still, literally, you have to plan to deorbit it. Like you can't just leave something that big up there. It would just create too much space debris. And other space stations like the Mir and China's Tiangong, I think one and two space labs both were brought down. And some of this stuff is going to survive. Like you said, the space station part of that is going to survive. Some of the mirrors survive, some of the Tian gong survive. And you don't want that re enactment of Skylab now. So they've figured out that if they crash land these things into like a really remote part of the ocean, probably it will be fine. And there's a point in the ocean, in the South Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo, and NASA and the other space agencies have been crash landing deorbited enormous stuff there for decades. But it wasn't until 1992 that a survey engineer named Voye Lucatala nice. Thank you. Croatian, I believe, used this brand new software. This is and Triangulated, the furthest spot from land in the world. And he said it's basically Point Nemo, this area that the space agencies have been using already for decades, they had it basically right on the money. Yeah, it's 1400 miles away from the nearest landmass. It's supposedly the one point on Earth further away from any other piece of land. And a little fun tidbit about that exact degree of longitude and latitude is that HP. Lovecraft wrote about the old ones, where the old ones live and actually gave coordinates that were really close to the actual calculated coordinates. It's kind of great to think about that. But I also think if you had a good enough flat map of the Earth, you could probably stand back and eyeball what looks like it's furthest away from anything. And you're probably close to point. Nemo. Because that's what NASA did. Yeah, that's basically what they did. And so this area, Point Nemo, I mean, the fact that it's called Point Nemo makes you think, like, man, they've been crash landing spacecraft and space stations there for decades. This must just be like, the most amazing place to go tour in, like, a sub. But the thing is, when you crash land something like space station, the debris field that creates coming into the ocean could be almost 1000 miles long. And it's not like they hit the target every single time. So it's actually like a really huge, enormous tens of thousands, if not millions of square miles wide area. That's what point nemo is. It's kind of a misnomer, actually. Yeah, because I think people like, when is it going to start poking its little head above the ocean surface? Right? Like a big stack of junk under there. Exactly. Pretty cool, though. It is very cool. And also, if you're like, well, what about the fish? Do not worry. It turns out that Point Nemo is one of the least biodiverse parts of the ocean around. So they say. And get this, Chuck, you want a little cherry on top of our Sunday here? I would love that. I always love the cherry on top. 99% Invisible has not done an episode on Point Nemo. In your face, Mr. Mars. Read them to it. That's awesome. There's a recent episode that they did on the movie theater megaplex history. That's really great. Oh, yeah, of course. It's 99% Invisible. Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. All right, well, if you want to know more about space junk, to start reading about it, there's a lot of really great articles out there. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this what the writer called it. My husband is jealous of Josh and Chuck. Okay. I hope you guys are both well. I wanted to share with you the Stuff You Should Know is having an unpleasant effect on my marriage. You see, my husband works nights, and while I'm a strong, independent person who could hold my own, I still like to have a little background noise to soothe me to sleep. Most nights, that means falling asleep to the delicate tones of maybe how the Black Panther Party worked or origami colon folding goodness. Every morning when my husband gets home, he begrudgingly acknowledges the other men in the room and pauses my ass. However, we hit a breaking point recently when he returned to find the Stuff You Should Know incomplete compendium of Mostly Interesting Things book open on his pillow with me snuggled against it. Comfortably enraged, he tossed it on the floor, and we exchanged words. Oh, boy. So, yes, you could say my husband is super jelly of Josh and Chuck. All that to say, here's a big thank you for keeping me company and helping this gal sleep tight every night. Lots of love to my main squeezes, Ray. She hers from Phoenix. All right, Ray. Hopefully, that was mostly tongue in cheek. I think so. I don't want to be a problem in anybody's marriage. No, just our own. Right. Well, thanks a lot, Ray, and sleep tight as always. Hopefully, you guys can work it out. Maybe just get him to read the Stuff You Should Know book, and he'll be like, no, I want the book tonight. And that's what your problems will be. Yeah, that's the easiest thing, is to convert him. Exactly. And we have ways. You can sign up for our Brainwashing newsletter if you want some tips. That's right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Ray did, or sign up for our Brainwashing newsletter, you can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app app, apple App podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
835694d4-3b0d-11eb-b411-c32bb34757c2 | How Hydropower Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-hydropower-works | Humans have been stealing energy from flowing water for at least two thousand years. It wasn’t until the advent of electricity that things really got cookin’. All we need to do now is to work out the harmful environmental impacts of this green energy. | Humans have been stealing energy from flowing water for at least two thousand years. It wasn’t until the advent of electricity that things really got cookin’. All we need to do now is to work out the harmful environmental impacts of this green energy. | Thu, 28 Jan 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=28, tm_isdst=0) | 49527817 | 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. Brian over there, and Jerry's here, too, somewhere. Now, not just in spirit, but, like, digitally, virtually. She's like Johnny Depp in demonic. Oh. Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes. With Jerry's, like, I've been singing Judas Priest all day because of this. Instead of Turbo Lover, I'm singing hydro power. That's pretty cool, man. Can you give us a little couple of verses? I'm your hydropower when I failed to mention I'm wearing my leathers. Okay. Just a leather vest and no shirt underneath. Yeah, and nothing else but boots. Some buttless chaps. It's awesome. Really? Is there any need to make any other kind of chaps? I mean, I think they usually don't have a butt. Right. You're just expected to wear something underneath. Maybe that's what it is. But then the whole thing just calling them buttless chaps is superfluous. Yeah. It's redundant, right? Yeah. So since we started talking about butlerless chaps, since we coined a new term, butler chaps, I think we're the first people to ever use those two words together. Yeah, people usually say the A word, right? Exactly. We're clearly talking about hydro power, not just hydroelectric power, friends. Hydro power. There's a lot of energy in that. They're water, and we humans have gotten pretty clever at figuring out how to extract it. Yes. And this is something that we used to use a lot more of in this country. Up until about the mid 20th century, we were using lots of hydropower, and it peaked in about 1960. Now we're down to just about 6% of our power being created through the use of water. But there's still a lot of hydro power plants in the US. About 2400. The US. Has a bunch, but we're also tearing them down along with Europe at A rated about, like, one per week, these dams, right? Yeah. And we're removing dams, demolishing them faster than we're building them these days, which puts hydro power, specifically hydroelectric power, in a really weird place in its history. But from all the research that I've done, I don't think it's going anywhere. What I think is going on is that it's at, like, this fork in the road, and it's trying to figure out what the best way to go is to be sustainable and be as green as everybody likes to think it is, even though, spoiler alert, it's actually not that green. Is everyone just standing around looking at each other going to say something? Yeah, it's like trying to figure out a restaurant as a group. Oh, God. That's the worst. Do you remember the best thing to do is to have a millennial friend or two in your group? Because they usually are really good about tackling that stuff. Oh, I thought you're going to say they're usually really bossy. No, but whenever it's like a sketchfest or something where there's just a bunch of disparate people. I usually try and get a millennial in the group decision making, so I can just go, I'm an old Gen Xer. I'm happy to go anywhere. Got you. Get on your Yelp or get out your Michelin Guide or whatever your kids do these days. Yeah, they all carry that paperback Michelin Guide with them, the Penguin Classics version of it. Hydro power around the world, though, is pretty popular, some places more than others, I think. Paraguay, they are far and away the leader, if you're talking about anywhere, because they're up to 100%. That's incredible. Norway, no surprise. They're at about 95, along with Nepal and Tajikistan. And I wanted to ask you this. You have in here that China, Brazil, and the US lead. Major countries in the US is down to 6%. So the top three, I assume we're third at 6%. Yeah, which just goes to show how much energy we put out. Only 6% of it is hydro, and yet we are the third in line of hydroelectric production in the world. China, one or two. One, I believe. And then Brazil. So Brazil is 67%, and then it goes down to 6%. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Yes, it's a big drop. Yeah, but, I mean, it just goes to show we produce a lot of electricity, and it's just some of it is from hydro. Which really boggles the mind that at one point, like you were saying, a third of our power came from hydroelectric production plants. It's just crazy. Yeah. I think it's down to about 16% worldwide, right? Yeah. That was as of four or five years ago. Yeah. And then that actually represents a really precipitous drop, I think in the mid $2,000, the odds, it was like, 24%, and it dropped down to 16% within maybe ten years or less. And the reason for that is not necessarily that people have stopped producing as much hydro power, they've stopped building as many new projects around the world and have started opting instead, unfortunately, for what's called thermal, which is usually using a fossil fuel like coal, oil, natural gas to heat some water, to produce steam, to make a turbine spin, to run a generator, basically. And it's just cheaper. It's much more understandable. There's a lot of drawbacks to it, but it just requires far less of an investment upfront than building a traditional hydroelectric plant. Yeah. And we'll detail all those pros and cons later. But if you wonder why people look to water to begin with, you need only look at water. Stand beside any river, especially one that's got some rapids. When you see those rapids funneling through a small channel, it gets pretty intense. Some serious force going through there. And at some point someone said, maybe we can harness that. We're not exactly sure who the first people were, but of course, some people think the Chinese, the Han Dynasty, they're always a good bet for leading the way. Maybe the persians, or maybe they actually do have writings from the third century BCE. From philo of byzantium. He made a great dough, by the way. He did. He was also the guy who first named the seven wonders of the ancient world. Was his dough one of them? Right. He's like, you got to try it. It's the flakiest. It's so good and flaky, but yeah, there's, I think, a description of a water wheel from old philo. Yeah. From 2300 or so years ago. So, yeah, we've figured out that you can put water to work. We've known for a long time it was using water as basically a way to produce mechanical energy, not electricity. Just put a pin in that because we're going to get to it in, like, 35 seconds. But first we use water to push water wheels, like those charming things you see in, like, a Thomas kink painting. It's one of my favorite things. They're really wonderful. I love them. They're about as clean as anything ever has been in the history of the world. There's just something so tranquil about it. But I've always loved them. When I was a kid, I remember going to stone mountain park, and they had the old gristmill there, and I think I even kind of understood the purpose and just how I think it's simplicity always really just hit me right in the fields. It's one of those things, Chuck, that it is a very simple idea, but it was like a home run right out of the gate. Basically, what we do to produce hydroelectricity is almost an unchanged version of the water wheel. Yeah. I mean, it's got fancier over the years, we've talked about this with any type of power show that we've done, whether it was nuclear power. I feel like we've done a lot of these. It all comes down to producing that mechanical energy to spin something. To spin a turbine. Yeah. So you spin this water wheel or turbine, as we'll see, and it spins on an axis. Well, if you insert an axle into that axis, it will spin the axle, and you can attach all sorts of cool stuff to that axle to make them spin, too. Like, you can insert more wheels and have them press down on stone as they rotate. So you can grind things or turn. Yeah, you can mill flower. You can grind paper or wood into pulp and make paper. You can change the rotation, the direction of the rotation to up and down. So now, all of a sudden, you have pistons that can pump bellows or pump water or do all sorts of cool stuff. So that was a huge advancement in the history of the world, and that's how things stayed for a couple of thousand years, basically until the 19th century, when we started to develop electricity. Somebody said very quickly, oh, you know what? Actually, we could apply that age old waterwheel idea to this electrical generation. And that's exactly what they did. Actually, the first guy, the first hydroelectric power provided power to a lamp at a house called the Craigside Lake Lamp. Yeah, exactly. You love lamp. I love lamp. It's in a town called Rothbury in north umberland and if I mispronounced North Umberland, I am not to blame on that. You cannot spell a word North Umberland and expect anyone to pronounce it any other way. I'm trying to decipher how it's really probably pronounced. Like, probably Christian Shire or something. Yeah. Or like nothing rumblende or something like that. I just inserted a b. So however you pronounce it, a guy named William Armstrong, he was, like this amazing inventor who powered basically his whole house using water power. But one of the things he did was generate electricity, too. That's right. And then Grand Rapids, Michigan, said, you know what? I'm going to one up you there, because we have a hydro generator at the Wolverine Chair Company factory. We have 16 street lights that we want to power. Yeah. And I imagine all the criminals in town were like, oh, it's so much harder to commit crime with light at night now. I know. Especially drop crime a little bit, I would guess. So I'm sure they had, like, the gas lights already, but the electric, I think. Chuck, we talked a lot about hydroelectric power in our Hoover Dam two parter, if I remember correctly. Yes, but I think we also might have talked about in our electric chair episode, but I feel like we may have misspoken and said that either Buffalo, New York, or Niagara Falls, New York, was the first city to use hydroelectric power to power its street lights. And that's just not true. It's actually Grand Rapids, Michigan. Yeah, they were a few years later. I love how I picture, like, the sketch version of this is two engineers with the Niagara Falls behind them reading a newspaper, going, hey, it says here in Grand Rapids they're using water to make light. If only we had such a means to do so. And Niagara Falls behind them. It's just like, look at me. Yeah. So that was just an excellent 19th century sketch that you just made, by the way. That's when sketch was at its best. So, I don't know. I would say the 70s sketches would be pretty tough to contend with. By the way, I watched that John Belushi documentary last night. Oh, yeah. Very good. And it's amazing when you look at the speaking of 70 sketch, to look at these archival photos of the house parties and apartment hangs oh, my God. Where it's like Belushi and Bill Murray and Harold Raymous and Lorraine Newman, just like all the comedy heroes just sitting around, like, drinking and smoking weed. Not that I endorse that thing, but I'd like to see that party. Yeah, man, I love seeing pictures like that for that. Imagine how funny that party was. Probably pretty great. Either that, or else I'd just be too nervous and socially anxious to talk to anybody and wouldn't have a good time at all. Well, since we're on the sidetrack, the first kind of really famous hang I had, like that was, I think, one of my first Max Fun cons, when I was sitting in a room with basically the original Upright Citizens Brigade songs. Amy Poehler and Andy Richter and Andy Daly and all these comedy heroes, and I was so afraid to even speak, but I was saying jokes in my head, and then two times I said a joke in my head, and Andy Richter said one of them. And another. I think it was Matt. Walt said another. That was basically my joke. And I was like, I'm going to start talking nice. And I did. And you did. Did you get applause? No, but they didn't all turn around and look at me and go, who's this guy? Like I thought they would. It's like, oh, we're all just people. Did they make you an honorary a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade? No. Did you get a T shirt? I did get a T shirt. Okay, good. I stole a T shirt. That's good. Should we take a break? I think we should take a break. All right, we need to get back on track, and we're going to take a break and talk about the types of modern hydropower right after this. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US. Based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff that's Lifelock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. What if you were a 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. Okay, Chuck, so like you said a minute ago, that flowing water has a lot of energy to it. I found a couple of stats that I've just got to share with everybody. Okay, let's hear it. Water flowing at 4 miles an hour, just 4 miles an hour. It is very slow like you yawn. Basically when you see that, like a walking pace, it can move a five foot diameter boulder. Okay, okay, that seems big. 7 mph has the same force as an EF five tornado. And water flowing at 25 mph has a pressure equivalent of wind that's blowing at 790 mph faster than the speed of sound. There's a tremendous amount of kinetic energy and flowing water and we have figured out over time how to maximize that. Like you said, the water wheel design is basically like what we're working with still today. But we've refined it so much that now we're producing these amazing turbines that spin super fast and they're designed to direct water in just the right way. Your water is supposed to go around them just the right way or drop on them or shoot from the side and wash around like it's on a slip and slide or something. And we've come up with a lot of turbine designs, basically, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, that have really improved on the water wheel. Yes, those bulb types are pretty cool. Those are watertight. And it's basically an aerodynamic chamber that's going to, I talked earlier about when that water channel narrows, how much more forceful it gets, and that's what they do. In this case, they focus and narrow the water column and then put it to the turbine, obviously at a much higher rate. Right. And I think that is an example of an axial flow where the flow of the water is parallel to the spin of the turbine. Or no, maybe that'd be radial, I can't remember. But basically there's axial radial and mixed and most things are mixed. And a really good example of a mixed turbine is the most widely used one called the Francis Turbine, which was invented by a guy named James Francis back in the 19th century. And it's fan blades basically are adjusted so that the water spills down from above onto it. But as it hits it, the fan blades directed downward into the side. So the water ends up actually sloshing around parallel to the spin of the turbine and spinning it. Real good old Francis. If you're talking about hydroelectricity these days, you're going to spend that turbine. The axle is going to spin the turbine and it's attached to a set of super powerful magnets that are turning inside a copper coil. And that movement of the magnets is going to knock those electrons loose and get those electrons flowing. And then all of a sudden those electrons flowing through the copper is a current, it's electrical current. And then they pressurize that into a really densely packed AC current that's really slow moving. And we talked about the invention of AC current, how that means you can just take it really far away and still use it without losing a lot of energy, which is great, because you can dump it into the electrical grid and say, you were once water, now you are electricity. Yeah, which is pretty cool. A lot of our power actually started out as flowing water. I love that idea. Me, too. But it goes to show, like, we really haven't changed that water wheel design very much. Instead of a grinding wheel or a bellows, we now just have some magnets that are attached to the turbine, and they spin around inside of that coil, and that's that. I know we talked about it in our episode on electricity, but I'm still to this day amazed that it's just so primitive. But it works. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it, basically, is the big motto of the electrical production industry. And donkeys the world over said thank you, because now I don't have to be hooked to a thing and walk in a circle all day long unless they're making mescal. As we talked about in our book, you got a nice traditional donkey. That's right. I hope they're all taken care of. I am sure they are. Yeah. If you have a donkey that makes mezcal for you, I'll bet you treat it really nice. So there are four main categories of hydroelectric power plants these days. The first one, the impoundment, is the one you kind of think of when you think of, like, the Hoover Dam. This water is impounded. They stopped that flow. It's impounded in a big reservoir. They release it through these gates, through these tunnels called pin stocks that we talked a lot about in the Hoover Dam episode. And they're using gravity, basically, to make water fall and gain all this turn all that potential energy into whatever the other kind of energy is. Kinetic energy. Yeah. And so empowerment schemes make use of what's called a hydraulic head, which is basically the height of the drop from, say, the gates where the water enters the pen stock to the point where that water hits the turbine. And the higher the head, the higher the drop, the more energy you can get out of the water, the faster it makes the turbine spin. So that's why dams are just so damn high and tall, because they have a really high hydraulic head, and you can just get a lot more electricity, a lot more kinetic energy out of that falling water. But as we'll see, that's actually kind of a problem, the fact that the high head hydropower is basically the state of the art. We need to advance past that. Just a little taste, a little foreshadowing right there. That's right. Then you've got, I think, my favorite one, which is diversion or the run of river hydropower, which is this is using water that's already flowing. You got a river that's flowing and someone came along and said, hey, this river has got some good action. Why don't we just divert some of this and channel it off to the side and create some electricity that way and then just let that water dump back in and do its thing on downstream. Yeah, and so some of them do just divert some of the river to produce electrical power. Some like just stick a whole plant in the river. But the key here is that, like you said, they're not trying to keep the water blocked up behind a dam, but there's still probably a drop because, again, this hydraulic head is basically the key to hydroelectric power generation right now. I think the conduit, which is a subtype of the diversion conduit or canal, is pretty neat, too, because basically they use these water pipes that may be part of a big irrigation system or some other kind of water project. We might as well stick a turbine in that thing because we're diverting that water through a pipe anyway, right? So might as well just capture some of the energy as it's passing by. I think that's a spectacular idea. So that's like, you got empowerment, diversion, and then another type is called pump storage. And pump storage is very much like impoundment. There's like an upper reservoir and pen stocks and you let the water flow through past the turbine and you generate electricity. But unlike empowerment, where when the water exits, it just goes downstream and keeps flowing and it's like, what the hell just happened? You actually capture the water. I have to say I've said damn and hell in this episode and I'm really pushing the envelope if you ask me. I feel like Bart Simpson. Well, you said damn high. I took it to mean D-A-M high. Literally. But, yeah, you're in trouble for saying thank you and pump storage, rather than letting the water just exit and flow down river. There's a lower reservoir, too, that captures the water and keeps it from flowing out. And then that's what you do. You let the water flow from upper to lower during peak electricity hours or peak demand so you can produce electricity. And then when it's not peak demand, people don't need as much electricity. You can use some of that electricity that you've generated to pump the water from the lower reservoir back up to the upper reservoir, which is pretty awesome. It makes it basically like a rechargeable battery. It's pretty cool. We spend a lot of time on Lake Sinclair here in Georgia, and the dam is very close to where we are. There's two dams, one at the north end, one at the south end, and we go to the north end. And it's just fun to go up there and watch when it's going through, I guess, when they're releasing the most water, because it's just crazy. Like the water in front of it is really choppy, but it's not going in any sort of pattern. You'll see a big swirling pool to your right, then another one in front of you. And Jet skis and boats are kind of like trying to fight against the current to get close and then get pushed back. I was going to say violent, but it's not loud, so it doesn't seem violent. But it's churning that water up. And I think fish, because the birds go crazy when this is going on, man. Yeah, it sounds like utter chaos. It is. But it's quiet chaos. Oh, is it quiet? To me, in my head, it sounded, like, really loud and wishy and everything. No, it's not really. Whooshy. You just see the water churning and moving and it's pretty cool. Why is it that if there's a chance to do something dumb, somebody on a Jet Ski is going to try it? Have you ever noticed? Yeah, jet ski. I don't know. Jet ski people are different. They're a certain breed. They got a little bit of daredevil in them, I guess they do. I mean, some of those things are crazy. They go like 80 miles an hour. That's not safe. No, it's not. One of the other last things about pump storage, Chuck, is that they've figured out, and I feel like we've talked about this before I mentioned it, that a really good thing to do with a pump storage hydroelectric plant is to actually use excess energy from wind and solar that you can't store anywhere. Use that to pump the water back up to the upper reservoir. And it's basically like, again, recharging a battery using wind or solar. So you could conceivably power your whole pump storage hydroelectric plant using nothing but renewable resources. That's amazing. Yes. I like that stuff. I love ecology almost as much as Earth science because it ties into it so much. Just kind of cousins, for sure. Then finally you have marine hydrokinetics, which we talked about. Do you remember the name of the episode? Can oceans power the world from 2011? And that is using ocean currents and waves and tidal currents. I wondered if any of the Great Lakes could produce enough of a current to be useful. Or is it only ocean? No, I think anywhere that has any kind of wave action, tidal action or current, you could totally make use of it. And apparently there's tides and currents in the Great Lakes. I had no idea, but I remember somebody saying that recently. I just remember learning that when I saw Ferris Bueller in high school. And there's that scene by what's the great lake there in Chicago? Is that Lake Michigan? I think superior. Superior. Oh, boy, we're getting crushed right now. Let's just see them all. It could be Erie, maybe Huron. Ontario, one of those not Ontario, but I just remember seeing that scene by the lake and all those waves and stuff. And I was like, Wait a minute, I thought they're in Chicago. Where the heck are they? Right? And someone said, no, that's a great lake, and it can look like the ocean like that. I mean, now I remember, I recall back to my boyhood when I would play in the lake, and I guess there would be waves, but it never occurred to me that they just shouldn't be there, that they were freaks of nature. What lake did you go to? Erie. Okay. You sure about that? I'm positive. Okay, so with the marine hydrogenetics and you should go back and listen to that episode. It's really good. But one type is if they build a plant right along the shore there, and it's got that turbine at the top, and seawater flows in and out, and they use that wave action and the tidal movement coming and going to run that turbine, spinning that turbine, it all goes back to spinning that wheel. Yeah, I actually saw there was a University of Florida study that said Florida alone could probably produce ten gigawatts of electricity from marine hydro kinetic schemes alone, which is pretty substantial because all of the hydroelectric output in the entire United States right now is 13 gigawatts. So that would be a pretty big addition, actually, if they could figure out how to do it. You know, I thought of another musician from Gainesville, Florida, the other day when I was listing them. Steven Stills. I can't believe I forgot. Steven Stills. Steve Stills. Stevie Stills is from Gainesville, which yeah, he's one of my favorites, too. Out of all of the Crosby, Stills and Nash people or just in general? Well, yeah, I think out of all, Neil Young is the king, obviously, but Steven Stills was in Buffalo Springfield with Neil Young, and he also had this great band that did a one off record band called Manassas. That was awesome. Okay, well, what about out of Emerson Lake and Palmer? If you're not a lake man, then I don't know what you're doing in life. What about Bachmann Turner? Overdrive. You got to go with Overdrive. Okay, yeah, totally overdrive. He was awesome. Sure you want to take a second break yet? I think so. I think that is our new queue. When I get really off track, stop the show and then pick up again with the topic. Yeah, new queue. All right, we'll be right back, everybody. We got to sort ourselves out. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? 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And then the other fact that when we run this water, when we build, like, hydroelectric plants on rivers and things like that, when we use it as fuel, it doesn't exhaust the water. The water just loses a little bit of its kinetic energy for a second, but when it flows out the other side, it regains it rather quickly. It doesn't need to be replenished. It's not wasted. Like, you just stole a little bit of its kinetic energy and use it for something else. And the river was like, whatever, I got it right back. So it's a pretty amazing green source of energy. You can understand why people have been so cookie for it for a while. Plus, it doesn't expend any greenhouse gases in its production. Right. Yeah. If you hate greenhouse gas, then you love hydroelectric power because along with solar, nuclear and wind, it has no emissions. And we've talked about nuclear. There are some problems there. And wind and solar is great, too. There's nothing that's perfect. There is a byproduct by producing solar panels and wind turbines, and there's ecological impacts with any type of energy production. It's all about just making efforts to minimize those as much as possible. Right. The other thing about hydroelectric power is that it's just simpler. Like when we're talking about thermal, there's a couple of extra additional steps, which is like loading the fuel, lighting the fuel, basically burning to create steam to spin the turbine. This is just water passing by that spins the turbine. So because there's fewer steps and there's fewer machinery or less machinery involved, it's a simpler technology. Which means that ultimately, especially if you look at the lifespan of a hydroelectric plant over time, it's much more cost effective than a thermal power plant. For sure. It's just again, it costs a lot more upfront to build one. But when they build them, they usually build them to last usually decades. Longer than a thermal power plant, too. Yeah. And then if you're in the business of creating power, you kind of love hydroelectric power because it's instantaneous. If demand goes up, you can just spin that turbine faster and allow more water to flow through. Sometimes it goes dormant and you turn it off. But if you need power, just get it going again. And it's not like it doesn't have to heat up or anything. You're like producing power and electricity the minute that things start spinning. Yeah, well, actually, there's measurements of the ramp up time, and for some kinds of hydroelectric power, it's less than a minute, about 30 seconds from zero to producing all the power. Like it's peak out power output, other kinds of five minutes. So I saw anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes ramp up time. For things like coal and oil, it can take half a day to a couple of days from starting from scratch to full power. So that's a huge bonus if you're an energy producer. Yeah. So we've kind of put a pin in the problem. And like I said a second ago, there is no type of power production that is perfect. Everything's going to have some sort of impact on the environment. And in the case of hydroelectric power, there are a few ways. And it's funny, it sounds so great, but then when you start kind of reading through these things, some of the air is let out of the balloon a little bit. Yeah, but we have to cover this stuff when you're going to build a big reservoir for a dam. There's going to be a lot of impact on the environment. Everything above that used to be shoreline and dry or maybe even marshy or forest land is going to be an aquatic ecosystem pretty quickly, within about a year. And there's a lot of plants and animals and insects and reptiles and fish and birds that live in that area. And some of them can adapt. Some of them move along and find a new home. And sadly, some of them die out and they don't have a chance to relocate or adapt. Yeah, anytime they build a big damn project, you're probably going to find within a year or two or a handful reports of entire species that have gone extinct because of that damn project. And a lot of people have kind of woken up over the last few decades, especially as the world has become much more environmentally conscious since the seventies and said, this is a big deal here, actually. And hydro power, I think, has kind of gotten away with interspecificial murder, but hydra has gotten away by trading on its kind of green reputation. And finally people started calling it out and saying, like, this is not acceptable. We have to figure out a better way. And that's kind of what I was referring to. That is almost entirely what I was referring to. Where hydro? And we'll talk about the future in a second, but it's at this point where it's like, how can we do this? Because this is an amazing green, renewable energy source, but it's also having devastating environmental impact. So we've got to figure this out. So we can keep doing this, but we've got to do it without wiping out entire species every time we build a new dam. Yeah, totally. The other thing that can happen beyond the animals, I did mention plants, but all that above water vegetation up there is going to be flooded. And those plants lived in certain kinds of conditions. That wasn't a lake bottom, basically. And it's going to decompose. It's going to release methane and CO2 into the atmosphere during those drought periods when that reservoir evaporates. And then you've got all the downstream problems, too, stuff that was instead of flooding these downstream ecosystems, it's kind of like the opposite of what's going on up top. They're going to dry up. And all that nutrient rich silt that's deposited downstream as the river flows is blocked by the dams. And that's going to build up in the reservoir, causing problems for the dam itself and nutrient depletion downstream. So it's kind of messing up both sides. Yeah. And so even for aquatic animals, it's a pretty big problem. Just building a dam is an obstacle for the fish that used to live there. So fish that used to swim upstream past where that dam is now located to its breeding grounds and spawning grounds, they have a problem. They have a big problem getting around. And the hydro industry has looked into all sorts of different ways to help these fish get around more easily. So there's fish diversion channels, there's fish ladders, basically a system of locks that the fish are meant to climb. I think we talked about in the Hoover Dam episode that there's, like, fish air drops, trucking fish, fish cannons, all sorts of weird stuff. None of them hold a candle to unobstructed reach of a river. That's what you want. So that's another challenge that's facing the hydroelectric production industry is okay, basically anything we do is going to negatively impact the fish population. So that's a big challenge for them as well. Unobstructed river, though, is not nearly as fun as a fish cannon. No, I don't know about for the fish, but for jet skiers hanging out, watching them get shot upstream, I think we did research into fish cannons, and they're okay, right? Yeah, but it's got to scare the sure. I'm sure some of them do the fish equivalent of jet skiers. Probably about being shot out of a kid. Come on, bro, send me through again. There are also humans that live in communities that live near where these dams are built, and they will get what's it called when you have to force someone out of a place? This place? Yeah. Convicted. The actual moved along. No. What do you call it, though, when the government steps in and say, hey, we got to move your house because we're going to build a school? Eminent domain. Yes. Okay. Well, they will come through and say, I'm sorry, community, but we're going to build a damn here. You're going to leave here's some money maybe to help you out with this, but you don't have a choice. We're going to flood. And in fact, all the lakes in Georgia are manmade power producing lakes, and they were once communities in some of these places. And there are stories of cars and houses at the bottoms of some of these lakes. Yeah. Which is just Creepsville to me, man, I love looking at pictures of that kind of stuff and thinking about it. But I've told you before, being in any of the Georgia lakes, I always am like, what is beneath me right now? It's awesome. It's thrilling, but terrifying at the same time, like being on a jet ski. And that's without even counting the catfish that are the scariest creatures on the earth. That's right. Or the gar. Good Lord. Oh, man. I saw a gar last summer that I had never seen one in person before. It looks prehistoric. It really does. Yes. They're very scary looking, and they'll eat absolutely anything. You can have a guard problem real quick. So the people that have been displaced, I think the World Commission on Dams did a study, and they estimated in the year 2000 that dams had physically displaced between 40 and 80 million people, all around the world. Yeah. That's so many people. Like you said, sorry, you have to move. This is going to be underwater very soon. And then when you build the damn even once you resettle the people who used to live in what's now a reservoir, the people downstream are under constant threat of the damn failing. When that happens, and it happens, whole towns get flooded out, lots of people can die. Millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of damages done. It's not like that's just a remote possibility, right? Apparently, as of 2015, the American Society for Civil Engineers identified 15,600 dams just in the United States that posed the highest hazard potential, the most critical for failure. 15,000 dams right now are really menacing, like a guy in a jet ski circling you. That level of menacing. Yeah. And I think they're waiting too many times. Was that three or four? That was like seven. Well, I was about to say three is a magic number, so maybe six is twice as good, but yeah, seven is too much. Okay. I think they're about 90,000 dams in the US. So that's 15,000 of those 90,000 are high hazard. Yeah. And when you hear about government and politics, you'll often hear talk of, like, hey, the one thing we can agree on, we got to get together on this infrastructure. This is what they're talking about, roads and bridges and stuff like that. But part of it is dams, and one of the ideas of moving forward is, let's get in there. I think only 2400 of the 90,000 dams in the US. Even produce electricity. Right? So one of the ideas is, let's get in there, let's shore these things up. Let's take as many of them as possible that aren't producing electricity, since they're already there anyway, and retrofit them to produce electricity, and they'll be safer and actually be doing something other than just being a dam. Yeah. Which, I mean, that's just the lowest hanging fruit you can think of right there. It's like these dams already had their environmental impact decades ago, so it's not as bad as you might as well put them to good use. And it's certainly preferable to building another dam to generate power. It's like, what are you even doing? Don't do that. Wait until all of the dams that need shoring up anyway are producing electrical power. Then maybe we can look into more dam projects. Apparently, that is not how the industry goes. Like I said, they kind of seem to have traded on their green energy image, but they're part of the energy sector, and they don't like things like government regulation, and they don't like things like tribes or local governments having a say in their licensing and all that stuff. So they lobby against that kind of thing. They're corporations. So it's a real problem in the industry that right now, they seem to be largely in favor of pressing back against environmental regulations or regulations that lessen the industry's impact. Rather than saying, yeah, we really need to figure out how to do this the right way, they're just trying to squeeze as many nickels as they can out before they're forced to do it the right way. Yeah. This one in Turkey sounds like a real nasty one. They're building on the Tigris. It's going to flood 90 miles of the river plus 150 miles of tributaries. Big time damage to the ecosystems there. And we're talking ancient archaeological sites that are going to be wiped out, people displaced, and a lot of people in the international community have said, hey, Turkey, why don't you think about some different ways to do this? And Turkey said, no, this is what we're doing. We're going to push forward with this. We have another one on the Euphrates that has reduced water flow to Iraq, to its south by 80%, has caused the loss of 61,000 acres of arable land every year. That's just such an astounding figure. It's like, how is there any land left? Yeah, so there are fortunately, a lot of people in the industry who are like, the writings on the wall like, this is just too good of an energy source to stop, but it's having too big of an environmental impact to just keep going forward in this direction. So they're trying to find ways to make it better. One of the inventions that I saw is called Movable Hep hydroelectric power plant. It's moveable not that you just move it wherever you want, like whenever you want, but the actual plant itself can move up or down, basically. Casters. That's good. It moves up and down depending on how high or low the river is, which is good because seasonally river height, which has a huge impact on the amount of energy it has, ebbs and flows, basically. So if you can lower your power plant in the water further when the water is low or raise it when it's high, you can also make it easier for fish to go around above or under Unobstructed, which is a huge bonus too. Yeah. There's another couple of technologies that are very cool. One called a VLH or ULH, very low head or ultra low head facilities. We talked about the head as being that volume of water plus the amount of drop. And basically they just don't need that much of a drop, much less of an environmental footprint. Doesn't require some big large dam or a big concrete span to create that huge drop. The fish can take that drop, which is a big deal. Right. And then these low velocity turbines. I really like this idea. It's basically saying, hey, why don't we just concentrate on or one of the things we can concentrate on is making our turbines just super efficient. And they don't have to spend at 90 RPMs. They don't have to spend very fast at all. So you can produce maybe the same amount of electricity without the need for those high pressure Pin stocks. Right. So the fish can just swim right through. They're moving that slowly. I think from what I saw, the reason why everybody's not just going to the low velocity turbines is because it's way cheaper to buy and install and operate. I figured high speed turbines, but the fact that people are thinking about this stuff and that they're coming up with new designs and they're proving that these things can work, and we're also simultaneously publishing studies about the huge environmental impact that this green energy has. I think that those two things combined are going to kind of pick hydro back up and brush it off and actually make it green in the near future. I hope so. Sometimes you got to I know it's antithetical to capitalism and ringing every last penny out of your company, but sometimes you got to bite the bullet a little bit, invest a little bit more in something that's better for the world down the line and still make gobs with money. Exactly. Nicely put, Chuck. Thank you. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I don't either, man. So that's Hydro Power. Look for another supplement edition of Hydro Power probably somewhere down the line. And in the meantime, until then, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this a little statistical analysis from a listener, and it's a little frightening to see how long it takes to listen to our catalog. Oh, boy. Happy New Year to each of you. A huge thanks for what you guys do to me. As to many other fans, your podcast never fails to bring a good laugh when I'm down, take my mind off studies when I'm feeling stressed, or to pique my interest on a fascinating topic when I'm a little bored. I listen every day, which means many repeats, and I still never struggle to find an episode to keep me interested. As you may be aware, at the end of the year, spotify gives a nice wrap up on individual listening habits. I listened to over 110,000 minutes on Spotify music and podcast combined in the year 2020. I listened to over 500 episodes of stuff you should know at an accumulated 24,256 minutes. Wow. My biggest streak wow. Was 29 episodes in one day. Wow. Anthony even says wow. I want to add, I'm not often the type of person to fall asleep listening to you all, but which would account for a lot of playtime. So this is like daytime listening. It sounds like you'd have to be on speed that day to listen to 29 episodes in one day. He's not on speed. You all have helped me through some of the hardest times as well as shared in some of the greatest times, all without even knowing it. Especially this year with Covet. In a very stressful semester at law school, he truly helped us make this year the best it could be. I hope you had a relaxing holiday and a great start to the new year. Ciao, Anthony. Cprwanno. PS. I love speed. No, hate speed. That's great. You should know. That's great, Anthony. Good luck with law school, too. I actually saw a couple of people who popped his total minutes. I think somebody tweeted, because you can tweet that really easily or post it. Yeah, I saw one, and I'm sorry, I don't know what their name is, but they had like 55,000 minutes to listen to stuff you should know, and that nuts, man. So hats off to everybody who listens to us in general. But also, if you listen to us that much, we really appreciate you, and hopefully we never annoy you. Like, hopefully one day it never just clicks and you're like, I can never listen to these guys again. I've heard too much. Yeah, totally. So be careful out there, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Everybody be careful. If you want to get in touch with us, like Anthony did, we love hearing from our friends. That means you. You can send us an email to stuff. Podcast iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should Know is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Jet Lag Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-jet-lag-works | It was only since 1958 that the Jet Age began, and jet lag became a real condition. Also known as desynchronosis, jet lag can lead to all manner of ailments, from sleeplessness to irritability to diabetes and cancer. Learn about how the body's natural clo | It was only since 1958 that the Jet Age began, and jet lag became a real condition. Also known as desynchronosis, jet lag can lead to all manner of ailments, from sleeplessness to irritability to diabetes and cancer. Learn about how the body's natural clo | Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:38:58 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=16, tm_min=38, tm_sec=58, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=43, tm_isdst=0) | 33045175 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporkscom. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, with Charles W, Chuck Bryant. We just flew in to be here. Yeah, I was on the Concord. I was just in Paris. Dude. Dude, I've seen the Concord. Yeah, the Air and Space Museum. Not the one in downtown DC. Yeah, but the one out by Dulles airport at the New Museum. Oh, my God. It's awesome. I want it on board so bad. But it's like you're standing right next to and underneath a Concord. It's cool. They also have like Discovery space shuttle. Discovery. You're standing right next to that. It's a really neat museum. Why did you end up grounding the Concord? Was it not cost efficient? It wasn't. And like any time there was any kind of problem, like everyone died. Really? Oh my God. Yeah. But also the US outlawed supersonic air travel so you couldn't fly across the interior of the continent. Okay. Which cut out like a lot of revenue source. Yeah. So basically it's just and I don't think Air France or British Airways ever even broke even in all those years on Concord flights. Yeah, but in 2003 there was that most recent crash, that last crash, and after that that was it for the Concord. Yeah. I think if I'm not mistaken, my friend Justin, who, you know, his mom, when they had some final flights of the Concord. Of the Concord. She went on one of those just to do it. I think I might be wrong with that, but I seem to remember that from my past. You could go from London to New York in 5 hours. What is it usually? Like eight? Yeah, eight or nine or something. Yeah. And do you remember when Phil Collins played Bandaid? He played a show in London and got on the Concord, flew to New York and then played a show there like in the same night. Yeah, that was pretty cool. That was Live Aid. Was it live Eight. Yeah, but what's the difference? The one thing I knew is that it wasn't FarmAid Phil Collins. Did he play Farm Aid? I don't think so. That was more Willy. Willy and Melon Camp and Neil Young and all those cats. Yeah. So Phil Collins flying back and forth between London and New York to deliver his concert. Thank God that happened. I love Phil Collins. Do you really? Oh yeah. Dude. That wouldn't have been possible had it not been for something that we like to call the jet age. Yes. Starting around the late fifty s, the jet became the preferred motive travel. Which interestingly, a ticket on a jet was actually less than a ticket on like a propeller piston engine plane. Oh really? At first, yeah. Interesting. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, but in the late 50s you had McDonald, Douglas and Boeing. Really? Kind of duking it out to create the jet, to get people very quickly from one part of the country to another. And it opened up commercial air travel, and all of a sudden, you didn't have to be the richest person in the world to get from New York to La. Without having to drive or taking forever to get there. A train, prop plane, whatever, and admit a jet lag, essentially. Well, there you go. Thanks for finishing my intro for me. Well, we've only been around we've been leaping time zones for less than 100 years. So there are some beliefs that eventually we may evolve out of jet lag, but for now, we haven't been doing it long enough. Now it's been like 50, 60 years yes. Our bodies to even know what the heck is going on. Right. And that's pretty much what jet lag is. Our body does not know what's going on. There's another term for jet lag. It's called asynchronosis. That's a great word for it. Yeah. Your body has a biological clock, and when you travel from one time zone to another, in fairly short order, your body gets out of sync with this environment. And all of a sudden, all the cues it uses to regulate itself and all sorts of things that your body does, it gets out of sync. And what happens when you get out of sync? Well, there's a lot of stuff that happens, Chuck. I'm glad you asked that. You can have cognitive problems, problems thinking and problem solving and just general mental problems. Short term, of course, and temporary, but still, you're not thinking quite right. Health problems. There is a study in 2006 from the University of Virginia that found out that lab rats who were given jetlag who were exposed to simulated jet lag, which is basically, I think, a DC to Paris flight once a week for, I guess, most of their lives, probably older ones died much more quickly than younger ones. Yes. If you're old, which I've noticed that my jet lag has gotten worse as I've aged, for sure. I didn't used to get jet lagged at all. Yeah. I didn't know what the big problem was. And now it's like, one of the worst things that can ever happen to you. Yeah. Well, yeah. Fatigue, alertness, irritability, disorientation, depression, gastrointestinal illnesses. Yeah. It can really mess up. That comes from flying to air gas. Just a change in pressure creates oh, really? Gas. It's not like methane or anything. It's just like gas bubble in your gut. So you, like, fart a lot on planes or after you can as a result. Sure. And you know what you should do? People, by the way, I'm going to insert some flying Etiquette here in there. Are you going to get up and go to the bathroom and fart? Don't fart in your seat. Why are you looking at me? Because you're across, Ruby. Okay. Me and flying now, it's just so annoying to me because it's like an 18th century bus station these days when you're flying, laughing, everybody's wearing, like, pajamas, teenage girls with their boots. Oh, my gosh. It's dressed appropriately. You don't even have to dress up. But it's like, I don't want to see what you look like in your living room. I know. Well, you take your shoes off, which is something I'm there's nothing wrong with that because my feet do not smell. If my feet smelled and my shoes smelled, I wouldn't take them off. I'm very aware of that kind of thing. But it's funny that you bring that up, because the other night I watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles great scene, which is that movie really holds up. Oh, yeah. And John Candy takes his shoes off and then take the socks off, and I thought, Well, I don't take my socks off. Right. But I thought of you because I know that you think that's a terrible thing to do. Yeah. I just think you should remain fully clothed when you're out in public like that. I'm cool with taking the shoes off as long as the socks stay on and your feet don't stink. Okay. You're on a plane. You've got all these symptoms awaiting you, and if you are part of the 94% of Americans, you are going to get jet lag. Yeah. I wonder what's going on with the 6%. They're probably, like, younger people who don't know what they're talking about. You think? Yes. Interesting. Because it's biological. I bet you there's something to that 6% besides your five years old. You think? I doubt if they interviewed a lot of five year olds about jet lag for the study. Well, not five, but I mean, I was like, what's everyone's problem with jet lag? I don't understand what they're talking about. Yeah. And I specifically remember being interviewed in 1998 to ask if I got that, and I remember going like, no, it's not. But it is a problem. It's unpleasant for some people, but if you're in the military or if you're some huge big shot CEO, they worry that could impair you as a pilot or as a soldier or as a big thinker and the head of a company or deal closer. Yeah. You don't want some jet lag CEO lady going in there and not making good decisions and making a bad deal. Yeah. How can you be a game changer if you don't have your agame on? That's got to be the motto of some company. It probably is. I thought I just made it up unknown when he plugged somebody, like Pricefister or something. And then what was the other study? In 2010, the University at Cal did a study of hamsters, and it said that on the health tip that the lab rats created new neurons at about half the rate of rats who did not fly. Yeah, that's not good. No. Your brain is literally not functioning as well as it should. It's not growing. No. And I said about the dying from that study about rats dying from being exposed to jet lag, the older ones, and they've also found that in humans you can have a harder menstruation if you're a lady and you can develop heart disease and diabetes more readily. Basically your entire body is just totally thrown out of whack. You're hungrier at weird times. Sure. You're just out of it. You just don't feel good, stressed out. You have a lot of stress hormones going. So what's going on, Chuck? What is jet lag? Jet lag? Well, we need to talk about the biological clock that we all have. Basically the article here describes it of groupings of interacting molecules and cells throughout the body. That's a good way to say it. Everything's working together. They tell our glands, hey, release these hormones at this time of day to make you sleepy melatonin, which we'll get to in more detail, maybe adjust your body temperature. It's a couple of hours before you're going to wake up, so let's make you really hot for some reason. And the body is all in tuned with each other, all these things firing like a master timepiece. Who wrote this anyway? That was a pretty good Patrick Kiger. He's done some good stuff. Yeah, it is a master timepiece. And there are 20,000 nerve cells called the supra chiasmatic nucleus, we call the sensitivity front of the brain right near the optic nerve. And that is what keeps your circadian rhythm in your sleep and waking cycles going. Yeah, like clockwork. That's the biological clock, the SCA. It's pretty neat. And the fact that it's located by the optic nerve is kind of telling because one of the ways that it sets itself, it actually has it's on a set cycle, 24.65 hours cycle. And it's since it's off a little bit, it uses cues to reset itself. And one of the big cues it uses is natural light. Yeah, some people think that the brain is super photosensitive and that light really is the key to everything there. Well, yeah, like the pineal gland, apparently, even though it's buried inside the brain, is very light responsive. And the pinional gland is one of the things that makes or it makes melatonin, which has to do with sleep cycles. Melatonin is the good sleepy time stuff. So this whole rhythm, that 24.65 hours cycle is called your circadian rhythm. Right. And when it's time to sleep, when it's about the time that you went to sleep the night before and it's dark out, your brain's melatonin production increases. And also you've been building up in your head all day. The stuff called adenosine, right. And they recently found has been linked to being sleepy, what's called sleep pressure. When you try to stay up and you're just getting sleepier and sleepier, it's harder and harder to resist. That experience is called sleep pressure. And they think that it's a deana sign responsible for that, and it accumulates in the brain until finally, about the time that you should be falling asleep, the sleep pressure is just too much to overcome and you fall asleep. Yeah. My Emily's family, my Ohio family has a lot of sleep pressure. We call it the yearly gas leak over the holidays. That's funny. And we all look up at 745. We'll be watching TV and everybody's asleep after like, a big turkey dinner or something like that. Well, after drinking all day and eating oh, yeah, stuff like that. Yeah. And it's all warm and toasty. I get it. But it's still kind of funny when it's called the gas. Man, you just made me feel so cozy in that description. It is in a very cozy household. So you got the melatonin production increase, you got a DNA sign built up, and you reach that sleep pressure threshold, and all this stuff is kind of going on this general pattern that's attuned to you and your rhythms. Are you a night owl? Do you like to get up early? Do you like to sleep in late? Like, this is your own circadian rhythm. Yeah. And if you mess any of that up without flying, you're going to be thrown out of sorts. If you're a night owl and all of a sudden you get a job or you got to get up super early, it's going to suck for a little while until your body adjusts. It is going to suck for a little while, and it takes a while for the body to adjust. But we've never really, except for the last 60 years, we've never really had the capability of exposing the body to a sudden shock of just falling out of rhythm like that. Like, I'm flying to Australia, right? Exactly. Yeah. Where there's like a twelve or 13 hours difference. Man, I've done the Europe thing, but I've never experienced yet, like, to that degree, I imagine that it would take me quite a while to adjust. It does. And it sucks because it takes away a percentage of your vacation almost. It definitely does. When you and I went to Japan, I got a bet we flew there. We flew west to east. No, east to west, right. We flew up and over Canada and down Russia, which is easier. It was supposedly. But even still, when we got there, it was like three in the morning and we're just like, wide awake. Yeah. And that took a very little while to adjust. But when we flew west to east on the way back just get killed. It took two solid weeks of being almost, like, clinically out of our minds wow. Before we got back on our sleep. Actually, you were pretty wacky then, you remember? Yeah. There was a period where, like, the first four days when we got up, we would both wake up in the middle of the night we wouldn't even talk. We just get up and go out to the car and drive to Crystals and eat some crystals and go back home and go to bed. And we'd never done that before and haven't done it since. We just did it for four nights in a row because jet. So we're doing stuff like that all the time. That's weird. But yeah, going from west to east is the worst and especially if it's like that was a 13 hours time difference. Yeah. What do they call that? It's a phase delay going east to west and a phase advance going west to east. Right. And it's kind of like you can look at it like if you're looking at a clock and bedtime is a set time in phase delay, you're just taking that hour hand and moving it back. So you're just putting off your bedtime a little longer. Yeah. With phase advance, you're moving that hour hand closer suddenly to your bedtime, even though your body is not ready to sleep, it's bedtime now. Wow. Well, it's just interesting that the body under, you know, I mean it makes sense. I guess what I find interesting is that we've figured out a way to technologically and artificially subject the body to like this kind of shock and that it responds the way that it does, that it starts like over producing this hormone or underproducing that hormone and you go crazy. Well, yeah. And since you mentioned it, that's one of the things that happened. It really literally disrupts biological functions, releases stress hormones, drives up your blood pressure, since inflammation stimulating chemical markers through your arteries. It's going to mess up your appetite, like you said, because you're used to eating it regular times and that's why you're eating crystal because that was probably dinner time in Japan, I guess. Yeah, but haven't you ever noticed when you get up early, like say you have an early flight or something, like you can get up at a normal time. Say you normally get up at eight, maybe you're a little hungry or whatever, but you could skip breakfast, it's not a big deal. But if you're up and moving around at six or something like that, for some reason you're just starving. Hasn't that ever happened to you? Yeah, I'm usually not super hungry in the morning regardless of what time I wake up. If I'm up really early, I am ravenous for some reason. And I'll also find and I've always wondered what this was, that I'm not as hungry if I don't eat anything, but if I have like the banana then it just makes me super hungry. Right, yeah. Or have you noticed if you have like red meat the night before, whenever you get up the next day you're just ravinous too. Oh, really? Yeah, that happens to me. Interesting. I don't eat a lot of red meat anymore. You don't? No. I mean just because Emily doesn't but yeah, I'll still have my steak every now and then. What are you eating these days? Same thing I've always been eating since I've been with Emily, which is a lot of chicken and turkey and fish. What kind of fish? It depends. I'll make, like, tilapia tacos or grilled salmon or what's the more flaky? Like, not mahi, but I'll eat mahi to the flounder. Yeah, I'll just go to the farmers market and what looks good and fresh, you know, they just took mackerel off the safe to eat or fine to eat environmentally list. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know it was on that. Yeah, tuna, of course. Love tuna. Oh, man. But you shouldn't need a ton of tuna either. How come? I think the mercury. Oh, is that right? Yeah, I eat a lot of raw tuna. Yeah. They say that Jeremy Piffman supposedly had some sort of mercury poisoning for me, eating too much sushi, which is why he's no way. Yeah, he had a bag out of some movie or show because of it, but then I think later on they said no, I think he was using that as an excuse, and it wasn't verified that he had mercury poisoning. That's a lot like the twinkie defense. It met. Yeah. Jeremy Vivint had the tuna defense. But that's why they say if you're pregnant, you shouldn't eat a lot of yeah, for sure, man, that was a sidetrack. I think I'm hungry, is what to do. All right. So why is it so difficult to overcome, Josh? Well, like we said, your body's circadian rhythm is not exactly 24 hours. 24.65 hours. And so every day you're ready for sleep a little later and a little later. And that's why at least Patrick Kiger thinks it's easier to adjust going from east to west, because that means you're going to have to stay up later to hit your normal bedtime anyway. And since we're already kind of doing that, it's not that big of a deal. And it's not just him. I think that's proven. Like, NASA says the same thing. Well, NASA and Patrick Hunter. Another reason is not just light body temperature. We said fluctuates. It's minimum temperature. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it was maximum 3 hours before you get up. No, team in. It's minimum temperature. Yeah. All right. I thought you got really hot right before you woke up. You might, but Team In is typically 3 hours before you normally awake. Okay. And they found that if you have to wake up, like, during Team In, what your body is normally used to being at team in. Right. That's when your jet lag is the absolute worst. And I think it's because that's a cue that your whole body has, is like, okay, we're still in deep sleep and we're going to be in a while. And then all of a sudden, it's like, I have to wake up and go to this meeting. Body it's whacked out of its normal process of waking. I wonder if that sometimes if I get up super early, I have a harder time warming up through the day. I wonder if that makes a difference. I would bet it does. Like if you're used to waking up at a certain body temperature. Yeah. You know, it takes care of that no matter what, every single time. No matter why you're cold or how cold you are. Go spend 15 minutes in a sauna and you will be right as rain. Yes. It's just a miracle wood box. Yeah, I do that with the hot shower, with the steam. Sometimes it doesn't take with me. Really? Yeah. Sometimes I'll still get out of the shower and I'm chilled to the core still. How long is in there? I will stay in there for a while and really try to heat up. And most of the time it will get my temperature up some with the sun. It's like resetting it back to your normal setting every time. You're kind of cold, though, for a man. Like you're often chilly when I'm not. And I know I'm super hot. You are very hot, but I think you're also a little cold. Put us together and we make a very well adjusted exactly, human body temperature wise, very middle. So ask anyone what their remedy is for jet lag and you'll get ten different answers. Ask ten different people, you get ten different answers, is what you say. As Bruce Willis. What is he going to say? Make fish with your toes. Make fist with your toes? It's always been one of my favorite things. And I've tried it and it's silly, of course it doesn't work, but I just do it now because it was in Diehard. Yeah, our guy told him to do that. No, it was a guy on the plane. I thought it was our guy, the driver. It was on the plane as they were flying in. And of course, in Diehard, it was just a set up to get him without choosing socks on. Yeah, because that played a part in the movie. It's a good movie. She's damn Fenster. Yeah, but like I said, some people use herbal remedies. Some people take Melatonin, which is not FDA approved, but you can take melatonin and synthetic melatonin. We should say. It says in this article, it tells you how much to take and when. And we'll tell you, too. But we should also add the disclaimer. Melatonin has interactions with drugs like diabetes drugs, blood thinners, birth control pills. You may want to check out what melatonin might do with your medication before you take it. You definitely should. Yeah. Some people just say, you know what, I'm going to take a red eye and I'm going to take some volume and drink some scotch and just knock myself out for the whole flight. And that'll do the trick. Yeah, that works. If you want to die. Yeah. Explain. Well, there's a 36 year old woman who recently died of a stroke because and she was otherwise healthy, apparently, but she passed out on a seven hour flight or went to sleep or whatever, but she slept for 7 hours on a flight and developed thrombosis, which is a blood clot, and apparently it went from probably her leg to her brain. And again, when we went to Japan, I think it was Japan Airlines, they make you get up. Do they? Yeah, they're like, okay, it's plain stretching time and they show you how to do it, like sitting down at your seat. But they're also like, why don't you get up to and walk around? Yeah, you kind of have to because you can develop a fatal blood clot just from sitting on a plane because of the change in pressure and just sitting for that long. Yeah. You're not supposed to sleep in a sitting position. Right. The body is meant to be horizontal and prone. Right. But that's just for rich people on flight. Oh, like up in first class now where they have the sleepers. Yeah. They're so obnoxious. They should put first class in the back so you don't have to walk through that scene. I know. The funniest is when they have the gauzy curtains separating first class and it's like, I see that you're having a salad. I can see your salad. The hot tub looks nice. Give me some of that salad. So there are all kinds of home remedies and little wives tales of what you can do. Right. But if you're an expert, like if you're in NASA or if you are Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, you have some real advice, like gradually adjusting your circadian rhythm, actually using a lightbox, which is a lot of effort, but I bet it works. It does. It also works for seasonal affective disorder. Sure. Actually, I came across a paper and all tweeted out and posted on Facebook or something, blog about it. We'll do something with it because I couldn't get it enough in time to really speak about it. Got you. But there's this guy who came up with a paper that's basically like a computational method for offsetting jet lag right. And figuring out how to adjust your schedule accordingly. Is it like this in the article? Yeah, that's the impression that I have. But it's like really detailed, but basically chicago's Rush University Medical Center researchers say what you want to do is if you're going from west to east, which is the devil one, right. Phase advance, you want to start going to bed an hour earlier every day. And like several days, maybe like five days before your trip, you want to start going to bed an hour earlier. And not just an hour earlier across the board, but earlier and earlier and earlier to where? Right before your trip, you're going to bed about 5 hours earlier. Right. And if you're going to take melatonin and you've done all your research, you want to take a half a milligram of Melatonin four and a half hours before bedtime. And then so you want to progressively push that time earlier and earlier in the day as you're going to bed earlier and earlier at night. And then when you wake up, blast yourself with a light box. Yeah, well, east to west. That was west to east. Okay. Yeah, east to west. You want to not blast yourself with light. You want to wear sunglasses in the morning and avoid light in the morning. But they say use a light box at your normal bedtime and stay up later. Right. Which makes sense. It sounds pretty torture. It does. There's a New York Times article, too, called A Battle Plan for Jet Lag. And they've done a study with Major League Baseball, actually, because they travel a lot, and they said that over to your spam teams that went eastward gave up an average of one extra run per game. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, but they say which is the old I guess it's not a wide sale if NASA is confirming it. They say it takes about one day per light, per time zone to get back into that rhythm in general. And they say the same thing you got to regulate your exposure to light. So when you get in that hotel room, if you're traveling east, you got to expose yourself to light early and advance that clock. If you're traveling west, expose yourself to light at dusk, then the early part of the evening, and delay that clock. And they'd say, like, close the curtains, put a towel over your clock radio, get it as dark as possible. Don't look at any computer screens and laptops. They say you shouldn't eat, like, a big meal or spicy food, like the first day you get there. Don't, like, dive right into that vacation because that can mess you up as well. gastrointestinally speaking. And what else? Well, the CDC says they don't have any suggestions other than, like, eat a balanced diet and make sure you get some exercise. Sure. And it's like, of course you're going to stay that CDC. Do you have any other suggestions? And they say, yes. Wear the loose clothing on the flight. Avoid alcohol. And afterward, they say that first day on vacation, you shouldn't be hitting the alcohol hard either. Yeah, because that'll just mess up your sleep period. And then have you heard of this thing called the Valkee? No. V-A-L-K-E-E. Team of scientists in Finland invented this thing because their belief is that the brain is all about photo sensitivity. And so they actually it's sort of like an ipod, but instead of the earplugs, it emits light through your ear canal directly to the brain. Oh, my gosh. And they said it works. They tested 350 subjects over four years, and. Found that there is definitely brain activity when the little Valky is on, and that nine out of ten subjects felt reduction in stress, seasonal depression and anxiety. And so they're using it for winter blues and PMS and jet lag and migraines, all sorts of stuff. Fantastic. Yeah. I don't know how much of this I'm curious if it is the price of an ipod or just the size of an ipod. It's a good question. Yeah. I tried, though. I get pretty bad jet. That's like when we go to do events now, I try to fly out a day early just to sort of adjust. Yes, I can do east coast. West coast. It doesn't hit me that bad. It's more like international. That gets me. Yes. I haven't had it very bad. Like when we went to the TCAs, I didn't seem out of sorts there or back. I get a little out of sorts. Do you? Yeah, but not super bad. I'm glad. Chuck? Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay. That was jet lag, everybody. Yeah. And that kind of goes in with our sleeping suite. We've done a bunch of those. Like, how much sleep do you really need? What was the one about the sleep aid? Remember the sleep aid where you could stay up for 48 hours without any sleep? I don't remember the title of that one. Who wants to do that? Above My Sleep. That was a good episode, though. Yeah. A lot of people wish that you didn't have to sleep, I would imagine. Not me. I'm with you. I like sleep. If you want to hear any of those, you can go to our website stuffyshadow.com and click on the podcast page and just start searching. Go to town. You're going to find some cool stuff. And if you want to read this article, How Jetlag Works, go to houseworks.com and in the search bar, type jet lag and it will bring up the spine by an article. And I said, search bar. So it's time for listening. Josh, I call this a very sweet email from Wendy and I will be reading some of it and summarizing some of it because it's super long. She starts out, congratulations on the launch of your TV show. Thank you. I've been reading online chatter and I hope it's going comfortably for you behind the scenes as you hear these reactions. It's a bummer when those weird people on the block who mow the lawn naked or pride themselves on not being tricked into attending college think that they're qualified critics. Hopefully you're all too experienced by now to do more than laugh at the losers and just keep doing what you enjoy. So that's all. That was very nice and it came at a good time because people could be mean and people have been kind of mean, but hey, we have pretty thick skin and we've been doing this for years. We got the armor on. So, anyway, that was very nice, Wendy. And then she just wants she's been meaning to write in for several years. Thank us. She started listening after she moved from Seattle to Burbank in 2008, and it was a pretty depressing time for her. She said, Stay at home mom, and we really got her through that time. Year later, she moved to Utah. She kept downloading because Chuck was on board, which is nice. And it was like having my brothers around for an hour or so every day. It was really nice. She said it was clear by that point, even if we didn't know each other, that you guys would probably be friends of mine if we knew each other. And you would not only appreciate the wild cultural shift from Hollywood to Salt Lake City, but also be more fascinated than turned off by my strange family connections. And she didn't explain what that meant. Very mysterious. Then she moved from Utah to Massachusetts, and she was eight months pregnant. And we really helped her through that. She was super appreciative of that. And then she says this. A long time ago, you had a mini side conversation about what romance meant and seemed to conclude that it was guy who had a manly friend crush on another guy that they knew and they'd really enjoy hanging out with. I don't think we invented that. No, that's commonly what your romance is known as. I may be a woman, but I do have a major friend crush on you guys. You filled in for the awesome friends and family that I've missed, intelligently shooting the breeze for the last almost five years now. That's really nice. Yeah. So she's moving around and we've helped her out, substituting for her smart friends, Keep podcasting, take care of yourselves. You know that in the zombie apocalypse, I definitely have your backs, by the way. My weapon of choice would be an Iron Age Scandinavian sax in one hand, a long handled axe in the other, and a shotgun I could carry across my back. So, Wendy, you are well armed, my lady, and you'll be right by our side. Thanks for that, Wendy. Yeah. We're glad we could help you through the last five years. Can you believe it's been, like, five years? Pretty soon I saw a tweet from a listener that said that they were off to college and they started listening in 8th grade. Well and Sarah are amazing. Eleven year old fan. She's about 15 and she's going to be driving soon. She is. I want to fix her up with my nephew. Too bad they don't live in the same state. Well, hey, we're living in the jet age. If you want to tell us how we help you out or help you through some rough times are just there for you. Like the pals we are. We always want to hear that kind of thing. Indeed, you can tweet to us at SYSC podcast. How about this? You can also tell us any of your jet lag remedies. Yeah, I'd like to hear them. You can tweet to us at fysk podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@discovery.com and you can check us out on the web. We have a new home. A website. Our very own website. It is appropriately called www.stuffyoushodenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit householdworks.com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. 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." | ||
How Hip-hop Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/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 | Thu, 11 Jul 2013 18:04:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=18, tm_min=4, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=192, tm_isdst=0) | 49846299 | audio/mpeg | "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 of 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 housetopworkscom. 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 Beasty Boy stuff that he was doing yeah, 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 Herck, man. He's what they call the OG. Chuck, spoiler alert. Yeah. We should say that we're for rating in the territory where 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 the 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 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. 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 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. No, 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. 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 Katherine, 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 are 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 MCing, but performance, poetry, physical movement, which is not just break dancing, but a lot of dance styles. Right. Including my favorite, crumping. Crumping 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. Yeah. 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 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. Hip hop style dance. Not very much like absolutely. Yeah. Right. So you've got this presence of 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 and 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 it, too, is 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 hosting 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. Yeah, 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 is 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 the Kool herc. He's a legend. 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 on Mass 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 maybe 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 just not just disco or not just hip hop, 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. And 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 the 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 tagger 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. Yeah. 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 turn 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 Error 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 Herc 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 Sadler. Right. They were early on in the same team. 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 Rappers, but one of those really early songs, like, they talk about going to your friend's house and his 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 us 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 80s. 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 Rap Attack premiere 1983 in New York City. 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. Was 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, 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. Death Jam pops up. Women all of a sudden are in the mix with Salt and Pepper and McLight. Yeah. Queen Latifah. 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 times. She yes. And 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. So where are we? Okay. Yeah. Public Enemy comes on the scene with the Black Nationalism movement. MTV gets on it because it spreads from the East Coast to the West Coast. Yes. In 1988, Yo, MTV Raps came out, and I remember being so happy that that happened. Really? I remember being that age and thinking, like, where are the rap videos? Like, come on and be 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 exclusively on Yo. MTV Raps. 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 Leppard. Right. I don't think the world will end. Or we'll put Run DMC in the same video as Aerosmith. Yeah. And I wonder if that helped pave the way to just kind of, like, break the cell walls between these genres on MTV. Yes. I think, for sure, it knocked down some walls. Run DMC super pioneers knock down walls. Remember the video? Yeah, they kicked walls down. They kicked the 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 a gangster rap. NWA. Of course. An iced Snoop Doggy dog at first. Yes. Now Snoop Lion. Yeah. Then Snoop Dogg in between the dirty, dirty do you see? Was it NWA? Were they the first gangster rap? She mentioned someone called Scoobyd who I haven't heard of, so I don't know if Schoolyd was the one. I've heard his name, but I've never heard of stuff. Yeah, but 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. Rip. Yeah. Dr. Dre, he had 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 Pooh. Like, the whole group was just awesome. Yes. They just had a show at the Fox, like, two nights ago. Cool. J Day lost soul. Public Enemy. What? Ice Cube, and, like, one or two other acts. How did I not hear about this? Ll Cool J put it together I don't know. It's 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. Oh, it's pretty cool. So, gangster rap, like we said, that was ushered in. And the original intent of hip hop started to get lost at this point oh, yeah. In a big way. Eating food that you liked and 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 one out. Yeah. Because people are cynical, and of course, gang violence and drug dealing and poverty and misogyny were all hallmarks of gangster rap. Yes. Which is still very much around today. Oh, yeah. Even though what's interesting, it's 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 sub genres, 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 credit, 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 never talked about being having money, ever. Because they didn't. Right. They were 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 from California. Yeah, I love those guys. They had a great the first time 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. Yeah, they were kind of a hybrid. Like, they would talk about violence and misogyny and all that as well. But that 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 Mixelot was awesome. He was, like, kind of a throwback. Like, after the transition had been made, sure Mixelot was still, like, talking about butts and buttermilk biscuits and all that, you know what I'm saying? Any more like floor length mink coats and stuff like that. That butts and buttermilk biscuits. Yeah. 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. He's cracking down Productions, and then both gangsta 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 gangsta DJ. Oh, really? Yeah, him and Guru. That was gangstar. Okay. I like Guru but the two of them together was always weird to me. Like, it was so I was never like even though I think Gangstars Code of the Streets, it's 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. Tulkar was Florida, I think, but yeah, the dirty south. Well, then you have, like, New Orleans bounce and I think that's where, like, 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 he's a 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, it 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 four pillars of hip hop. And people who are in a hip hop, they 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 Turkey 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 Tacky 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 Pinpals. People are like, this guy is 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. Well, he also got kind of good at making it look a little pretty. He didn't write any cursive or anything like that. Right. 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 sort of emulating, Taki 183. And that was how people came to New No 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 we 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. Yes. Unless you like living in 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. And the graffiti galleries all the time. And those hip hop historians who say, yes, graffiti is part of hip hop, point to the convergence between hiphop and graffiti and say that it's centered around a tiger named Hayes, who's got a pretty awesome website. Eric Hayes. It's like this kind of throwback to well, it's like a timeline of, like, hip hop and graffiti. Like, if you go through his stuff, it's pretty neat. Yes. 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 tiger. So from that point on, people were 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? He did bus to move. No, I don't remember that party. They crashed the corporate party and he was like the entertainment for the night. That was up in the air. Yes. I thought that was an episode of Scrubs or The Office. No, it was an 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 to 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. Harlem Shake. Yeah. 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 all the YouTube viral videos that were going on recently and to see how far off everybody was from the actual Harlem Shake, 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. Yeah. But breakdancing is what we're going to concentrate on because it's pretty cool. Head spins, backspans. 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 break dancing? Yeah. And it's clearly the 1940s. Yeah. 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, 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. See 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 while I was breakdancing. And like a texting 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. But 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 backflip, but I've most often seen as a front flip. 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 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, Jimmy took me to the World Break Dance Championships a couple of years ago. Like, the world was it awesome. It was at 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 breakdancing were just there, like in break offs and stuff. We just stood around for like 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, herky jerky all over body movement, interaction with the floor, like, not 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 just kind of standing, somebody else would come in, push somebody else to the side, and they were taking over. Like, that comes from the cakewalk. Later it became the Soul Train line, 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 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 capuatia 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 outdance 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 this is what's cool than the breakdancing aspect of it. Yeah, agreed. And Crumping today used to 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 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 hiphop 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, yes. 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 rapid transit, starting with the 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's? 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. Hocker Africa bombada. One of the two said that they think break dancing 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 callman walking, by the way. Yeah. So, like we said, it's a 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? 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. Sort of the late 80s. But it came back big time in the 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? Remember Rerun? Oh, yes. He was dressed in pretty hip hop at the time. Suspenders. He wore a Beret, but it could have very easily been a Kangal hat. He wore a Converse. Comfy shoes. Yeah. Adidas is really the brand, though. It was. It was. But at the time, that was super hip hop. 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. Not have, like, 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 in New York, right? Yeah. I mean, Chucky 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. Yeah. Chuck Bronson. Yeah. But they weren't from Atlanta, obviously. Where was publican me 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. Crush Groove was pretty good. Yeah. 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 Kangoos and Ernest 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 the sort of 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. Yeah. 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 was like, no way. But Crisscross, of course, wore backwards clothing. Yes. One of those guys just died. I know. Very sad. And then the basketball jersey really? Baggy clothing started 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. Yeah. CNN is quoted as the source here, so take that with a grain of salt. And also with the dureg, supposedly is another prison where things yes. And then just like with Breakdancing, hip hop style became a pretty big business commodity, too. Like, Russell Simmons started a 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, rapper, clothing designer. Right. Like, they're just 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 the girls 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. The BC voice. I thought you were going to say the multifinger ring. Yeah, you got that too. That was big because and do the Right thing. Love and hate. The two Rings. Was that the guy with the radio raheem? Yeah, I saw that again the other day. Man, that movie just blows me away still. It's very powerful. I like his later work more. Yeah, he liked it when he got away from like Inside Man in 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 wrap won't be around long. Yeah, suckers. Yeah, it's outlasted a lot of other stuff. Agreed. Tell me we got electronic music to do now. We do have that dubstep article. Yeah. 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 message back. And now listen to meal 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 Three Musketeers. 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. I 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, josh, Chuck 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. I 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. And then I told him I was listening to a learning podcast and not music. So to prove I'm not distracted, 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. Nice, 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. Yeah. He's all like, hey, you can 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 Facebook.com, you can go to podcast@discovery.com. I'm ready for this one to be done. And you can join us at our home on the Web deputyshoot.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com." | ||
c7cf8764-361e-11ea-bbe5-137bcff45524 | Short Stuff: Gibtown: Sideshow Central | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-gibtown-sideshow-central | There was a glorious time in American history when circus sideshow performers lived together in a small town in Florida. Learn about the fascinating history of Gibtown today! | There was a glorious time in American history when circus sideshow performers lived together in a small town in Florida. Learn about the fascinating history of Gibtown today! | Wed, 06 May 2020 11:19:06 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=11, tm_min=19, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=127, tm_isdst=0) | 12548860 | 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, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. It's just the two of us again. We can let it all hang out because Jerry's not around. We're just a couple of dudes hanging out in our bathrobes talking about GIB town. The town in Florida near Sarasota and Tampa where the people who lived in the circus or the carnivals want to live when they weren't working. Let's go. Quick story since we own a Short Stuff, I'll make it 20 seconds. Okay. I got out of the shower today and I almost went and put on a suit just to walk into the kitchen and make Emily laugh. But it wasn't worth the effort. So I was like I told her the joke. Just imagine I did that. All right, that's good enough. So, Gibbon. Yeah, we did an episode on circus sideshows way back and it's a really good one. And I know that we'll talk about this a little bit in this episode, but these things can very much seem like exploitation of people with disabilities. And on one hand, they certainly were sure, but on the other hand, we found out through research, a lot of these people was the only way they could make money. A lot of them found love and community. And so it is very much something that is in the gray area. As far as when this was going on, I just wanted to throw that out there. I think that was really good, Chuck, because I remember our what did we call them? Sideshow performers or was Freak used in the title of that episode? I don't remember. I don't think we did. But it was a really good one. And I remember I just saw Freaks, the 1930 movie, the other day. And apparently a lot of people from GIB Town who hadn't settled there quite yet but soon would, were in that movie as well. Yeah, for sure. So we're talking about Gibson, Florida, which is near Tampa, and it is on the Alafia or the Alafia River. Do you know which one it is? No. I hang out on the east side when I'm down there. That's west side. We don't get along very well. Well, I see you flashing your west side side. You couldn't even see me and you knew that I did that when I say West Side. And it was all jumbled, too. Like it's just basically all fingers were splayed on each hand. And then I put it up against my chest, as if that does anything. I've been recording a lot of these Skype things now with movie crush, and I always do video, and they're always surprised when they ask about us. And I'm like, we don't do video, mainly because my notes get in the way. But I was like, after this long, all I need is that guy. My ear holes. Sure. A little bit of this right up in your ear. Yeah. So Gibsonton, if you went to that town in the 1950s and walked around a bit, you would think, what is going on here? There are lines and tigers in that backyard. Oh, my. There is a restaurant run by an eight foot tall man and his wife, a woman with no legs, and there's Lobster Boy and there is Monkey Girl. And these are all sort of the unfortunate names given to them on their side show tours. Yes, sometimes by their adopted parents, who would be the promoters, the sideshow, or circus promoters who basically had legally adopted them. And in some cases, that was actually a step up for some of the kids. But, yes, if you did walk around what came to be called Gibtown, it did seem a little different. I mean, just the fact that people had, like, monkeys and elephants and lions and tigers in their backyard, that's a different than most other towns. The sideshow rides parked in people's driveways, it's a little different, too. And apparently this town was that way because it was first settled by the giant and the half woman, they called themselves, but their names were Allen, Jeannie Tomahini, which is great. Jeannie Tomahini. It just rolls off the tongue. That's great. They first showed up there in the Guess, they just basically said, hey, everybody, this place is kind of cool. We're not judged, we're not treated differently. And the town is actually kind of neat. And eventually the town or the county, Hillsborough County, passed an ordinance that said you can have things like carnival rides in your driveway or elephants in your backyard if you are a carnival or circus performer. Yeah, I think they got the notion that it was a pretty sleepy little town. And in the 1960s, they had about 100 actual sideshow performers and about 1000 carney's that would live there when it just became a friendly place for them all to live. And they were all kind of like a big family, so they congregated there. And I think the town was like, you know what? These are great residents. They pay their state taxes. Wait a minute, it's Florida, right? That's why they're living here. There are no state taxes. Although I don't know if that was the deal back then or has it always been the deal? I don't even know. I don't know. I know there's no state income tax, but the property taxes are much higher. Like, they make it up in other ways, for sure, right? They get you one way or the other. That elephant tax is really steep, but they realize, hey, we could use these residents, and they're only here part time, if you know what I'm saying. So that's kind of great, too. And so they made, like you said, these business ordinances that made it kind of a friendly place for carney. Yes. So I say we take a break and come back and talk a little more about GIB Town. Let's do it. 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.com stuff. That's Lifelock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. A 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 series 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. What's the famous quote? Chuck? Don't try it, Jake. This is Gibtown. That's it. I don't even think I got the first part right. No, you didn't. Stop. This is GIB Town. Don't do it. I think it's hey, GIB town. I'm walking here. That's it. That's from Midnight Cowboy, right? Midnight Cowboy? Yes. That is Dustin Hoffman. Yeah. Rat Rizzo. Nice work. So, back to Gibtown. This town, like we said, by the 1960s, was booming with carnival folk. They love living there. It was kind of a lovely community for them. And we mentioned earlier that they sometimes found love. We mentioned the tall man and the short lady who traveled as the world's strangest married couple. It's actually a very sweet story. Yeah, he was over 8ft tall, chuck, and she, not having any legs, was about two and a half feet tall. It met the knees. Yeah, I guess so. Maybe like mid shin, actually, who knows? No, it was me. I saw a picture. Okay. There you go. So the Toyini, they toured as the world's strangest married couple, and they actually had kids, too, and their daughter remembered that they would leave for the summer and go make some money and come back to GIB town and run the fish camp, giants fish camp, which is one of the places that they owned, which was very legendary, but apparently isn't there anymore. No, there's a memorial there now. I watched a couple of short YouTube videos about GIB town, and there are still remnants of and there are still some performers. About 200 carnival people still live there, but there are little remnants of that past world. Every now and then, you'll see some broken down old rusted rides in, like, a vacant lot or maybe a themed restaurant that's closed down. So GIB town is about 45 miles from Sarasota, which is where the Wringling brothers barnum and Bailey circus winters. And we've talked about Florida in general, having sort of circus stuff in general, so I think it all just sort of made sense. Right. And I don't know why GIB town. I think it was just that the tomahini happened to set up shop there and found that the people were tolerant and friendly, and it just kind of spread from there. So it had the heyday from, I'd say, the 30s till maybe the 80s or so. And this article from how stuff works points out that there were sideshows in operation. Pre lapalusa side shows like the real Deal into the although they really kind of started to decline by the people were like, this seems exploitive. And people said, it probably is, but let's not ask the performers. Let's just decide for them. But finally, in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, and all of a sudden, working in a sideshow is not the only place you could get a job if you had some sort of what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know. Physical malady? Abnormality, maybe? Yes. I'm not sure the right way to say that these days. I'm not either. But if you were a sideshow performer, you could now get a job anywhere, thanks to the ada. That's right, which is great. The lobster boy, as he was known, grady Styles. He was known as the lobster boy. And here's the deal, and we talked about this in the sideshow performer podcast episode, is that you got into these things because you were born with a condition almost invariably, and they would give you a name like Lobster Boy when in fact you had a real life condition. Which one was that? Ectodactyle. Right where it appears like you have two fingers only that sort of look like claws. It looks a lot like lobster claws, actually. Yeah. And Justin Bieber's wife actually has a form of this because she has a pinkie that is sort of misshapen, and she has just come out and said, all right, let's look at it and talk about it. Here it is. But he actually was a terrible person. Yeah, I saw that, too. He was murdered. He was an abusive alcoholic. He killed his first wife and was sentenced to home incarceration because there was no prison that could care for him. Wait, was he killed? No, I think he killed his daughter's fiance. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Daughter's, fiance, home, incarcerated, quit drinking, got married again, started drinking again, and allegedly, he was either knocked off by carney for one $500 paid for by his current wife, or the neighbor just came over and took care of business because they knew what a bad guy he was. Yeah, I think he was paid, from what I saw, that amount of money. I didn't see any other alternate theories, but I shot him twice in the head, and he died, like, sitting in his chair. Yeah, he wasn't a very good guy from what I saw, either. No. Not to trash his name. No. But that was, like, the big scandal in gym town, for the most part. It was like a really peaceful, happy place where if you were a sideshow performer, like, you could go feel at home and be yourself. And one of the cutest things that I saw was that another couple that found love priscilla the monkey girl, who had hypertrichosis, which she had, like, a full head of hair, like a hairdo as an infant, and it just kept going from there. She had a beard. She just had tons of hair. She married Emmett the alligator skin man, who had a healthy case of ichthyosis, which is thick, scaly skin all over your body. And they were married for so long that they had their 50th wedding anniversary at a local club, the Showman's club there. Exactly. Isn't that the cutest thing? It is. And I love the idea of Gibtown that these people came together on the outskirts of society, and now hipsters are moving there, apparently. Yeah. That's the least surprising part of this entire episode. That's right. One other thing. If you want to see something very cute, go look up a baby photo of Priscilla the monkey girl. She was adorable. Agreed. Well, that's it for short stuff, everybody. Short stuff. 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." | |
aac6c038-cfe0-46af-993b-aed700f90455 | Short Stuff: Death from Astral Projection | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-death-from-astral-projection | <p>In 1975, yoga enthusiast Robert Antoszczyk retired to his room in a group house in Ann Arbor, MI to try a meditation technique that would allow him to astrally project his spirit. He died, never coming out of his meditative state. What happened?</p><p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p> | <p>In 1975, yoga enthusiast Robert Antoszczyk retired to his room in a group house in Ann Arbor, MI to try a meditation technique that would allow him to astrally project his spirit. He died, never coming out of his meditative state. What happened?</p><p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p> | Wed, 20 Jul 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=201, tm_isdst=0) | 14959749 | audio/mpeg | ||
null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Terry's here, too. Dave's here in spirit. It's short Stuff, but we're all in the same astral plane, man. We're all here in spirit. That's right. We're or Tethered by the silver cord, but otherwise we're just floating around checking things out. Sure. The reason Chuck's talking like that, everybody, is because we are going to investigate one of the weirdest occurrences in the annals of both traditional yoga and the New Age movement. Okay, I'm going to put it like that because I think that's pretty accurate. Really? That's right. We're talking about a man named Robert and Toes Chick. And this is a gentleman who was in his late 20s. In the mid 70s. He lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was, by all accounts of good dude. He was pretty chill. He teached yoga. Teached he taught yoga. English, nywca. He's a vegetarian. He was a practicer of karate. Former Marine. Just seemed like an all around good dude. Very much into Esoteric yoga, which is to say, a large focus on the mind and spirit. And one of these people that really got into, like, hey, I'm really going to start studying with Yogis, and I'm going to travel to India, and I'm going to take up fasting and meditation and give up a lot of my material possessions. Like went all in on this. Yeah. And he didn't just show up in India, eat some, like, palak paneer and hang out for a few days and then come home. He actually went and studied under the yoga master, Ayengar. So he really was into yoga in the 70s. Like, this was not the 90s or the 2000s. This is the 70s, when it was not the most usual thing. You would find somebody who had traveled to India to study yoga still. So he came back from that, from what I can tell, a fairly changed person. And like you said, he was really interested in Esoteric yoga, and in particular astral projection. And I found a contemporaneous article, which I just used on purpose from the Detroit Free Press in 1975, and they called astral projection, astro projection. All one word. And they say astro, right? Yeah. They said it's kind of like the Jetsons version of it, but then they used it more than once, so apparently they thought that's actually what it was called. But with astral projection or astro projection, I guess if you take it on face value, it's kind of easy to explain. And that is that when you meditate in a certain way, one technique is to focus on the line between sleep and wakefulness and, like, really focus on that and try to actually stay in that space. Your spirit, your soul will leave your body. And in that state, your conscious mind is conscious, kicking in all of this information and all of these sights and sounds and things. But you can go anywhere, not just in the world, not just in the universe truck, but in different dimensions and planes of existence entirely, all while your soul is still connected to your body. Right? Yeah. And that's the key that waking consciousness, because it's not like you come back and say, boy, I think my soul left my body, but I have no memory of anything. It's floating around, metaphorically speaking, and taking all this in and bringing it home with you. They have, like, in this delusion dreaming because there are some similarities there. But the whole key here, and I kind of joked about it earlier, that we're all attached and tethered by our silver cord. That's what it's called. It's sort of like an umbilical cord when you're astral projecting that keeps you tethered like an astronaut to a spaceship so you just don't get stuck out in the astral plane somewhere. Yeah. It is possible for your silver cord to sever, apparently. One tradition is that when you die, like when you're born or when you're conceived, I should say, you as a fetus is connected to your spirit through your silver cord. And then as you grow and age and everything, you stay connected. And then finally, when you die, that silver cord is separated. So your soul is separated from your body. But it's possible for your silver cord to become accidentally or inadvertently separated. And that is not something that you want to happen, because in this plane of existence, that means that your body is dead, your spirit is never coming back. It's permanently untethered, which means it's permanently and forever lost in the astral plane and in the spirit world, and it will never be able to find its way back. And there's a lot of people who believe in this stuff who believe that that's exactly what happened to Robert Anthoscheck. And they actually make a pretty good case if you really dive into it. And I say we take a break and then dive into it. Chuck let's do it. All right. It's chick. It's hard to say. I apologize. It's hard to spell as well. It is whenever you have S C I'm sorry, S-Z-C-Z-Y. I'm not seeing any vowels in there, so that makes it tough. No, we got the anto part down path. Yeah, that's easy. So Bobby A was living in a house. He had a couple of roommates. And it's June of 75. It's Sunday. And he says, hey, listen, I'm going to go and meditate and try an astral project in here. So you know what that means. Rumi. I'm tying the forever scrunchie on the outside of my I'm hanging it on my doorknob. And that means do not come in at all. Do not disturb me, please, please. So the roommates were like, Whatever, man. And several days go by and it becomes Tuesday. And one of the roommates finally says, it's been a few days. He has not come out of his room. Maybe we should go in there, open the door, and there he is, dead on his back, but still in a meditative pose. Yeah, he's got his thumbs still between his fingers, I think his index and middle finger. And the medical examiner who showed up shortly after said that he had a serene expression on his face, but he was, in fact, dead. And if you examined the body, which they did, they were like, I don't see any reason he died. Once they conducted an autopsy, things got even weirder because the medical examiner said there was no evidence, no trace of anything that might have killed them, no injury, no disease. And there was such a dearth of clues. He said, normally in the Detroit Free Press, the medical examiner said, normally there's something that provides some clue. Even if it does, it's not like directly pointing at the mechanism of death. There's something there that I can at least make a guess. He said there's nothing here. I have no idea. I can't even make a guess at why this guy died. It's a total mystery. He was the picture of health. They even brought in Quincy. And Quincy had no idea. No. And if you don't know who Quincy is, just ask your great great grandparents, everybody. That's not nice. His stomach had food in it that was undigested, which would seem to indicate that he died not too long after the meditation on Sunday. That food would have been moved through if he had waited till Tuesday to die after a three day session. Right. And so they said, well, did this guy die for meditation? The medical examiner said, well, that's an interesting idea. Let me look into that. Not so much interested in astral projection because I'm not sure I believe in that stuff because I'm a medical examiner. But there have been reports of yogis all over planet Earth that try to regulate and change their heartbeat, like, usually slow it down. I seem to remember that's incredible and stuff. In the 80s, there were yogis who did tricks where they said they could slow their heartbeat. Here's the thing. There's never been, like, super verified accounts that this is possible to do with great success and regularity. I think there was a yogi once who did slow his heartbeat for a few seconds. We're not saying it's not possible, but they just haven't studied it and proven that a human is capable of that. Yeah. And I have actually seen a couple of studies that do suggest it is possible, but yes, it's not definitely been disproven, but also, there's not a whole bunch of support for it, necessarily among scientific study. Right, right. But it was enough of at least a rumor or an idea that that was a line of thinking that the medical examiner followed, and he posited that it's possible. Robert, in this meditative state where he was trying to astrally project, which by the way, is considered a really dangerous type of meditation among yogis in the east. Like, this is not something that you do lightly. And having trained and studied in India, robert probably would have been a better candidate to do this than the average person, but it was still dangerous. And so the medical examiner posited that perhaps he had slowed his heartbeat down so slowly that it just stopped beating to zero. Yeah. And after a very short while, you would die if your heart stopped beating. But also you could say, you could make a case that this would leave no traces of itself because the heart would stop beating under death under any other circumstance, too. So if the heart stopping beating was the cause of death, you would never have any idea? Yeah. Like you could tell if someone had a cardiac arrest or something. It's not that it's just slowing down and then the engine stops. Exactly. So this was a theory that went away because the official cause of death ended up being and I'm not laughing, but it was a bit of a bit of a surprise at the end of this material that you sent me when it said he died from a cocaine over toast, because I did not see that coming. And his family didn't see that coming. His friends, his mom all said, there's no way. Robert was the opposite of that. He was a clean liver, and he shunned stuff like this and was really into detoxifying his body, not putting cocaine into it. Right. The only thing I'll say about that is you never know. Prince died of overdose, and he supposedly was a devout religious individual who shunned medication and then dies of was it fentanyl? I guess. Overdose, yes. Or else it was from oxy. I don't know. Yes, something like that. But anyway, all that to say, like, something could have happened. It was the mid seventy s. I did see in the material you sent that it might have been hard to get cocaine in Ann Arbor in 75. I think that's highly disputable. Okay. Cocaine in a college town, 75 is hard to come by. Okay. But let me defend that because that's actually me editorializing. Right. Okay. Cocaine became really popular and it reached like its first peak of popularity in the late 70s. Say like 77, 78, 79. Right. This is in Michigan. And during that first bout of popularity, where cocaine became a thing in America, it was associated with wealth and glamour, not like aesthetic living in yoga and vegetarianism. So I just put it out there because I think it actually supports the idea that he might not have done it and that it was just kind of a cursory. We have no idea. We're just going to say this. The point is there's no explanation. Like, coverage of this just drops off. After that ruling came out, the official cause of death was a cocaine overdose, and apparently no one can find any explanation why they said that and how it was backed up and how they came to that conclusion. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I would think if you died from a cocaine overdose, there would be some sort of trace that a medical examiner would find, right? Sure. And I think a lot of people say, well, I guess the medical examiner found cocaine in the system and determined it was enough to kill them. Either way, it's very weird. Again, it's a 180. That doesn't really jibe with any other part of the story, and that doesn't mean that it's not true. Like you said, you never can tell. It's entirely possible. And if you use Occam's Razor, that's what happened, right? Yeah, but if you don't use Occam's Razor, and if you believe in astral projection, you probably aren't a big fan of Occam's Razor anyway. Good point. But if you believe in astral projection, then what happened to Robert Anthony Chek is one of the most hellish things that can ever happen to a human being, which is his spirit got separated from his body, his silver cord was severed, and his body is dead here in this plane. But out there in the astro plane, his conscious mind is forever trapped, to be lost and wander forever, never to be able to come back. That is scary stuff. And also, maybe he's still out there on the plane, though. Maybe he is a very happy individual in some other dimension. Let's hope so, because there's a lot of astro projectors who come back and all talk about very scary places out there where souls need other souls, and it's very violent and chaotic. It's not all like happy hippie stuff. Yes. So I want to shout out an article on medium from Nick Repazitrone called The Hades Environment. Definitely worth reading. It's about the weird history of astral projection. Yeah, I don't know if maybe we should do a full app on that one day. Okay, maybe we will. But in the meantime, hopefully everybody enjoys the short stuff. Neither way, it doesn't matter now, because short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. 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0275af84-3b0e-11eb-947e-eb31572991d6 | How the Titanic Worked: Part Two | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-titanic-worked-part-two | After the Titanic sank recriminations and blame followed, sometimes ruining careers unjustifiably. As the decades wore on and she was found almost 2.5 miles down, history rehabilitated some people. The question still remains how to preserve the ship. | After the Titanic sank recriminations and blame followed, sometimes ruining careers unjustifiably. As the decades wore on and she was found almost 2.5 miles down, history rehabilitated some people. The question still remains how to preserve the ship. | Thu, 01 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=91, tm_isdst=0) | 46756341 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss. Turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. 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@ibmcom. 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 over there. And this is stuff you should know. Titanic Edition, part two, the sequel. When we last left off, the Titanic had just set sail. I'd like to say it was in fine shape, but it had almost sucked another ship into it and it had a coal fire aboard, but other than that, it was doing just fine. I wonder if the captain, after they averted hitting the New York, was like, did you see those guys? They were totally pooping in their pants. Yeah, give me another two. Don't mess with me. Yes. I don't have the impression that the captain I don't know if we said his name or not yet. Edward Smith said his name. I don't know that. He certainly doesn't, in retrospect, have a sterling reputation. No, I was going to say he doesn't have a reputation that is like that of a maverick, necessarily. No, I think he did have a sterling reputation, at least exactly. I saw in, I think, a PBS documentary that captains like this at the time were likened to rock stars of today. Like they had their own fans and you knew what captain you were sailing with, and it was a big deal. And he was one of the most famous and well respected, if not revered, as far as the captains go. But over time, like Stooping. Yeah, exactly, like Snooping, but over time, because of the inquiries and the desire to place blame and define simple answers and compartmentalize everything, he's been kind of painted with an inaccurate brush that loses a lot of nuance. And one of the ways that he has been mislabeled that makes him seem like a maverick is that he was going full speed ahead trying to break speed records, wanted to get there as fast as possible, show up those cunard jerks. And that seems to just be not the case at all. And, in fact, yes, the Titanic was going very fast. But according to an Irish journalist who's done a lot of research on this senen Malone, I believe, is their name, they were going that fast because they were having to use up more coal to keep that fire from spreading, and that he didn't really have that much of a say in how fast the thing was going because they had to keep the coal fire under control. I'd like to slow down. Are we still on fire? Well, we can't slow down, then. Full steam ahead. But that really kind of goes to show you, really teaches you, like, oh, yeah, we've lost a lot of the details here. Or I shouldn't say that pop culture has lost a lot of the details. There are plenty of people out there who know details like that, and those are the people you should listen to. Those are the people who we've listened to. So you can feel pretty comfortable listening to us for the last episode in this one. Let's begin now. All right, fast forward from April 11, when it sets sail to April 14. We all know what happens over those three days. There's some steamy love making in the back of a car in the cargo hold. Draw me like one of your French girls. Wouldn't that be good? Kate Win? I thought you were doing Leo. No, either one would have been funny. Okay. There's room for me on that door. That was Leah. Yeah. And she said, no, there's not. Oh, man. We lost a bunch of listeners. No, I mean, joke about that. So it is the night of April 14, 1912. This is the third day out. It is very cold. The water is about 28 degrees Fahrenheit, negative 2.2 Celsius. And around noon that day, some things started happening. They had this really cool modern Marconi wireless system where they could receive messages wirelessly. And the operators on board started receiving the first of at least what would be four messages about ice and, like, big ice that's in the water. A second one comes in at 535 from an actual ship that said, hey, iceberg is 19 miles north of you're, headed right toward these icebergs. And you know what they say, like, they don't look big on top, but there could be serious trouble underneath. They really fill out underwater. I don't think that's the thing. Okay. And about an hour before the collision, at 11:40 p.m.. The Californian, which was a nearby vessel, said, hey, we're stopped. We're surrounded by ice. And the operator on the Titanic said literally, Shut up. I am busy. I'm working Cape Race, which apparently was a relay station in Newfoundland, and they were busy sending out messages for the passengers. Yeah, the passengers could pay about $65 to send a Marconi Graham to basically show off to their friends and family back home that they were sending us below from the middle of the ocean. Yeah, because the postcard they sent was just in the mail room aboard the same ship at the same time as them. This Marconi gram could go out immediately. So the first class passengers were sending out little hellos to the tune of about 250 of them, I believe, just that day. Wow. So the Marconi operators were very much overworked, which is why he told the other one to shut up. Apparently, he said it twice. Shut up. Shut up. Two exclamation points, too. So 251st class passengers sent out just that day. There were only 300 and something first class aboard, so that was most of first class. Yeah. Well, hopefully there wasn't just, like, some obnoxious one that had sent out, like, ten or twelve, but who knows? Billy Zane, right? He was like, I want to send another Marconogram about Picasso. Yeah, I was just thinking of Billy Zayn. Again, the Marconi operators, like, the presence of this Marconi wireless thing on board was just as cutting edge as technology got at the time. Yeah, it was a text, basically. There were so few ships that had wireless aboard that it was just nuts, which is why so many people were sending Marconi grams to show off. But at the same time, the fact that there were these wireless radios on some ships, including ships that were in the area, means that the Titanic did have warning that there was an ice flow, like, in between them and New York. And they started, like you were saying, they were receiving warnings about the icebergs and ice flows. And again, Captain Smith is depicted as having ignored this just heedlessly headed on full steam ahead into an ice field, even though he'd been warned against it. And from what I saw, this is again a mischaracterization, because he didn't receive any warnings that would warrant slowing down or changing course or anything like that. He knew that there were icebergs. It's just kind of like if somebody was saying, there's an iceberg 20 miles ahead of your projected course, heads up. You'd be like, okay, good to know. But that wouldn't require you to do anything about it. But there was one, the very fateful one that really may have sealed the fate of everybody aboard the Titanic, and that was that last one that came in at 1140 that said, we're stopped and surrounded by ice that apparently did not make it to the Captain, as far as I know. Yeah, you're right. The deal was icebergs were very common. It wasn't like, oh, my God, there are icebergs. We got to stop everybody. They were used to dealing with icebergs. It was just a heads up. And that last 1 may have been a big difference maker. Right. So they knew that they were icebergs, but there was nothing to be worried about, as far as they could tell. And when Captain Smith handed over command of the ship for the night to, I think, Charles, second Officer Charles Lighthole. So when he handed it over, Lighthole, he said, hey, if conditions become hazy, let me know and we'll slow down. But until then, full speed ahead. And it turns out that the night of April 14, 1912, in that area of the North Atlantic was incredibly calm. The sea was like glass. It wasn't hazy at all. It was totally clear. And there was no moon and lots of stars, so they couldn't see very far because there wasn't much light. They didn't have binoculars in the lookout. But also, because the sea was calm, there were no waves to give out any telltale characteristics of breaking against icebergs. It was just nothing but clear water everywhere they could see. So there was not a lot of chance of them spotting icebergs under the conditions that they were dealing with. So, speaking of the moon, did you ever hear that theory about how the moon could have impacted the fact that the iceberg was where it was? No. There was apparently, on January 4, a few months before the Titanic, the moon made its closest approach to Earth in about 1400 years, which also coincided within six minutes of a spring tide, which is the semi monthly alignment of the sun and the Moon with the Earth. And basically, all of this ends up in especially high tides and tidal currents. And this was a really big year for icebergs. They were about double the amount of icebergs than average. And what usually happens is when they kind of calve off from where they start, they end up getting kind of hung up when it gets into sort of shallower lanes, and that almost always happens. It kind of keeps them in place. But because of the strong spring tide, it may have sent more icebergs out to sea than normal. That's nuts, man. Yeah. And again, it's one of these things that other people are like. Everyone's trying to find these retroactive things to blame, but I think it all kind of adds up when you start looking at sort of the sliding doors theory of fate, that it all sort of ended up impacting what happened that night. Yeah, and I think that's another reason why people are so engrossed by it, because, again, it just seems almost preordained. And that is very often traced back to this hubris that kind of infested the whole origin and idea of the Titanic, that it was unsinkable and that it was just the biggest thing ever made, and we're going to send it out as fast as we want. It just seems like they were sailing into fate just from those things. Yeah. I mean, it is like a Hollywood script or something, but it really happened. I know somebody should make a movie out of it, and get someone else to write it. Oh, man. 8 hours long. Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee were in the crow's nest. And I think Fleet is the one that later said that binoculars could have really helped. Yeah, because Fleet was the one who was close to the end of a shift when he saw this iceberg. He sounds an alarm down to the bridge and First Officer William Murdoch was up there in about 37 seconds, said, Stop the engines, go full speed of stern, which was very common maneuver to sort of try and dodge something if you're in a big ship like that. And again, in retrospect, this was not a great idea. Some people posit that if it had just gone straight and hit this thing head on, it might not have sunk, but it ended up turning just enough to hit a very and especially when you factor in that fire, if that actually was a thing that weakened it, it hit the hole at a very vulnerable spot, possibly it's most vulnerable spot because of that fire. But also even had that fire not been there, that was the Achilles heel of the Titanic area. And it's tough to fault Murdoch for trying to spin away from it, but it was what you do. Well, it isn't accepted. It was an accepted technique to also just ram iceberg head on. But the reason Murdoch chose, probably why he chose not to do that was because if you did that head on, you're going to send everything and everybody lurching forward because it's a head on collision when you side swipe something that's much less jarring. And in fact, the passengers who did survive the Titanic later said that there was a slight jar when this thing hit the iceberg, so much so that I think a passenger said, had he been holding a full glass of water, not a drop would have been spilled. So he did it, I think, out of instinct, because nobody wants to hit anything head on, but I think he also did it to spare the passengers and the crew and the cargo being jostled and jarred, as rudely as they would have been had they hit it head on. Yes. And this is where those rivets come into play as well, because it is theorized that because those rivets didn't hold like they should, it ended up buckling the ship right there. And apparently it's that buckling that really sort of put the nail in the coffin for the Titanic. Yeah. Like it might have survived the gouges had it not been for the buckling, apparently. Yeah. So I guess the buckling kind of pulled the rivets or the seams apart and that allowed the water in. Is that the idea behind it? I think so, because they started, Murdoch said, let's get all these watertight doors shut, which was a really great move, but it was too late. And there were five of them that were filling up. They originally thought Captain Smith was like, there must be a 300 foot hole in this thing. And I saw a couple of different numbers. This article from How Stuff Works says 32 sqft. For these six slim lacerations on the boat. I saw about 12 sqft even still. Yeah. I mean, I saw it into about two sidewalk squares. Wow. Like, that took down the titanium. I know. Can you imagine? It's not nuts. Of course. You would think Captain Smith would be like, it's got to be a 300 foot gas to have that kind of water. And he wouldn't know. It's not like he could see, like, this is beneath the water. It struck the iceberg underwater. So it was just an estimate. But yeah, now we know from going down and looking at the Titanic using sonar, just how small they were. So just a couple of sidewalks squares, huh? Yeah. And the really brutal part is Andrews kind of just like in the movie Victor Garber, once he got worded that there were five of those cavities filling up with water, it was like, that's it, man. We could have survived four. And I know it doesn't seem like it right now, but the ship is going to go down. Yeah. So, I mean, you remember, I think in the first one, we said that the thing was designed to be just fine with two and that four could probably make it, but five was the magic number. With five, it was like, this is not going to end well at all. And even with four compartments full and sealed off, there's a good possibility that the Titanic would have sunk, but it might have taken so long to sink that everybody aboard would have easily made their way off. But that fifth compartment, it was just terrible, because not only was the Titanic doomed to sync, it was doomed to sync very fast. I think Andrews estimated 2 hours, basically when he found out how many compartments were filling. Yeah, it was really the speed. And if you're saying to yourself, But, Josh, how can you say that when they were short life boats, as we'll see, there were other ships nearby that likely would have gotten there quicker or not gotten there quicker, but gotten there quick enough, had it sunk slower to get people off of that thing. Yeah. You can take a break. Yeah, I think so. I could use one, buddy. All right, let's take a break and we'll talk about what happened after that chunk of ice fell near Caitlin Leo right after this. 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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. Thomas Andrews explained to Captain Smith, like, this is going down and it's going to happen in about 2 hours. Smith basically gathered his crew and said, hey, the ship is sinking. We need to get everybody to the lifeboats. Yeah, he started lowering the lifeboats, but apparently, from what I've read aboard the Titanic, you wouldn't have known that the ship was sinking based on the activity and the behavior of everyone aboard. Most people were kind of going about their business, hanging out in the lounge, still sleeping, getting ready to go to bed, because this is, I think, around eleven or so when it struck the iceberg. And like I said, it was such a faint jar that I think people couldn't believe that the Titanic would be taken down by something that only produced that faint of a jar. Sure. And so a lot of people just kind of acted like nothing was wrong. Yeah. I mean, crew included. I think when the message went out from the captain, there was a lot of disbelief all the way around. Right. Surely if we hit an iceberg bad enough to sink, it would be evident, like just standing here. But that's just not the case because it was so large. Like you said, you wouldn't even spill a glass of water. So knowing, except Leo and Kate, they saw that chunk of ice fall. Yeah. So they knew. Oh, yeah, I forgot they were witnesses to it. They knew what was going on. I forgot about that. Yeah, they were out there, king and queen of the world. Right. All right, so 1215, the captain is sending out messages, and I mentioned that ship nearby. There were a couple, but the Carpathia was a Kunard Line steamer, and they were like, oh, you need help, do you? I knew you'd be back. No, they acted fast, of course, but they were about 58 miles away and they knew. They were like, there's no way we can get there in time now, especially not if it's going to sink in a couple of hours. But again, even just the only four compartments not flooded, the Carpathia probably could have made it there in plenty of time. But there was actually chuck another ship, though, the California, that was close to the Titanic. And as we'll see in the inquiry that followed, it's basically the Carpathia hero, California villain. The Californian was accused of basically refusing to render aid and that just wasn't the case. There was a mystery ship that very much did refuse to render aid and just pretended like it didn't see what was going on. Yeah. It was actually a ship called the Mount Temple that was captained by a man named James Moore, captain James Moore, that was, I believe, within 10 miles of the Titanic. The entire time that some passengers and crew later said they could see the lights. They could hear the lifeboats being lowered. They could hear the cries of people in the oh. My Lord in the water. And that survivors said they saw another ship. It was close enough that they could see some of the porthole lights. That's how close it was and that it just sat there. It wouldn't come. And it was because the captain made the decision that he wasn't going to risk going into the ice flows. Well, he also didn't come forward and say, yeah, that was me. He let the captain of the Californian, Stanley Lord, take the blame. And Stanley Lord went to his grave, basically disgraced captain, even though he would be vindicated when they finally found the Titanic and said, oh, wait, you were way far away. And also, more to the point, you didn't realize that the Titanic was in distress. History has rehabilitated a lot of people, but at the time, and for many years, we like simple stories where there's a hero and a villain. The carpethio was the hero in the Californian was the villain. That's right. Good story. I think so, too. So they're giving out these life jackets made of cork, plenty of those. And I think there was room for 1176 passengers on lifeboat if they're all full. There were about 2200 and change of passengers and crew aboard. So at 12:25 A.m., the captain says, start lowering these things. Let's get those first class passengers in there first. I think there were 14 of the lifeboats were the big daddy that could carry 65 people. There were, I think, two emergency ones that could carry 35 each, and then four collapsible boats that could carry 49 people each. And I see different numbers bandied about, but supposedly that first lifeboat, and maybe the first few were not full. And I think that first one only had anywhere from 25 to 28 people out of 65. Yeah. Mostly because there are a lot of people aboard who were like, I don't believe the Titanic is sinking. And that getting in that lifeboat seems way more dangerous to me than staying aboard the nice, warm, toasty Titanic where there's lots of brandy to be had. Yeah. And that's why some of those first life boats that's what I was saying. Like, it was apparently eerily calm and quiet and not at all chaotic. And then when it finally became apparent that, yeah, the ship was sinking and no, there's not enough lifeboats to save everybody, that's when it became rather chaotic. And then suddenly people were not only getting into lifeboats until the capacity was full, they were, like, jumping into lifeboats that were being lowered and injuring people already in there. It became kind of pandemonium all of a sudden. Yes. Like when your drink was sliding off the bar, then it got real. That's right. So, I'm sorry, first and second class passengers are being going up to the highest deck, which is where these lifeboats are. Just like in the movie. The third class passengers were kind of locked down there for the time being because they were waiting to get other people out of the way and then they were going to let them out. And that John Hart, third class steward. John Hart basically was like, a lot of you people haven't even been out of third class, so you don't even know where to go. So John Hart spent a lot of time directing people to the proper route to get them to safety, or at least an attempt at safety. Yeah. I mean, there were a lot of stories of heroics, of everyday heroics, of people who were just like, this is my job. I'm going to die doing my job, trying to make people as safe as possible. And John Hart is a very good example of that. Totally. So the First Officer Murdoch and Second Officer Light Owler were in charge of overseeing the lifeboats on the port side and the starboard side. And they kind of approached it differently, I believe. Murdoch was basically like, hey, you're breathing. Get in a lifeboat, or you're just going to try to get as many people out of here as possible. Whereas Light Aller was like, if you're a woman or a child, come on, but if you're a man, I'm going to shoot my gun in the air. Because, by the way, all of the officers who are in charge of overseeing lifeboats were issued pistols, basically keep people in line and in worst case scenario, shoot people who tried to get aboard lifeboats that otherwise shouldn't have been. And I think light ole shot or no, not light oler. I think the fourth or the fifth officer had to fire his gun in the air to basically get people to come back to their senses because men were starting to try to push aboard lifeboats while women yeah, exactly. While women and children were still there. So, again, it was nice and calm and everybody was following the order of women and children first. And then that kind of started to crumble in places. Not everywhere, but in some places. Billy Zane grabbed a kid. I have a child. Remember that? Yeah. And that was in another movie I saw recently. What, Billy Jane or Billy Jane stealing a kid to get in a lifeboat? No, I'm trying to think. There was another movie that was made recently where this couple that's like a kind of a post apocalyptic thing or something going, this isn't going to be interesting. I'll try to figure it out and tell you later. But somebody else did the same thing, grabbed a kid and used a kid. Yeah. And you don't realize it until about two thirds of the way through the movie. And then you're like, oh, my God. It was really well done. But I didn't realize that they'd stolen that from Titanic. All right, well, let me know. So the band really did play on. That movie scene is straight out of reality, apparently, right down to the song. I think they say the last song was either Autumn or Nearer My God to Thee. And I think Near My God is the one they played in the movie. Say what you want about the movie. There were some really gripping scenes in the second half of that film, and that was one of them. The other one that really always got me was and this is kind of the point where we are now of how this thing actually sank. When Kathy Bates, as Molly Brown, is in that lifeboat and sees those propellers up in the air, it was pretty remarkable. Yeah. Those lacerations in the hole, they took on water toward the bow. So the front of the ship was suddenly much heavier than the back of the ship. And the ship was built so strongly, even with those substandard rivets, the rod iron ones, that it didn't just break immediately, that it actually lifted up the rear and the propellers became visible first. And then it kept going higher and higher and higher. And then the pressure on the plates that held the whole thing together became so enormous that it was something like 17 and a half tons of pressure per square inch. That's how much pressure was being exerted on basically the halfway point where the Titanic split in two. And finally it did split in two, but it didn't break into two immediately. The bottom of the hole that connected the front to the back still hung on and almost became like a hinge. And so the whole bow went underwater but just dangled there for a little while until it finally filled up. And at one point, the stern, the back half of the ship was straight up in the air. Basically, it was about as tall as a 25 story building. Dude, can you imagine being in a lifeboat and seeing that? I can't. I cannot. All of these things that you're. Seeing you're like, this shouldn't be happening. None of this should exist right now. And it was and it was going pretty fast, too. I mean, they launched the first lifeboat about 2 hours before. The stern was now suddenly like 25 stories into the air. Finally, the bow part fills up with enough water that it breaks off. And it was so heavy that it traveled about 2.4 miles down to the sea floor, or the Titanic rest today in like, six minutes. That's how fast it traveled down there and just hit like a missile, basically. It hit the sea floor. Yeah. And obviously this is when they start losing. Like, remarkably, they had electricity and even, I think, radio that Marconi was still working for a while. But obviously, when this thing splits in half, that's when these flickering lights even go out. And that was also a very pretty emotional part in the movie, when it goes quiet, when there's so much chaos going on, and when those lights go out and the boat is finally when both halves fully go underwater, then you're just left with screaming human beings. Yeah. There was a survivor who said that it sounded to him like the sound of all the people crying and screaming and yelling for help in the water, that it sounded like the sound of cicadas on a summer night. It was just that kind of frenetic and all encompassing. But then I saw another survivor who said that the worst part was when it started to fall silent, when there were fewer and fewer people yelling, because you knew that the people who had just been yelling a few minutes before were now dead. They'd frozen to death. Apparently, the temperature of the water was so cold that you would lose consciousness in about six to twelve minutes, basically. Yeah, we've been joking around and stuff. I think the adage comedy is tragedy plus time. You can apply here, but we do not take any of this slightly at this point. It is one of the most horrific scenes that anybody could ever imagine being a part of. Absolutely. Which is, again, why so many people celebrate Molly Brown, because there are so many people out in the water still with those cork life jackets. I think the quartermaster, Robert Hitchens, who was basically the captain of the lifeboat that Molly Brown happened to be in, refused to go try to pick up survivors who might be in the water. He said they're all dead. And she threatened, apparently, to throw them overboard if he didn't go find people. And what was amazing is that some people did actually survive. The chief baker. His name was Charles Jocelyn or Joffin. He survived paddling around for 2 hours. 2 hours. And then he finally found a capsized lifeboat and clung to that, climbed aboard that. And some people did survive like that, but he was in the water for a couple of hours. And weirdly they attributed to him getting drunk before he went in the water. But this was apparently after he had helped save a bunch of people. The first thing he did is he went and stocked as many lifeboats as he could with bread and provisions. Then he started actually physically throwing women who refused to get into lifeboats into the lifeboats. And then after there was no one left to help, he went and started drinking. For some reason, they think that that kept him alive, where otherwise he might not have just maybe by freaking out. Like it kept him from freaking out. Well, warmed him up, too, maybe. I don't know. No, I think it's supposed to be the opposite. Don't take that advice. Stranded in the cold, don't drink. That's right. Chuck there was one other story I saw talking about the sound of the people who are crying out. There was a young survivor, I think he was like nine or ten or twelve, and his family was moving to America, and he found out the hard way that he couldn't go to baseball games because the sound of the cheering crowd took him right back to the sounds of the people crying for help on the Titanic. And he just wanted to love baseball, but absolutely couldn't because of that. Basically, he had PTSD. Basically. Yeah. That's very sad. But let's take our last break here, and we'll talk about what happened after 02:20 a.m. After the Titanic made its way to the bottom of the ocean. 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. 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Grow your business with Shopify today. Go to shopify. comStuff right now. All right, so the Titanic is underwater at this point. It is chaos and death and despair everywhere. You can see the Carpathia finally arrives at about 430 a. M. On April 15, and these lifeboats were adrift. They had no compasses, no lights, they were freezing. I think the Carpathia recovered 14 boats and 712 people, which is remarkable. One of those people, only one of those, I think, died on route to New York. And the world starts getting worried that the mighty Titanic has sunk and it's front page news all over the world, basically. Yeah. When the Carpathia finally made port in New York, it was surrounded by smaller boats that had been rented by the press, who are trying to get scoops by shouting up to people aboard, asking for quotes and all of that. There was gobs of money thrown at people by journalists to try to get their story, because this is as international news as news gets. Yeah. So apparently the Californian looked for bodies and did not find any, may not have accounted for the drift and may have been looking sort of in the wrong place. And Whitestar said, as you would say, nuts to that, let's send out a bunch of search vessels to see what we can do. And I think they knew at that point they were not going to find anyone alive, but they were at least trying to recover bodies. And they sent out a few boats and one of them found 306 bodies, one found 15, and then another couple found four people and one person. And again, all these people died in the most tragic way you could imagine. They were water logged. They were so heavy that it took several people to lift them aboard. The first class passengers were put in coffins. They were embalmed. This is really gruesome. But sometimes they had to break their frozen limbs just to fit them inside. It was sort of no time for the formalities of burial. It seems like it was a mass casualty scene. And so they were just kind of doing what they could, I think. Yeah. Some of the crew was actually buried at sea, which I would be like, don't bury me at sea. That sounds like the opposite of okay to me. Right. I've never been okay with burial at sea. Okay, you're telling me this? Yeah. I'm just going on the record. We're going to cruise together. Yeah. All right. So the US kind of, like, really insinuated itself into this tragedy to a questionable degree in some people's minds. At the time, the Titanic was a British ship. The White Star line was a British company. And yet the US held public inquiries the Senate did on the Titanic tragedy before the Brits could even do it because they started this inquiry, I think, one or two days after the Carpathia made port. That's how quick the inquiry was launched by the US Senate. And so all of these people who were subpoenaed as witnesses before they could leave New York had to stay and give their testimony before they could go back to England. So the British had to wait to hold their public inquiry until the American one was over, which I think kind of chafed everybody a little bit. But between the British inquiry and the American inquiry, they both basically reach the same conclusions. And they were three fold life boats, lifeboats and life boats. Yeah. And not just the amount, like, kind of the stuff we've already been over. There was no system, it seems like, and this is all because it's true it seemed like no one knew how to load these things. Seemed like there was a lot of indecision about where you actually do the loading. There were a lot of opinions flying about, about who should be loaded, about how many crew members you need on these life boats. And there was no direction at all. There was no uniformity and there was no plan. And that's like we mentioned at the beginning, because so many of these crew members just kind of showed up at the last minute and they didn't even have training in how to do this. Yeah. And like we said, the Californian was vilified. That was another thing. But even at the time it was explained by the California's captain, like, look, the wireless operator went to bed. He didn't hear these distress signals. Yes, they were shooting off rockets, but we thought it was another boat that was mainly doing it to navigate through the ice. Like, it didn't seem like a distressed thing to us. And again, history has kind of exonerated him, but at the time, he was not very well thought of. Neither was J. Bruce Ismai, who survived because he got in a lifeboat. He was vilified as a coward who didn't go down with his own ship. He was painted as having dressed up as a woman to get aboard. Just basically anything you can think of that's despicable. He was described as having done to get aboard a lifeboat to save his own skin. The only way that he could have had any honor and dignity is if he had willingly died with the ship. He didn't do that. And supposedly, in retrospect, he was probably unfairly characterized. He went to his grave saying that there was no women or children anywhere near where he was. They were not around. And he decided to get into a lifeboat that had space. But even still, he's just considered this despicable figure because of this kind of historical trend that was initiated during the public inquiries. Yeah. And of course, Andrews, the designer, and Captain Smith, as in the movie, you see them both go down with the ship. And another very impactful, emotional scene with Victor Garber. I think that he set the time correctly on a clock or something. No, I think he went and rearranged the deck furniture, the wicker chair. No, he didn't. I think he said the clock. Right. He's just such a cliche. Yeah, he said the clock. This is as. Things are sliding off tables and it's a good movie. Now that I'm talking about it, I kind of want to watch it again. Okay. All right. There were other people that were hailed as heroes. The captain of the Carpathia was knighted by King George Fifth for his actions and saving people. The Marconi operators and just the wireless system in general was viewed as heroes because had it not been for those instant distress signals that were sent over Marconi Wireless, who knows how long those people would have been out there in lifeboats and how many more would have died? So, yeah, a lot of people could be saved. Could have been saved. I think the number I've seen most widely used is 500. Had the lifeboats been properly filled with passengers, another 500 people would have survived. But you also have to say, well, how many people would have died had the Marconi wireless not been in operation at that time, too? So Marconi himself is actually hailed as a hero for having come up with this wireless, even though I don't think he invented the technology. Binocular locker. Maybe he doesn't need a lock. Yeah. Davy player was like, oh, God, I've got that key in my pocket right now. Maybe just put it in a basket right there in the crow's nest. Or just a bunch of binoculars. No locks. You don't need a lock. Okay. Are they afraid people are going to walk off with the binoculars? Right. Well, there were a lot of reforms that came out of this. They started launching ice patrols. Wireless operators started appearing on ships far more prevalently. And there were operators sitting there around the clock to help with distress signals. But these probably save thousands and thousands of lives. But because these things hadn't existed at the time or were ignored, like the lifeboat regulations, then a lot of people died. Brutal so, Chuck, the Titanic went down and was not discovered until 1985, I believe. Right, yeah. That's when things get really interesting. I think anyone who had any even passing interest in the Titanic has marveled for years. Like we were talking about in episode one about these images, and especially the way these things are lit with these little sort of these little swimming robots and their flashlights in the dark down there. It adds this eerie quality to it with the suspended debris and how easily this thing would kind of come apart if it was knocked against or something. Just really stunning, stunning footage. And that's, I think, what drove James Cameron. He got really into it. Oh, yeah. The guy who discovered the Titanic was Dr. Robert Ballard, and I saw a talk by him where he was talking about one of those early ones where they were using one of their remote vehicles equipped with a spotlight on it, and he said, inside, the gloom of the Titanic looked like a light came on. He said he and the rest of his crew on the vessel aboard, on the surface, just, like, stopped breathing. Like, that was the eeriest thing he'd ever seen. And he realized that the searchlight had just was reflecting off of one of Titanic chandeliers that was still hanging there. I can't imagine what that sensation would have been like. Just terror, but also just total awe. Yeah, totally. So the Titanic is falling apart thanks to a kind of iron loving bacteria, I believe, called hallowmonus. titanicae. Yeah, I think that's right. Right. Surely that's on purpose. Yeah. I think they discovered it from evaluating the Titanic. Right, yeah. Okay. They basically don't think it's going to be around much longer, but Dr. Ballard is saying, no, we can do something with this. There's actual underwater technology that uses epoxy paint, where you can paint underwater. And he has a proposal to save the Titanic by painting it and turning it into an underwater museum, because outside of the debris field, like, bodies were dissolved and eaten within a very short amount of time. But there's still plenty of objects that are still there inside the Titanic. There's no currents, and a lot of areas inside the Titanic might be anaerobic. So it's quite possible that there are bodies generally preserved in there and that a lot of the rooms and different areas in the bowels of the Titanic are still in relatively good shape. So he's saying it's imperative that we keep the Titanic from rupturing and opening up and exposing its innards to the currents and the oxygen and the ocean, and we can do that by painting it, the outside of it. So I'm really hoping that he's successful in that quest. Very cool. Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I got one more thing. We could not talk about the Titanic without talking about Futility, the 1898 book that was written by a guy named Morgan Robertson, and it's about the biggest ship ever built, the Titan that is headed from Liverpool or New York to Liverpool when it encounters an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sinks. And, like, the description of the Titan almost matches the Titanic. Even though it was built, it was written 14 years before. Very cool. We covered that on something else at some point. Didn't we do an episode on Coincidence once? I don't know. Because if so, I'll bet that was it. Well, if you want to know more about the Titanic, have a good rest of your life, because there's a lot to learn. So go forth, find your favorite Titanic based podcast or website, and start there. Since I said start there, it's time for finally. You know, instead of listener mail, let's do the old call for reviews that we do once every five years. All right, let's do it. Yeah, I didn't have a listener mail ready, so occasionally we like to ask people for reviews and ratings on itunes, because we were told ten years ago that helped. Yeah, I mean, I think it still does. So if you want to go on to Apple podcasts, or whether you're on Spotify, wherever you are, there's probably a way to leave a review. And if you can leave us a nice review and a rating, at the very least, it boosts our spirits, right? That's right. And also tell a friend we don't try to grow the show very much, which is weird. We've never been great at it, yet somehow it happened, right. But we've always counted on you guys to spread the word. So if you could tell a friend or family member about us, that would be wonderful. Yes. So I guess thanks to all of you leaving us reviews and ratings, preferably good ones. And even if you don't, thanks a lot for listening. We appreciate you all, each and every one of you. Agreed. If you want to get in touch with us in the meantime, while you're leaving a review to say, hey, I just left your review, or I will never leave your review, it doesn't matter. Even if you just want to say hi, you can shoot us an email to stuffpodcast diehardradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. 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0328808c-3b0e-11eb-947e-f7281f0ccf41 | Conservatorships: #freebritney | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/conservatorships-freebritney | Britney Spears has made a lot of noise lately in her bid to nullify her conservatorship. But what are they even? Listen in to find out! | Britney Spears has made a lot of noise lately in her bid to nullify her conservatorship. But what are they even? Listen in to find out! | Tue, 27 Jul 2021 12:58:46 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=12, tm_min=58, tm_sec=46, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=208, tm_isdst=0) | 45765776 | 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 Bryant, and there's guest producer, who's actually a real a producer, too, dave Kustin. So guest producer, in your mind means ghost producer? No, I don't think he's dead. Are you dead, Dave? Well, not a real producer. I don't know what's going on here. So he is the producer of Short Stuff, which is technically a spin off of Stuff You Should Know, but he's here sitting in for Jerry on Stuff You Should Know, which would make him a guest in this particular context. Okay, but enough about that. I was just saying all that to welcome everybody. Now it's brewing forever. Sorry. Instead, Chuck, I think that we should talk about conservatorships. And before you say anything hold on. Yeah, I understand. I think everybody who didn't realize what episode they were listening to just inhaled, too. I searched high and low for something to relate this to in the real world, they could find, like, nothing. So this is probably going to be a fairly boring, dry episode on legalities in the legal system with no application to real life and certainly no application to pop culture whatsoever. So buckle up, everybody, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Oops, you did it again. I happen to be wearing a Catholic schoolgirl skirt right now, too. Yeah. So this obviously came to me because of the Britney Spear situation. I don't know a lot about Britney Spears and didn't know a lot about her situation other than loosely hearing about it in the news. But the more I poked around, the more I was like, man, this really smacks of sort of the old days, like, your honor, my wife or my daughter is crazy, and we need to do something about this. And I use that terminology because that's kind of how it used to go back in the day. And sadly, that kind of stuff still happens right through things like conservatorships. And so it turns out that it's a pretty straightforward thing, but in her case, the waters are pretty muddy. Yeah, well, she's a really rare case. The only other person I can think of that even comes close to fitting the bill for this very rare type of conservatorship that Britney Spears has is Amanda Binds, who is another child star who kind of publicly melted down, I guess you could put it, and whose mother got her into conservatorship, which I think she's still under today and Bristles under it publicly, too. So most of the time when you're talking about conservatorships, which is basically one person legally having the ability and authority to make decisions on behalf of somebody else, you're talking about somebody who has gone into a coma, somebody who has had cognitive difficulties, maybe for life just suffering from Alzheimer's or something. Yeah, something like that. Much more often than not, it's something that's part of elder law, the conservatorship is. So it's really rare. Weird. You can just say weird. It's very weird. That Britney Spears very healthy with it active. Like, I think she's like 30 something. Early 30s right now. No, late thirty s I think she's 39 that she would be in a conservative ship. But she has, she has been since she was 26. And maybe she's coming out of it, no one can say for sure. It kind of looked like, well, of course they're going to let her out of it multiple times in the past, but it seems like from what I understand now, she might actually finally get out from under this conservative ship. At this point, who knows? Yeah. So just a little quick background, if you didn't know, and not to get to in the weeds, but in 2008, Britney Spears had what people have described online as a kind of a public meltdown. Her family was worried about her. She was hospitalized for mental health issues twice. A couple of times she famously shaved her head and was very aggressive with the paparazzi. And it's very easy for some people, I guess, in her family to say, hey, she has some mental issues, she needs some help, let me step in and establish a conservatorship. But it's also easy as an outsider to look back now and say, hey, she went through some stuff, the paparazzi is awful and terrible, and what might you do in that situation? And maybe she just needed a little assistance to get through a particular time in her life. And here we are in 2021, all these years later, and she still has her father basically in charge of the decisions of her life financially and with her health and in certain cases her career. And she's trying to get him out of there first and foremost as her conservator, and also trying to get the conservatorship itself dissolved. Yeah, because I think one of the things that makes her case so gut wrenching is that basically her worst enemy, her father was put in charge of her life against her will, and she's lived like that for 13 years. We'll talk about how her case applies throughout the episode, for sure, but just to kind of like lay down the groundwork for what a conservatorship is, apparently there's not one set legal definition like you could very easily just basically say it's where somebody's legally in charge of somebody else's decisions. Some states call it guardianship, other states call it conservatorship. But the whole point of it is that somebody has been deemed unable to make good decisions for themselves, to sometimes physically take care of themselves, or maybe even both. And so the court has been petitioned to kind of give someone else the ability to make those decisions, to take care of that person. And the point of it, if you take away the whole Britney Spears thing and any kind of sketchiness that can kind of pervade this whole kind of legal weirdness. It's kind of an act of love to step in and say, this person is in really bad dire straits right now, and I will help them while they're going through this or possibly for the rest of their lives. I'm willing to take care of their needs and see to it that they're taken care of. That's what it's supposed to be about at base. Sure. And ideally, that's how it goes down. There is not a lot of data about conservatorships and how often they are petitioned to get uninstated. I think it's removed. I like uninstated. I like it, too. It's a great word now. Okay, I just made up a new word everywhere. You could win boggle with that, Chuck. And we'll get to why that is a little bit later. But when you petition a court, what happens is there is an evaluation that the court orders of this person who is known as a conservatee, and the person in charge is the conservator. And there's an attorney appointed to represent them, and they hold a hearing and they decide whether or not this is something that they should move forward with. There's an evaluation done. The person is allowed to speak on their behalf at this time. It's not the kind of thing where you can just be railroaded. And I'm not exactly sure the details of Britney Spears when it first happened, as far as if she was like, yeah, this is for the best right now, or if she fought it in the beginning. No, but I think she was you're saying no? No to which first or that she was in favor of it? I'll tell you in a second. All right, well, go ahead. You want me to tell you now? We have to wait a second any longer. Okay. I'll fill you in. Chuck I watched some of the documentary, but I had other things to do. I saw the documentary, too, was surprisingly ho, home and totally one sided. I thought it was really kind of gross in a lot of ways, but interesting, for sure. But I also read a really good New Yorker article, recent one from July 3, I think, called Britney Spears Conservatorship Nightmare by Ronan Farrow and Gia Tolentino supporters. And it is just a moment by moment breakdown on, well, Brittany's breakdown, and then also, like, how she ended up in it. And from this and other sources, I saw that basically she was not informed that she was being placed into conservatorship beforehand, which, from what I can tell, is a gross violation of her rights in that sense, and that she didn't have a chance to petition the court to basically say no. And then by the time she found out about it and tried to petition it, she was told that she was not in any kind of mental state to hire her own counsel. And so she had counsel appointed to her, so she never had an evaluation. So the judge in this case is now retired, and she said that that is not true. Of course she was evaluated, and I talked to her and all that stuff, but the way that this is described as it was a ten minute thing, and they went in on the surface, her parents went in and petitioned the judge, and ten minutes later, the judge granted full, I guess, temporary conservatorship without any other formalities. That's how it is on its face. And then the judge is denying that there was any backroom deals or anything made beforehand. So it doesn't really make sense. And it kind of stinks to high heaven in that respect. Yeah. What did she think was going on then? Who, Brittany? Yeah. When she was evaluated? That's the thing. I don't know that she was evaluated. She had just undergone 251 50, where basically the state two, not just one, two. She had a 51 50 and an Ou 8120h. Man no. So the 51 50 is where somebody can basically say, this person is mentally unstable right now. They may be a harm to themselves or others, and the fire department comes and gets you and takes you off to a hospital where you're kept against your will for 24, 48, 72 hours. That happened to her twice. And upon the second one, her parents went and petitioned the court to grant them conservatorship. And the court did I don't know anything about an evaluation that actually took place as part of the conservatorship. I get the impression that I was like, oh, she said 251 50. That's enough for me. Interesting. By the way, we can't say that without shouting out listener Aaron Hagar. Oh, yeah, that's right. Rock on. We have to. Yeah, totally. All right. So there are some different types of conservatorships. One is financial, and they often work hand in hand and sometimes kind of have to. Financial, obviously, is when you are in charge of someone's finances. The conservative themselves have autonomy, but they don't have financial autonomy. They can't go out and buy a house or rent a house or make any big purchases or maybe even any kind of purchases without the conservatory sort of being there along the way saying it's fine. Yeah. And I think they also have, like they generally have spending money. They're given an allowance. Right. So they'll have that at least. But yeah, for the big purchases. No way. Physical is when their health and basically medical decisions, their health and their life kind of everything is controlled by the conservator. I know I'm going to mess it up at some point, whether or not they want to go to a therapist, or whether or not they want to have certain medications. Supposedly you can't make someone take medication legally, but again, especially in her case, it gets very murky with some of the charges she's levied against her father as far as that stuff goes. Yeah. In particular, what I saw was that the care and the stick that her father uses against her is visitation rights for her to see her kids brutal, that was definitely one thing that came through. And a lot of stuff I've been reading is that she is super dedicated to her kids, and they've been just kept from her for basically their whole lives, and that was ultimately what really led to her meltdown. The paparazzi didn't help, and just being a star divorce, all of that stuff did not help. But it's her kids that is really like the dagger that just gets turned in her chest every time she had to leave or they had to leave. And her father dangles that over her. Like, if you don't do this, if you don't sign this contract and do these performances, I can't let you see the kids or whatever. Right. That's apparently because he gets a cut. He does. He gets 1.5% of all new deals, too. Yeah. And she's made a lot of money in the past years that she's been locked down. She had a very successful Vegas run. She had a couple of big albums. She's been guest judges on a couple of the big competition shows. So she's out there earning a lot of money still, right. For her and Pops. Yeah. There's general conservatorships, and that is when it's kind of everything and these are more common. It's kind of rare, it seems like, for there to be only a physical conservatorship without being a financial, because those things are probably kind of go hand in hand. So general is all encompassing, and then you have your limited conservatorship where it's usually this is a case where it may be like, let's say an adult that's disabled in some way that still wants to have and can have autonomy, physical autonomy, and maybe hold down a job and have their own apartment, but there's just certain parts of their life that a conservator will handle. Right. So everything I saw is that limited is what you're ultimately going for when you're establishing a conservatorship. You want to minimize the number of restrictions necessary to help the person through their life while maximizing their individual liberties. Yes. When it goes down and it's not supposed to be a one size fits all, like, boom, this person has all control over them. It's like, how much do you need? How much do they need to give up? That's supposed to be the goal of a conservatorship hearing. Yeah. And then you've got sometimes they're categorized by their length. You can have short term, temporary or permanent. With short term, usually it's not more than a few months than 90 days. And it's because of some things that happened. It's an immediate need. These can sometimes go down without that formal hearing that we were talking about, because it is short term and capped off at a certain point. That is different than temporary, though. Temporary can turn into permanent, whereas I don't think short term can. Yeah, I think temporary is where they're like, okay, this person may get better at some point, but we have no idea when. But when they do get better, they're going to want to have their life back. So let's just make this temporary. Short term is where I saw that it's frequently used for when somebody is going into, like, drug rehab or something like that, and they have a lot of plates in the air or a lot of finances. Although one of the things that I saw is that finances are not supposed to be a reason for conservatorship. Right. It's supposed to be to help, I'm afraid. They'll spend all their money. Yes. That's supposed to not be a justification for conservatorship. And the problem that I have from the outside with Britney Spears conservatorship is that it seems to be 100% predicated on that. Yeah, it seems that way. That it's almost like this poor person, her brand grew bigger than her, and so to protect the brand from potentially her spending it into the ground or whatever, they placed her in conservatorship so that she can't make decisions about her own brand, and then that's being kind of reflected on her own life. So she's being held hostage against and also being forced to perform. It's one of the most bizarre things, I think that's ever happened in the legal system, especially. It's nuts that it's been ongoing for so long, too, and so public. Yeah, it's a very interesting case. All right, let's take a break. Yay. Yay. All right. No names. Dave's not saying nay. No. What did Dave just piped in? Was like, no, keep going, keep going. I'm the conservative here. We'll be back right after this. So, Chuck, there was one other type of conservatorship by duration that we didn't mention that is apparently pretty typical, which is permanent. Oh, yeah, I mentioned that. I guess I thought it was self explanatory. No, it's permanent. Go on. Well, it's permanent in spirit, but you can, as we're seeing now, file to have it removed or UN. I don't even know that word I coined earlier. Unreinstated. I'm sorry. Reinstated. No, I don't know. I wouldn't either. So noninstated. See, the whole point of Coining new words is you got to be able to use them at the drop of a hat. Yeah, but it takes some practice. You know what I'm saying, man? I know. So the reason permanent, though, is so typical as far as conservatorships go is because most of the time when you end up in conservatorship, it's because you suffered some sort of very debilitating problem or you had it your whole life. It's a long term issue that you're dealing with. So this is a long term solution, a permanent conservatorship. Right. And that really ties hand in hand with kind of the next part about how to get one. It is usually almost always because of some sort of mental incapacity of some form, whether that's temporary or like you said earlier, for a temporary, like someone's in an accident and they're in a coma, but they come out of the coma in two weeks and then work their way back to good health again and they wake up and they're like, ricky Lake, we're engaged now. Really pulled that one out of some thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you. We mentioned stuff like dementia and Alzheimer's. That is a very, very common case for conservatorships. Or if you have, like you said from birth, if you have some sort of permanent disability, no matter how that came about, then that's oftentimes, like parents or some other family member just from the time you're a kid, have that conservatorship. Yeah. And basically there's like a twopronged test to applying a conservatorship. I'm going to say it correctly the first time one of these times in this episode, I promise, I can't even say conservative. No, man, that's great. Chuck. So is the person unable to basically meet their own basic needs, like care for themselves, feed themselves, that kind of stuff? In which case there would be a conservatorship of the person where you can make like medical decisions for them, maybe living arrangements like decide if they're going to live in a long term care facility, something like that? Can they make decisions for themselves which are sound financially? Like, can they understand a contract that they're signing? Can they understand that if they buy this house that they have to pay this amount of money or something? And if they can't do either or both of those things, then the conservatorship might be just the thing to kind of help them make it through life. Especially again if they have substantial wealth or if they are just totally unable to care for themselves. Yeah. And the way this goes down, ideally, I think more typically than what we're seeing in Britney Spears case is medical records are presented, the probate or Family court is handling this. The conservative either understands and goes along with it because they know it's for their own good or is clearly not capable, which is why they need the conservatory to begin with of making these decisions. And again, it's just super rare for this kind of case where someone is having something done seemingly against their will, kind of from the get go. Yeah. I mean, for the most part, if you're in a conservatorship, you might not even be conscious. You might have no idea that you're under conservatorship. Sure. You might not be able to work or hold down a job or remember to feed yourself. You're certainly not going on World Tour and releasing four albums, two of which go platinum and then maintaining a Vegas residency and generating $130,000,000 in income over 1013 years. Something like that. It's just so bizarre. And I have to say also one other thing. I don't want to give the impression that I'm just like a hashtag free Britney person. Like, I understand that those people have just the best intentions, and my hat is off to them, but I also think it's very wise to remember we're seeing all this from the outside. Most of the court documents involved are sealed, and so there's a lot of, like, tea leaf reading and trying to figure out what's really going on here. And it's entirely possible that this conservatorship has kind of helped Brittany. Like, the people who defend who have been involved and defended say she had a couple of million dollars left, some of the worst people in the world surrounding her. Her money was going fast. Her brand was starting to go, and now she's worth, like, $60 to $80 million. She's back on top. She doesn't have a bunch of scummy people hanging around her. And then the scummy people are like, no, these people came in and wrestled control of Britney's own life, and now they're in charge of her, and they're building her for money. So it's really impossible to tell who to trust at this point in time. So I think it's wise to at least keep something of an open mind, even if it seems totally on the surface. This pop star is being held prisoner in public. Well, when you need those TVs read, you get hold on. I don't know. Get Ronan farrow. That's right. He can run. Frank Sinatra junior. That's right. No, he's Junior Junior. Right. Is he supposedly no, I mean, he's supposedly with the Allen son, but that's right. I mean, I'm not the first person. It's a big thing online. Yeah, sure. That's Frank's kid, sure. But who knows? Supposedly not. I don't know. Okay, boy, we're just hitting the Celebrity Beat all over the place. Do you remember Kids Beat on Nickelodeon? Yeah. See you next time. That popped into my head the other day out of nowhere, and I was like, did I just make that up? That was a thing, though. Yeah. I don't remember anything but that. Catchphrase that sign. Same here. Same here. Nothing else. Maybe we had a group hallucination. It's possible. Like the bear and stain bears. That's right. What's that called? Mandela. All right, so in her case in California, and this House of Forex article that we got a lot of this from highlights this it is different in every state with a lot of legalities like this, so it will differ depending on where you are. But in California, they have something called the Judicial Council of California's Handbook for Conservators, where it does lay out about a dozen rights of someone like Britney Spears, one of which is they can directly receive their salary. So supposedly it's not like the checks getting written to Jamie Spears, and he doles it out. Supposedly, by law, she is receiving her salary still. Oh, that's not at all what I heard. Oh, really? She has her living expenses met, and they totaled about $425,000 a year. So she has everything she wants, but she doesn't pay for anything herself. She says that, I need this. That doesn't mean that the check isn't made out in her name. Oh, no, absolutely. You're right. But the whole her dad doling it out, that's 100% true. Yeah. What I'm just saying is the check doesn't come. No, it's all in her name. Still. Agreed. The right to receive calls and mail and see people. You can change your will legally. You can get married. You can hire your own lawyer, which has been a big bone of contention with the Britney Spears case, because she had this court appointed lawyer for many, many years, until very recently, when she was finally like, can I at least hire my own person? The whole free Brittany crew has basically been like, that lawyer is chummy with her dad. He's working for her dad rather than her. You know, that's why at the beginning, I was saying she might finally be getting out from under this conservatorship because she has a new lawyer of her own choosing. There's a new sheriff in town. There is. And everybody's running for the hills. What we're seeing play out now are another couple of things on the list. The request to either change conservators or in the conservatorship, they are allowed to vote. They are allowed to control their own allowance. But that very clearly doesn't mean they're allowed to establish their own allowance. Yeah. Or what the amount is or anything. Yeah. Their medical decisions and business transactions should be under their control. And was there one more? So basically, anything you're allowed to do at the beginning of it, the conservatorship, you should be able to throughout. There were a couple of things in there, and that was, I think, California's rights. Right? Yeah. So this is a California case. She's under a California conservatorship, so all those should very much apply to her. But she said recently that her father won't let her get married. He decides who she can date or not date. Yeah. And again, I don't think that's legal, but I think he can threaten not just visitation, like restraining orders. He can take out restraining orders in her name against whomever he deems, like, inappropriate, and I guess can demonstrate to the court that this person might be a bad influence on her. And that's probably how he has been able to decide who she dates or doesn't date because she wants to marry a dude right now, she says, and have more kids. And the other big, really, truly shocking revelation that she revealed recently is that she has an IUD that her father won't let her remove. She can't have kids. So her reproductive rights are being infringed upon under this conservatorship, and that is a very big deal. Yeah. And again, this is the kind of stuff where there's two sides talking and we don't know the real truth on the inside. But at the very least, when an accusation like that big is levied, you have to, I would think, as the court have to look into that kind of thing. Yeah. And there have been court appointed investigators before, and one of them, I read, concluded like, she should probably not be under this conservatorship anymore. It wasn't like they joined the free Britney crowd or anything like that, but that was their report and their recommendation. But it's like you're saying we're seeing this from the outside. The people who are on the inside in this conservatorship point out like, she wasn't worth very much then and she is now. So she's kind of thriving under this arrangement, which is apparently a way that somebody could end up in a conservatorship for the rest of their life. Thriving under the conservatorship. And then conversely, if you struggle under the conservatorship and have a really hard time, that can be used as evidence that you need to be under the conservatorship as well. So you kind of give this impression that it's like if you're like a with it person able to make your own decisions and you find yourself in a conservatorship, you probably feel like you're just totally out of your mind and just can't believe this is happening to you. It sounds nightmareish. If it's as bad as from what Brittany is saying it is. Well, yeah. And I'm sure she's in a case where she's trying to establish something a little more nuanced, like emotional. Wellbeing, rather than a judge can say, look at all this money you've made since this has happened. And there's a lot more to it than that, though. It's to be a whole human well, that's another thing too, though. So the original co conservator, along with Jamie Spears, Brittany's father, was a guy named Andrew Wallet, and he was court appointed. Terrible name for a conservator. Terrible. Like, he should have just been like, I can't be a conservator because of my last name. He's Andrew C-O-D. And he was for many, many years, actually. And actually it was under his conservatorship, her co conservatorship, that she kind of, like, came back and started working again and started making money again and I guess kind of thrived, at least as a business. And he was basically run out of the conservatorship on a rail because he asked for a salary toward the end of $426,000 a year, which is a lot of money. The thing is, his point was, like, look, if you're a conservator, basically under normal circumstances, you're just kind of keeping up with somebody's quiet life, one everyday person in their quiet life and their little finances and making sure they're taken care of. As conservative Britney Spears of State. He was, like, running basically international business that had all. These fingers and all these pots. And he said, most people who are in that position make millions of dollars a year. I'm asking for $426,000. So that to me was a real reminder, like, oh, yeah, there's actually two sides of this coin. This is an unusual situation for anybody and it kind of makes sense in that respect. Although if you look at the normal amount that a conservator would charge for their time, he was asking for a lot, actually. Yeah, and that's a good point as far as your obligation is conservator. And again, put Britney Spears aside for a second. In these ideal situations, they are genuinely taking care of these people, meeting their daily needs and necessities, making sure all their bills are paid and their checkbook is balanced and they don't go in the hole financially. The big hooking point here, though, is that if you're a financial conservator, you are not supposed to be using that person's money for your own benefit. Like you said, you are allowed to take a salary. And it says in this article somewhere between $40 and $100 per hour, which means Jamie Spears is taking $100 per hour at 40 hours a week because he's getting $16,000 a month. And that's what it comes to, like, basically the top rate at 40 hours per week. Right. Which when you look at that, like you said, though, he also gets a cut of her stuff. To play devil's advocate, he is taking a salary commiserate with what a conservator historically can take. Yeah. So Andrew Wallet, if you look at it from the perspective, well, he's a conservative and not actually like, running the business, then he'd have to work more than 80 hours a week, 50 weeks a year at $100 an hour. But again, his point was this isn't a normal conservatorship. This is running the Britney Spears multinational enterprise for her benefit. Yeah. And if you're the conservatory, you're going to at some point probably have to answer to the court, especially in some case like this. So you got to have all your ducks in a row, you've got to keep receipts, and you've got to have a paper trail to kind of back up everything. You can't just waltz in there and say, like, trust me, everything's going fine. Supposedly, you're going to have to have pretty robust records for kind of every financial decision you're making on behalf of your conservative. So that's ideally now we reach the reality and this is one good thing of Britney Spear's conservatorship and all the light she's shining on conservatorship abuse right now is like, this is an issue in normal non celebrity society where people can get preyed upon by basically a professional conservator. And there was a General Accounting Office report that basically said the states have no idea how many people, how many of its citizens or residents are under conservatorship right now, how much money is being held in conservatorship right now, they might have a good idea in some cases. In other cases they have no idea. And as part of the report, the Gao basically made up identities in four different states around the country and applied for conservatorship. And they were granted in all four cases or all four states conservatorship to go out and be a conservator to a stranger and take control of some strangers finances as part of as their career. And the states didn't check their background, didn't run their Social Security numbers, didn't do a credit check, didn't do anything. They just basically rubber stamped it like this person wants to be a conservator. There you go. You're a state licensed conservator now who can go take control of the finances of someone who's never even met you before. And like, in that respect, this is ripe for abuse. This is the kind of situation where a judge is morally obligated to give as much attention to each case as needed to make sure, 110% sure, that the person under conservatorship is not being exploited, is not being taken advantage of financially, is not being kept. I think they call it isolated, medicated and liquidated and kept away from their family and their loved ones. It can be a nightmare unless the court is overseeing this properly, and apparently in all cases they don't, which is just unconscionable. And judges who dropped the ball on that should be run out of town right into jail themselves. All right, well, let's take a break. Thanks for backing me up on that one. And we'll be back right after this to talk about how you can end these things and some legislation that might help as well. Right after this stuff you should know. If you want to know, just listen. All right, so I mentioned before we get into how you can terminate this, this sort of dovetails with your great soapbox moment right before the break, if I may say. Yeah, I remember there's legislation as of about an hour and a half ago. I read this on New York Times. Wait a minute. It was published an hour and a half or you just read it an hour and a half ago? It was published an hour and a half ago. Wow, that is late breaking. First up, you should know this is super late breaking. Two members of the House co sponsored and when you see these bills co sponsored on both sides of the aisles for these kind of smaller bills, that's when you know that government can work. Was it senator Lance Bath and Senator Joey Fatone. That's good. Thank you. Cosponsors, rep. Charlie Chris, the Democrat of Florida, and Nancy Mace, Republican from South Carolina. Legislation, it's a pass that would create a pathway for Britney Spears and other people to replace their private guardian or conservatory. So it argues for more accountability. It argues that we need more data on this stuff. Like you were saying, how no one knows how much money is tied up in this. No one knows how many people are trying to get out of these. Yeah, it's shockingly. I don't want to just say Willynilly, because that's probably not fair, but under studied, at least under observed. Yeah, under observed, for sure. So as of now, in order to get out of a conservatorship, you have to prove fraud or abuse that has occurred to have that be replaced. And this bill would kind of roll that back and say it doesn't necessarily have to be abuse or fraud. It could just be that they aren't comfortable with it. Their emotional well being is not being met or whatever. And just to make it a little bit easier to free someone up from these conservatorships. And so we'll see. There was one a few years ago in 2019 that didn't get beyond the House Judiciary Committee. But everyone's kind of thinking with all this attention right now because of Britney Spears case that they might have a little momentum to get something like that done. Oh, yeah. Big time. The Free Act, by the way, I appreciate the acronym Freedom no. Freedom and right to emancipate from exploitation. Act. Okay. All right. I can respect bending over backwards a little bit to make that work. That was all right. Okay. I think Chuck, also, one of the reasons why they have aired to this point on the side of making it more difficult to remove a conservator is because they've kind of there's, like, maybe a suspicion that you could have a fight or a falling out or something like that over something totally unrelated to the conservatorship. And now the person could be like, that's it. You're not my conservatory anymore. I want you out of my life, or whatever. And the person might be great as their conservator and it might be a really good conservatorship, but it's just there was that moment or that following out. So in that sense, it should be made difficult. But then, on the other hand, is that really the way we should be airing? Should we be airing toward away from the rights and the desires of the person whose life and responsibilities for their life has been taken away from them? Shouldn't they at least have the right to choose who's calling the shots for them? Who's making those decisions for them? And I think ultimately I kind of lean toward the rights of the individual. Yeah. It also makes you wonder about let's say there's no kids involved and it's a case of someone abusing drugs or something like it's an interesting slippery slope to think about whether an adult has a right to throw their life away yes. And make bad decisions or whether or not it should be legal for someone to be able to step in and save somebody. I don't even know how I feel about it. It's just an interesting thought experiment I came across something called the right to risk, where basically it's exactly what you just said. Like, everybody has a right to just blow it completely, including a fortune, including fame, including alienating loved ones, doing whatever you want to ruin your own life, that you have that right. But I think the law recognizes that there are some mental states that a person can enter to where they wouldn't otherwise want to do those things. And I think that's what the people who are running Brittany's conservatorship are saying, that Brittany isn't capable of keeping people who would unduly influence her to throw her life away at bay. She can't keep those people at bay. She doesn't understand the documents that she's signing. And then there's whispers and hushed rumors of like, no, the real reason she'll probably be in a permanent conservatorship is because there's some diagnosed mental illness that is just sealed because it's a medical record. Right. And that's kind of like what gets leaked out on the conservatorship side. I don't know. I think having like an attorney that is of her choosing who's sharp that is working for her and her alone, getting into this and really finding out what's what and going into court, I think that'll be a really I'm interested to see what the outcome of that is. I don't see how that could not be a good step at least to have more investigation done by someone of her choosing. Yeah, because for years, apparently, her big problem was not with being under conservatorship, it was her dad being the conservator. Right. And so he was co conservators with a couple of people, and she apparently even was fine with one of them for a little while, but then they resigned because she said she wasn't fine with them any longer. And then now it's just back to her dad being in total soul control. So I wonder if her dad is forced out and it's just strictly like lawyers and fiduciaries who are in charge of her conservatorship, if she would be like, no, this is fine. I'm fine with this, I wonder. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what happens with that and this legislation as they kind of go hand in hand. Absolutely. Do you have anything else? I got nothing else. I do want to shout out my pal Babs Gray, barbara Gray and Tess Barker are two comedians in La. And they were in that documentary and have championed Britney's case for a while. And they have a new podcast out, and they had one called Britney's Graham. Britney's instagram the podcast, but now they have a new one called Toxic Colon. And boy, if we get our new colon barbershop quartet inserted there, that'd be great. The Britney Spear story. So that's getting a lot of attention right now. Cool. Yeah, they're all over the place right now, so big ups. Big ups. If you want to know more about conservatorships and Britney spears and lance bass. Well, you can just start searching the Internet and jump down that rabbit hole and see what happens. And since I said that, it's time, of course, for listener mail. I'm going to call this cool job that I've never heard of. This is from one of our Irish friends. Oh, yeah, I love this one. Hey, guys, first things first. Thanks for a really great podcast. I've been listening every day since my first day as a delivery driver five years ago in Dublin, Ireland. I spent a week driving all over the country and you've been my companions. Last week I came across the episode Jobs from a bygone era. A classic. And I wanted to share with you a job my great grandfather did that definitely applies. He worked in Dublin City as a knockerupper and I was like, wait, what? A knocker upper was a job that existed at a time after the Industrial Revolution, but before alarm clocks were widely available to the poorest, that filled the factories with workers. For a tiny weekly fee, a knocker was employed to knock on doors or tap on windows. It's like a wake up call in a hotel, basically. Exactly. They usually used to pull or a long stick or bamboo to tap on the bedroom windows. There's great pics online of a famous lady in London using a pea shooter. My great grandfather, though, was an even rarer breed, as he was known as a knocker uppers. Knocker upper. That's niche. He was employed by the other knocker uppers to wake them up wow. So they could go and wake up to customers all over the city. Eventually, they were all put out of business. When the country went electric, cheap alarm clocks hit the market, but they were a snapshot in time and provided much needed service. I wanted to share this little bit of social history with you guys after everything you've given me. Look forward to a live show in Ireland sometime, Mike. We'd love to come back to Ireland. We did that show and that was fun, Dublin, and it was one of the best. Yeah, that's a pretty great email, Mike. Thank you for that. Hey, I have a little anecdote about knocked up. About knocked up? Yeah. So when Yummy was little, she thought knocked up meant you were in trouble, like you were grounded. Yeah. And it led to at least one case of hilarity with her dad asking where her friend was. And you may say, oh, she's knocked up. She can't come out. What? She can't come out for nine months. This is like nine or ten years old, I think. Wow. That's pretty cute. So thanks, Mike. Thanks, little Yummy. And thank you guys for listening. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Mike did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of Iheart Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio App Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
Saunas: More Interesting Than You Think! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/saunas-more-interesting-than-you-think | Although they seem pretty mundane, saunas are surprisingly fascinating inventions. Josh and Chuck break out all sorts of sweaty, sauna-related trivia, from the Finnish affinity for saunas to sauna etiquette, in this episode. | Although they seem pretty mundane, saunas are surprisingly fascinating inventions. Josh and Chuck break out all sorts of sweaty, sauna-related trivia, from the Finnish affinity for saunas to sauna etiquette, in this episode. | Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:50:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=15, tm_min=50, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=203, tm_isdst=0) | 36105496 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chucker's. Chuck, Chucky bride of Chucky Bryant. You pause as if you forgot who I was. No, I had a thing. I have marble mouth. Worse than usual today. Here we go. This podcast is brought to you by Charlie Rancher. Have you ever mixed up with Zima? No, but you know that Oakland former Oakland Raiders quarterback Jamarcus Russell just got busted with they call it Purple Drank. It's codeine syrup and I think some sort of carbonate soda. And Jolly Rancher, well, it's robot tripping, is what he's doing. Well, it came out of the Houston, Texas scene, like, ten years ago. Weird drink. Never heard of it. That's how square I am. I haven't heard of it either, so don't feel bad. Yeah, okay. Plus, it's like that's what they do in Houston. Seriously, is that what you want your town associated with? Yeah, we use codeine water. Yeah, we came up with purple drank. Wasn't he the QB for LSU? Yeah. Well, he's a bust. He's nothing now. Well, he's a big wash. Really? Yeah. He went to the NFL and got all fat and through interceptions and he was great for us. So anyway, I guess what all that leads us to, Chuck, is saunas. Yes. Football players. Well, they probably are. Steam room guys. Yeah, let's talk about that's. A great place to start. Chuck, there's a difference between a sauna and a steam room. There's a number of differences, but the mode of heat is what's really different. Right? Yeah. And I should point out we called the Sauna's colon more interesting than you think for a reason, because Robert Lam, our esteemed writer and stuff from the Science Lab cohost he wrote this and he told us, like months ago. He's like, Dude, you should do saunas. Yeah, it's way cooler than you think and it's dirty and filthy. And he was right deep in history. Yeah. For my money, Robert Liam is the best writer on how stuff works.com. We always ever but he wrote an altogether pleasant article that I've read, like, many times, and every time I just love the way he wrote it. It's a great article. We should read the first line. Please do. The first line of his article says, you're going to want to read this article naked. So please, before you go any further, disrobe completely. So if you're in the confines of your own home yeah. If the shades are drawn and you're an adult and there's no one else around that you feel uncomfortable with, very specifically, Chuck is only talking to people who just go with 21 years of age and older. No, 25. And you're alone in your house, and if you're listening to your podcast and you feel like doing so naked right now, please do right now. Sauna is more interesting than you think. Right. Thank you. Brought to you by Jolly Rancher. Chuck, we were talking about the difference between a steam room and a sauna. Yes. A steam room is heated by moisture vapor, water vapor, and for that reason, the average steam room is going to be about 140 degree, which is 40 deg Celsius. Right. Pretty hot. It is, but you can't jack it up much hotter than that. And the reason why is because it feels so much hotter than it is, because it's a moisture rich environment, and our body cools by sweating, and then the evaporating off of the skin cool. That creates our cooling sensation. Well, in a steam room, you sweat, you sweat buckets, but it never evaporates because for evaporation to occur, the environment, the ambient air has to be drier than your skin. Right. And if it's equally dry or it's wetter, then your sweat's not going to evaporate. No cooling effect. Right. Which is why sweating while you're swimming, it's a problem. It's disturbing. Yes. Which is what I do. Yeah. And then in a sauna, conversely, this is dry heat, so it's going to be a lot hotter temperature wise in there. Right? Yeah. I mean, if steam room is 104 degrees Fahrenheit average, you're talking 176 degrees Fahrenheit hot, 80 degrees Celsius in your average sauna. And do you like saunas and steam rooms? You do? I've never really sat in the steam room, but I love saunas. Actually, growing up, there's a Holiday Inn in Toledo that my family had a pool membership, too, and they had a sauna. You could get a pool membership to a hotel in Toledo in the wow. Yeah. Never heard of that. But, I mean, now that I look back, I'm like, yeah, that's really weird. It probably wasn't a membership. Your dad was probably like, yeah, we got a membership, kid. I wonder actually had a room key is we had I'm pretty sure we had a membership, but I don't remember. But they had a sauna for sure. And so I was introduced to the sauna, like, really early on. It was like just a normal thing. So when you were a little kid, you enjoyed it because it seems like such an old person thing or an adult thing to do here in the west, if you go to Finland, baby, they are all about the saunas. I mean, it's like their national pastime. Right? Actually, in their national epic, Chuck, it's called the Califolia. This is a little side note. Never heard of that. It's their national epic. Very old. It mentioned saunas frequently. Well, of course. Okay. There's about 1.6 million saunas in Finland. Wow. And the first description of a Finnish sauna dates back to 1113. The Ukrainian historian. Nester wrote about them. That was my goat's name. Nester. Really? Yeah. Did you name it after the Ukrainian historian? I was eleven and I named him after the Ukrainian historian. Was you that or plato. Did your goat love a good spits. No, but he drank Coke from a bottle, which was kind of cute. That is so cute. It's cute with goats. It's not very cute when you see a human baby drinking Coke from a bottle, which I've seen, and it's disturbing. Really? Yeah. Wow. Have you ever seen, like, a one year old drinking a bottle of Coca Cola? No, it isn't right, man. Yeah, that's not right at all. It's better than an Espresso shot, I guess, but not much. It's in there. And by Coke, of course, I'm using the Southern Colloquialism for Coke, which means any kind of soda pop. Sure. As always. Man, we got really far off of Saunas, didn't we? Let's go back. So Finland Saunas are associated with it, and for good reason. Right. Did you read the article about the Finnish Navy fighting pirates? Yeah. They have Saunas on the pirate fighting boats. Yeah. Not only that, the Finnish army in Kosovo built 20 Saunas for their fighters over there. Like 800 troops. 800 troops. Crazy. At 20 son. And they have them in prison. Yes. Finnish prisons. Yeah. It's literally a part of daily life. If you go camping and you're finished, you take along a portable Sauna while you're camping. Like people take Saunas every day. It's like showering to us. Sure. And this is in addition to showering. They shower a lot, too. Yeah. Before we breeze past the finished prison Saunas, though, this is sort of remarkable to me, because we'll find out, as we said, that a lot of about being in Sauna is being completely naked. Especially if you're finished. Right. Americans are more shy, but we'll get to that in a minute. But I imagine a Finnish prison Sauna is a pretty hatton place to be on a Friday night, wouldn't you think? Yeah. Because the Saunas have something of a reputation, especially in the 70s, they developed a reputation for being a swinging gay hangout. Yeah. The bathhouse. Right. And that is nothing new, actually, Saunas, which we'll talk about later, the history of them. But they were kind of eradicated thanks to the Protestant Reformation, because they started to get pretty gay. Yes. It's a big party in there. Right. And not just gay either. Well, no, all sorts of stuff. Prostitution. Yeah. Where was that? All they were missing was a disco ball and Andy Warhol, and it could have been Studio 54. So let's crawl back inside the Sauna for a minute. Okay. You know all the spruce, cedar wood that looks so nice and feels so good on your bottom? Yes. I always thought that was just like I mean, I knew obviously they weren't going to put stainless steel in there. Right. But it would but I never gave it two thoughts. Right. You would think that it was just a traditional and it is traditional, but at the same time, it's never been updated in that respect. Because if you did put in stainless steel, you would leave many, many layers of skin in the sauna from your bottom every time you sat down. Sure. Same as plastic. You'd just be in big trouble. So wood absorbs heat, and it remains relatively cool at high temperatures, which is why, I mean, it's still warm. Your Tucson is hot, but it's not like you're not hurting yourself. Yeah. And Robert also pointed out that it absorbs steam and stores heat and releases, like that fine cedar smell. Right. Which is why they use cedar and spruce, because they have natural aromatics trapped within more than others. Right. I love cedar, except pine, but I don't know if you'd want to just sit there and smell pine the whole time. Would you? Maybe it would get a little crazy, I think. Yeah, I think so. Chuck, let's talk about the original finished sauna. The sabu sauna. Yeah. Nice. It looks sort of like the Unabomber cabin. It's literally a cabin like structure. Right. No windows, no chimney. No chimney. Which is important because it is a wood fire sauna. Yeah. And it's a little disconcerting, apparently, if you have an original savvy sauna, it takes, like, all day to get it hot enough. Right. You're burning wood, there's smoke in there. It's black soot on the walls, and this is where you're supposed to go in and sit. Yeah, it sounds very dangerous to me. It does. It doesn't sound healthy. Which is why the saba sauna, because of the eye irritants, the fact that you're inhaling carbon monoxide and all sorts of other stuff, is generally relegated to sauna purists, according to Mr. RLAM. Yeah, but I get the idea that you're supposed to let the smoke clear out as much as possible. Is that right? Yeah. Like, how do you do that? Because you're just letting all the heat out. Yeah, he said it seeps through the cracks in the roof. Yes. Hot enough. Yeah. As a COA, I would say, please do not try and build your own savvy sauna, because you will likely die of affixiation. That's what I'm saying. I don't understand how people survive these saunas. Right. So they're generally left to sauna purists, and the rest of us just use regular saunas. It's just called a sauna. And this is the very recognizable sauna with spruce or cedarwood. Right. And a stove. Most of the time. These stove, called Kiwas, are electric these days. Although you can have a wood burning kiwa. Kiwas. K-I-U-A-S that has a chimney. Right. So you have gas, too. The main feature isn't that it's wood heated for a Sava sauna, it's that there's no chimney and you're inhaling it. Yeah. Well, we should point out, too, like, whether it's wood or gas or electric or whatever, that's not providing the heat. You're heating rocks. Right. And then the rocks transfer the heat to the surrounding environment. Yeah. And if you want to jack the temperature up a little bit. Remember we talked about steam room? It's heated by water vapor. You can actually use the same thing for a sauna. You take a little water, too ladle from a bucket, splash it on the rocks, and all of a sudden you have, with the Finns, called loyalty. Well, there's an umlat in there. I know, and I'm not big on Finnish pronunciation. I know how to say Simon Haya, and I'm not even sure I'm saying that right. I'm going to go with lily. Lily. Lily. Swedish. I'm sorry. Yeah, I just said something in Swedish. So, since we're talking about the rocks, though, we should say that the rocks, it's very important. You can't just throw granite in there, because granite will probably explode in your face. Right. If it gets that hot tub. But water on it. Real danger. Exploding rocks are not good. No. You need unweathered Corey Rock, and he listed a few. Hornblenda is my favorite. The one they like the most is what is it? Period. Period. Period. Because there's a semi precious mineral called paradox. Yeah. So I imagine this is where it comes from. Paradoxite or old friend basalt. Yeah. Makes it basal. Why can't we get that one? It won't stick in our head. Like there's no neural pathway forming when we hear that word. So, anyway, peridotite. Yeah. Those are the rocks, the unweathered quarry rock that you can use to get really hot. You can pour water on them. It will steam and will hiss. Right. But it won't blow up in your face. Right. Again, which is very important. I was surprised to find that the Swedes don't have a name for the pile of rocks that heat the sauna. They have a name for the stove kiosk. They have a name for the steam, which is they don't have a name for the rocks. It's called a pile of rocks. Yeah. Interesting. I bet there's water on that pile of rocks. That make us some loyalty. Josh, you can also have what's called an infrared sauna, and that's the latest and greatest. And people say people that believe in the infrared, honestly, that it actually penetrates into your bones, which, if you listen to the Butterfly Wings podcast, you know, infrared means redder than red on the spectrum of light. Right? Yeah. And it's radiation. Sure. Because this is radiation. I don't know if that's good. Basically, what's going on is you're being bathed in infrared radiation, so it heats you up. I'm a semi purist, I think. Yeah. I think I would just like a regular sauna, not a savage sauna stove. A kiwis. Exactly. Kind of like they have at the gym. Yeah. Or at the holiday without alito. The old naked men. Well, that is the thing about saunas that you're going to run into, Chuck, is naked men and naked women, even depending on where they are. Why not? Yeah. Robert made sure to point out that depending on where you are in the world. Different cultures have different traditions. Finland, a lot of Eastern Europe, Russia, you can pretty much drop everything. You got to have your towel, though, because you got to sit on it. Right. You may be completely naked, but you still have to have a towel for hygienic reasons. You don't want to just sit your butt on the cedar plank where somebody else just set their butt because there's a transfer of butt funk. Yeah, but you know what else I thought was funny? He said that Americans who want to wear their bathing suit in there, they're really frowned upon because of hygienic reasons. Right. They just cover up with a towel. Yeah, but why is that not hygienic to wear? Like your speedo in there. Does the butt funds get trapped in the Lycra? I think the butt funk can make it through the Lycra to the outside of it. Is that it may be. I don't know. I just thought that was odd. Yeah, because here in the US, we're like, no, you wear a bathing suit for hygienic reasons. That's my point. That's my point. Maybe it's because we don't wash our bathing suits quite as often as we wash our cells, our naked bodies, maybe. So this is a steamy episode of stuff you should know. Well, we are talking about nakedness. And we also should mention that same sex saunas are found all over the place in Europe. Yes. Where saunas have traditionally been around for a very long time. They tend to have same sex, although they'll also have mixed sex as well. Yeah, there's both. Wait, I'm sorry. The places where the songs have been around the most are more likely to have mixed sex. Places where it went away for a while and came back would have more like same sex saunas. Right, right. I was confused. I'm sorry. Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, he says, generally offer nude, mixed company bathing. Yeah. Mixed company. Like men and women. You got it. Yeah. And Russian banyas. Did you ever see Eastern Promises? Yes. Such a good movie. Has there ever been a more uncomfortable fight scene in your life, completely naked than the naked couple of guys? Yeah, if you haven't seen a movie for you. Yeah, it's an awesome movie. It's for adults. It's rated R or maybe NC 17, even. Possibly Triple XXX. The old Triple XXX. But yeah, there's a fight scene where Viggo is completely naked in a bathhouse and fights these guys. I can't imagine anything worse than being in a fight when I'm completely naked. That gives me the hives. It does me as well. Let's talk about sweat. Yeah. Let's talk about the science of it. Yeah. Okay. That's what it's all about. Yeah. But a lot of people who use saunas say that they're very healthy, and as Lamb gets into that, goes back to the idea that sweat is excretion and excreting. Anything is healthy. Sure. But he also points out that it's very easy to make this mistake. This idea of any excretion is good, has been around for a very long time. And don't forget, we used to use leeches to suck our blood. Yeah. We used to believe that pooping as much as we could was a good idea, which I kind of still cling to that one. Yeah, I do, too. Good. I'm a big believer in it. If you're talking sweat, Josh, what happens is nerve endings are triggered by heat, and it releases a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Exactly. And he says there are 2.3 million sweat glands that all sudden kick into action, which are also called echrin glands. Echrin glands, which are different from apocrin glands. I feel like I have more, but it's probably not the case. Mine are just overactive. That's possible hardworking you do. I've seen you sweat in a 70 degree fahrenheit height tank, which is chilly. You have to have a wetsuit for that. And Chuck's still sweating again with the swimming and sweating. So he claims that in a 15 minutes Sauna, the average person sweats about four cups, about a liter of sweat, which is way more for me in 15 minutes, right? Yeah. I can sweat about a gallon in 15 minutes. I guarantee you. That's a lot, man. Liter of sweat is a lot of water to lose. It is. But you should see me in a Sauna. It's awesome. It's one of the best feelings. But I'm not exactly sweating out toxins, am I? No, you're sweating out salt, uric acid, not to be confused with Robert Uric, and that's pretty much it. You do excrete toxins, right? Yeah. But not much. No. For the most part, toxins are excreted through your kidneys, your go to excretion station, right? Yes. And the researchers have found that in heavy sweat, about 1% of mercury found in the bloodstream is released where the other 99% that's released goes through the kidneys. It either comes out in the stool or the urine. Right. Pea or Poo. Right. And the concentration of a toxin in the bloodstream appears to have no bearing on how much is released through the sweat. It's almost like our sweat glands are set up to just do 1%. But people who use sawn and say, man, 1% of concentration of mercury yeah, that's definitely worth 15 minutes in the Sauna. Absolutely. They can feel more. But I think it's not just feeling healthier. They're saying, look, there's a science behind it as well. Right, exactly. Another benefit of a good Sauna sweat or a good sweat period is it's really good for your skin. It opens your pores, keeps them nice and pliant. And there's a study by the Journal of Dermatology that said a regular sweat from a Sauna has a proactive effect on your skin and helps out with eczema and all kinds of dry skin conditions. And also, Lamb points out that we've long associated bathing rituals with kind of clearing away the like a spiritual thing. The psychic funk. Yeah. Not just bottom funk, but head funk. Yeah. And anybody who's felt poorly and has taken a shower can attest to that. You just feel better somehow after a shower. Absolutely. And there's nothing worse than the feeling of taking a shower, stepping out and still feeling bad because you know it's going to be another 24 hours before you are going to start to feel good. Sure. Like, you know you've screwed up big time if you take a shower and you still don't feel good afterwards. Right. You are. Josh a great shower. Like a great sweat or a good steam. Good spitz. Good spitz does the body good. We're talking about the Russian banya, the saunas there, the bathhouse. They also would beat themselves. I think they probably still do. You would flog your skin with what's called a VENIC, and it's a bundle of leafy branches, like oak and maple and birch branches. Right. And by doing that, they're stimulating circulation because the skin is like, what's going on? Quit that. Send some blood there. Find out what's going on. Right. Let me know what's going on after you get there. See, and that's what the skin is doing. It also produces a mild euphoric effect, apparently. Yeah. It releases the plant oils, which is also a good thing. And he said it stimulates the production of opiate endorphins. And it's like a mild Narcotic effect. Yeah. Crazy. Which I love those three words together. Mild Narcotic effect. It's almost like cellar door. Right. Mild Narcotic effect. That's better than massive Narcotic effect. Right? Yeah. Then you're in trouble. Then that shower doesn't work. Chuck also, saunas produce a mock fever. Yeah. I thought that was kind of cool. So your internal body temperature can raise as much as 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Right. And the temperature of your skin can increase by as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a lot. That is a serious amount. And by doing that, your body is like, oh, okay, I'm sick, I need to jack my immune system up. So white blood cell count or white blood cell production is increased. The lymph nodes, which are another internal waste system, a very important one, are flushed and you start to sweat even further. Yeah. But it doesn't increase your blood pressure. It increases your blood pump circulation. Circulation, but not your blood pressure. No. But if you do have high blood pressure, we should say saunas are not recommended for you. Well, we should just go ahead and say who all it's not recommended for kids and old people. Yeah, it's not recommended pregnant ladies. But it is good. Like, those people shouldn't get in, but women definitely might want to get in because it apparently alleviates menstrual cramps really well. Right. But if you're pregnant again, you want to stay away from the sauna, but you won't have physician first if you're pregnant. Right. Very astute point, Chuck. Thank you. Lastly, about physiology and sauna, what you want to do is keep yourself very hydrated, because the irony is, while you're excreting that 1%, the go to excreting organs, the kidneys need water to excrete the other 99%, and if you're sweating all of it out, things get backed up, toxin levels raising your body, and you can do some real damage to yourself. So every time you go into the sauna, you want to take a jug of water with you with at least a liter, right? Yeah. I would say if you have gout, the sauna is probably a good place to go. You think so? Oh, because uric acid builds up. Yeah. All is a build up of uric acid, while urea is uric acid. So if you have gout, get deep to a sauna. Okay. And there was one other cool thing about the physiology. One reason they recommend heart patients not getting sauna's is because one of the traditions is to jump from the sauna either into a snow bank or into a pool water in Finland. Yeah. And shock your body. And the old urban legend that you heard when your kids about going from the hot tub to the pool and you'll drown because your pores are open. Right. So not true. Actually, it's big in Turkey, too. There's the Turkish bath, which is like a hot tub and then a cool tub. Right. And you go from one to the other. That's what Turkish bath is. Did not know that, far as I know. That's what I've always heard. I had no idea. Chuck, I think it's high time we talked about the history of the sauna. And saunas are very, very old. Yeah. Neolithic tribes. I love how he tied culture, and humans like culture springing up around human physiological needs. And bathing, he said, was like the first people that bathed in hot springs led to saunas. They're like, wow, this is fantastic. I really like this. And I think in France and Spain especially, a lot of the Neolithic settlements are located very close to hot springs. And not by accident either, right. No. As people remain nomadic, apparently, we started creating collapsible, portable saunas that resemble, like, sweat lodges in native America. And then as we began to settle down and become sedentary, they made more permanent structures like dugouts earth and dugouts, and then eventually the sabu. Saunas, which remember, they back at least to the 12th century. Right. That's usually a lot better than that. Apparently, as Finland settled by modern Finns, sauna was pretty much brought with them. Yeah. And through the Middle Ages, it was like the common people. It wasn't just for the rich or anything. The common, like, whole villages would sauna together, sweat it out together, men, women, and children, and at the local bathhouse, they would actually feast inside the sauna, which is really gross. It is. They would get married and they would get they would have babies on. Yes. Prostitution. What are they called? The Stews. Yeah. Was the nickname they had. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a stew. You want to eat with crackers, maybe afterwards. Yes, perhaps. So this association, like we said, with Saunas and places where you could find a prostitute and have sex with said prostitute and just kind of that Roman Dionysen orgiastic kind of vibe going on in the Sauna was one of the reasons why they were eradicated by Europe, because in the early 16th century, europe got a little tense. Yeah. Protestant Reformation just ruined everything. Yeah. They're kind of like, you can't do that. You put a hat with a buckle on right now. Yeah. You can't do that. Either. Or that. Or that. Or that. Right. Get out of it. Start crying right now. Let me teach you what guilt is all about. Right. And then that lasted for about 500 years, and then finally, in the late 20th century, thanks to the 1960s, people began to loosen up again and climb back into the sauna. Right. And the Sauna immediately became associated with sex again, like the gay band houses that we were talking about. Have you ever seen in The Band Played On? No, but my brother worked on that. I think we talked about that, and I think you said that your brother worked on it, too. But Phil Collins plays a bathhouse owner, and I think it's Richard Gere, who's trying to track patient Zero, is trying to convince them to shut down the bathhouse because there's, like, this epidemic that no one is paying attention to that back then, they called gay cancer, which is now called HIV or AIDS. They call it gay cancer. They did originally. Crazy. Yeah. And so the bath house is featured prominently so that is featured prominently in the bathhouse. Phil Collins. Phil Collins susu studio was yeah, they did a good job, the bathhouse. I think we talked about what a good job Phil Collins did, too. Dude, that was a long time ago. So if that's the case, then people that's like a two year old podcast, so I don't mind repeating things every once in a while. We should do one on things to do with the dead body or synesthesia. That would be a great one. So, Chuck, the saunas make their comeback now. You can find them at Holiday Inns around the world. Actually, it's not true. I've never seen a sauna at a Holiday incense. At my last really crappy job, they had a gym in the building, which was one cool part, because you could go down, like, during lunch and work out, and they had a sauna in there, and I would work out, and then you could theoretically I did for a time. Okay. And I would go sit in the sauna, and it's just the best man just sitting there. I see why the intercourse happened, because there's something. Very primal about just sitting there naked and just sweating and sweating and sweating, but I never had a desire to eat food or meet anyone special. You know what I'm saying? Right? Yeah. Is that clear? Yeah, I got it. Hint for those of you who can't see, I just winked at Chuck. Yes. So, Chuck, let's say that you have been inspired to go out to take a Sauna from listening to this. There's actually something called Sauna Etiquette that you need to know about. First of all, if you're in a country and they speak German and you decide to go to Asana, there will be a person in there named the Sauna Meister. The Sauna Meister is in charge for basically running a very strict ten minute session where your entire job is to go in there and sit down and shut up. Right. Basically follow the Sauna Meisters lead. You're not allowed to leave once the 10 minutes has started. You're not allowed to come in once the 10 minutes. Definitely never, ever put your hands on that ladle. No. That's the Sauna Meister's job. You do not wet the rocks if you have a Sauna Meister. No, that's the song. And I got the impression I was looking around, I couldn't find anything that wasn't in German and that I could translate. But I get the impression that Sonomizer is actually a paid professional. Well, I hope so, because if someone's just doing that for kicks, then no. You know, there's, like, jerks out there like, I'm the Son of Meister, because I come here all the time, and it's like, no, I'm the son of meester. And just goes on like that for a long time. Yeah. And then they wrist wrestle. Yeah, they leg wrestle with just towels on. How about those guys that walk around the gym with a towel over their shoulder, but naked? I know. And why do they always look 70? I know. And they pretend like, hey, everybody else is subject to the Protestant Reformation. I'm free. It's like, put a towel on, hippie. I don't even like, I'm this close to being a never nude myself. Denim jeans. Yeah. A shower with denim jeans. No, but I'm not into that. Put some clothes on. Protestant Reformation. No one can escape it. Yes. No one escapes the Protestant Reformation. I'm the Sauna Meister. So, lastly, with Sauna Etiquette, basically the whole thing comes down to putting the ladle on. If you're alone in the Sauna, feel free to add some loyally. Yeah. Do whatever you want. Somebody in there. It's probably one of those things where you want to be quiet and then just say, hey, do you mind if I put some water on the rocks? It's supposed to be a pretty quiet environment. Don't go in there like some chowder head with your cell phone. Right. And when you go in and out, you want to come in and out as fast as possible, because that open door changes the temperature very quickly. Right. And just be considerate. Don't be a jerk. Yeah. It just reminded me. I saw the wore the roses again the other night for like the 50th time. I remember kathleen Turner locks Michael Douglas in the Sauna. And then the next shot after he falls out of the sauna is him drinking Gatorade in the office the next day. Yeah, he's got like a gallon of Gatorade. Didn't Danny DeVito direct that? Man? It's one of my favorite movies. He has a brilliant mind. Lastly, Chuck, let's talk about the world record for sauna. And yeah, there is a guy named Timo Kawconin. He is the world championship. Well, the world record holder. Finish, of course. Finish? Yeah. In August 2009, he sat in a sauna that was heated to 230 deg Fahrenheit, which is 110 degrees Celsius for 3 minutes and 46 seconds. Like warm food at that temperature. You can cook food at that temperature. That, my friends, are saunas. And again, I think Chuck and I will both endorse. You going over to the website Hostelworx.com, typing in saunas and just reading this really well written article by Robert Lam. I think you'll enjoy it. Yeah. And informative. And since I said householdworks.com, I'm largely abandoning the handy search bar thing. I think that's run its course. Really? Yeah. So the new signal for listener mail is housed upforks.com. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay, watch. I'll say it again then, because I wasn't ready. I was still in handy search bar mode. Okay. You want to just go over and read saunas@housedefworks.com? Watch this. See? So you're not going to say, now it's time for listener mail. I can't control it. I used to be able to control a lot more when I said handy search bar, but oh, look, it's just Tampa. That's when you start chiming all over the place. I need to not say anything else. Okay. Let's just read the listener mail. How about that, Josh? I'm going to call this. Take that, Colbert. Oh, yeah. Colbert. I recently heard this from Scott in Connecticut. Is that what CT is? Yeah. Okay. I recently heard about your rivalry with Stephen Colbert's Kiva team. Congratulations on your success. I'm a fan of both your podcast and his show, which is cool, but he says he wasn't going to choose sides until late one night when this happened. I know. This is pretty amazing. It's slightly harrowing. I was up late unwinding from a long day of working class. I was listening to some vintage SYSK the boutonn's grocery national happiness episode. After a little while, I noticed a strange smell. A little like overheated electronics. Yeah. Ozone. Yeah. This is scary smell. I sniffed around my computer. I noticed that it seemed to be stronger near the door to the rest of my apartment. Opened it, and this visible wave of thick acrid smoke and gas poured into my room. Wow. I ran to wake my housemates opening as many windows as I could to vent out some of the gas. Sounds like a smart guy. It literally tasted like burning. Our eyes and throats were stinging and we called the fire department. They arrived. They found our oil furnace had basically imploded. Those things are dangerous. Oil burning furnaces? Yes. I don't know where he is. And he's going to get a letter from the oil burning burning upward. Okay. Remind me to tell you about high fruit toast corn syrup letter one day. The basement was loaded with carbon monoxide and other compounds you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley and had been leaking up into the rest of the apartment. If not for your podcast, I would have gone to bed earlier. Never noticed that smell. This is why I mentioned Colbert. You may wonder. As it turns out, my roommate Caitlin had been watching Colbert upstairs and she fell asleep. She was tripping ZS when I woke her up and pulled her to safety. Where was Stephen Colbert in our time of need? He may have a space treadmill named after him in a high profile primetime TV show, but he's no substitute for SYSK when it comes to riveting and informative late night life saving. Thought I would add another game winning point for team SYSK Scott in Connecticut. He's also no SYSK when it comes to raising donation loans for the developing world because we beat the tar out of him on Kiva. Yeah, kiva. Orgteamsstepychutze. Chuck. We indirectly save these people's lives. You realize we saved quite a few lives at this point, my friend. If only we'd been there for the family at the end of storytelling. Yeah, I want to know if we've killed it. Oh, God. So you're so hooked on Todd Todd Solins right now. Love that guy. Todd Solans, if you're listening, I appreciate your work, buddy. Yeah, I do too. If you are Todd Solins, we want to hear from you. Send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blog on the housetofworks.com homepage. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime 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 you're favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | ||
8d8739c8-ba8a-11e8-a624-57f0212d6eef | Short Stuff: Time Zones | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-time-zones | Time zones are a pain. Let's get rid of them! Can we? Sure! | Time zones are a pain. Let's get rid of them! Can we? Sure! | Wed, 07 Aug 2019 11:42:11 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=11, tm_min=42, tm_sec=11, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=219, tm_isdst=0) | 13388107 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Well, the short stuff, I should say. Let me just start over. Hi, and welcome to the short stuff. Nice work. Thanks. Do you think we'll edit that first part out? No. Okay. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, the contrarian always saying no. There's Jerry over there, who just kind of keeps quiet because she knows it's how we like it. And like I said, this is short stuff. Let's go. That's right. And we're talking about time zones, and it's a sort of weirdness of time zones in this modern age. It is very weird. And they're kind of new, and it makes sense that they're kind of new, because before it was really difficult to move from place to place in any sort of quick manner. So it didn't really matter what time it was in some town 100 miles away from you. Right. Nobody cared. Yeah. There was no way of knowing really what time it was. And by the time you walked over there to ask, it was so much later than it had been when you left. The whole thing just didn't matter. But once we started to invent ways of locomoting more quickly, the world got a lot smaller. And I really don't like that term for some reason. I just feel like I need to confess this. The world got smaller. The world shrank. I don't know why it really bothers me. Because you're a flat Earther, right? Well, you can make a flat circle smaller. And by the way, I am absolutely not flattering. What's funny is that you have to specify that in this day and age, as the world got smaller, then suddenly it did kind of matter what time it was in the town 100 miles away. Because you might have a connecting train you had to pick up there, and you needed to make sure that that train was coordinating with the train that you were getting there on so that you could reach there by some designated time. And that didn't always happen at first. No. I mean, it was a real problem. People were late for trains or missing their trains. There were circumstances where trains would be close to colliding to one another because of the schedules and the times. Yeah, no problem if everyone isn't agreed on what time it is. And you have an interconnected train system, that can be extraordinarily problematic. Yeah. And this is happening in Europe. In the US. It was a real mess because we had local time zones, and I don't mean regional, I mean, like, every city in the US. So we had 300 time zones in the United States. And then eventually they said, all right, this is unwieldy. Let's whittle it down to 100 time zones. Right. And the reason why there were so many is because up to this point, everybody basically set their watch or their sundial or what have you to noon when the sun was directly overhead. Everybody knew it was noon in your town, but that doesn't mean it's noon somewhere else. It means it's noon in your town. And so everybody, every town basically had their own time zone. Right. So when they whittled it down to 100, that was a vast improvement, but it still wasn't quite where they needed it to be because there were still a lot of problems with it. And so a scientist, his last name was Fleming, he was Scottish, and his first name was Sir Sanford. Well, the sir wasn't his first name. That was an honorific. But the Stanford was his first name. Yes. Sir. Sanford and Son. Fleming. Right. And he missed a train in 1876, as the legend goes, because of the timetable and this screwy time zone thing. And he said, I'm through. He got mad and he said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to divide the world into 24 time zones, which makes sense, spaced at one degree intervals all across the planet. Sure. And everyone said Groundskeeper Willie. That's brilliant. Yeah. You just made short stuff special, officially, because there was a rare chuck Scottish accent. I know, it's the rarest. Yeah, it is the rarest. So that's pretty smart. 24 time zones makes a lot of sense. That's how it is today. You would think. That's not the case. As a matter of fact, I believe there's 39 time zones around the world. Is that right? Yeah, that's what I saw. 39 time zones, not 24. And to make the madness even more complete, some of these time zones are offset not by a single hour like it should be. Some people offset their time zones by 30 minutes or 45 minutes, which is like just drop out of the world, basically, if you do that. So it's what they call an S word show these days. But even that was still an improvement from that 100 or 300 something. In the US. And in the United States, we've had four time zones, eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific, for, I guess since the 19th century. Actually, as a matter of fact, exactly. In the 19th century, on November 18, 1883, those were officially instituted not by the country necessarily itself, but by the railroad companies, who all agreed finally on a uniform time where it was at any given point in the country. That's right. And they actually, when all the railroads set time on this one specific day, they all changed to noon, when it reached noon standard time in their time zone, which meant that each of those places had a noon twice in one day. So it's very famously called the day of two noon. Amazing. I think so too. You want to take a break? Let's do it. Okay. Alright. So things are getting a little less unwieldy, or more wieldy, more wheel. Is that a thing? That's what I'm casting my lot. Can something be wieldy? I guess if it can, be unwieldy. Surely it can be Wieldy, too. Right? So things are getting better. And then we went off and invented planes, and then planes could get places even quicker, and that just compresses the travel time even more. And then the Internet is invented and all of a sudden, it's pretty much like everyone's running on a 24/7 culture all over the world. And some people in recent years have looked up and said, why do we have time zones anyway? Why can't we just all agree to set our clocks on the same time? Take a little bit of getting used to, but you'll all be okay once you wrap your head around the fact that a number is just some random shape that you designate for where the sun is in the sky. Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely true, and it is arbitrary and totally artificial, but it's going to take a little while to not think like that if we follow these guys advice, if you ask me. Yeah. We're talking specifically about a man named Honka. I'd say Hanky. Hanky? Yeah. I say Honka. It depends on where he's from. If you wanted to be wrong, you can say Honka. He's a Johns Hopkins University Professor of Physics. And there's another guy named Richard Khan. Henry. And they what propose is just a universal time, like I said, where everyone in the world agrees on one thing and that's to just set our clocks the same, which I am totally down for. It does make sense. Honka and Henry definitely have a really good idea here, which is we all set our clocks to Universal Time Coordinated UTC, which used to be called Greenwich Mean Time, which basically says the Primeridian that goes through Greenwich, England, is 0 hour. It's also called Zulu time because Z for zero in air trucker or plain speak is Zulu. Z is Zulu. I think you mean Zed. Zed, depending on who you're talking to. That's why they all just call it Zulu, because they couldn't agree on zero or Z. Right, right. But this is already happening, and like, the military has been doing this. Financial traders do this because it's just clearly the better way to go. It is. Because if it's it's 09:00 on the prime meridian, 09:00 A.m., then it would be 09:00 all over the world. The whole world is based on what time it is on the prime meridian. But here's the thing, and this is why it's hard to wrap your head around this kind of thing. That means then, that rather than it being 900 eventually associated with the morning in your land, wherever you are, 09:00 A.m. Might take on an entirely different meaning. Just a completely different meaning, because that 09:00 A.m. Might be at, what's, 02:00 A.m. To you now? Yeah. You just got to give up those things, man. Give it up. Right. We would have to totally decouple and it would be so difficult that I think Hank and Hinrai say that it would take about a generation for us to get used to it. And basically they're saying those of us alive today have to die off. And then the younger generation have to be raised like this for it not to be weird to eat breakfast at like 11:30 p.m. Or something like that, depending on where you are. Yes. And I think that's for a full, like, hey, it's a little weird for me to completely go away. I think inside a few years, everyone would just be like, all right, whatever. I used to call this 09:00 A.m., but now it's 12:00 p.m.. Right. And again, me, I've gone off before about I don't necessarily think it's arbitrary, but just the symbolic nature of a number is just something man has slapped on the moon. Time is an artificial human construct, for sure. And clocks, like, keeping time, is even more artificial. But there are some real upsides to this idea. It's all upside. Well, I think that getting used to it part will be really weird. Although it could be like such a distraction for the entire world that we might just forget about all this, the BS quagmire. Maybe a lot of us find ourselves and just be like, this is cool. Who knows? But some of the upsides are that if you live on the western edge of a time zone sure. You got to keep up with the eastern edge. And you typically suffer from sleep deprivation chronically as a result of living on the western edge of the time zone. That would be gone. Yeah. I think solely for business purposes and travel purposes, the benefits are just so outrageously strong that it just doesn't make any sense to do anything otherwise. So can you explain something to me? Sure. How does it get rid of something like jet lag? If we're still traveling to some other part of the world and the sun is still up or it's not up, and it should be for our biological clocks, how does having the time be the same help that do you understand that? I don't think it does. It all okay. Well, that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I think you would still be going to bed super early if you travel to La from the East Coast. It would just whatever symbol on your watch would be different. Yes. But just booking travel, booking conference calls, like anything, it would be nice to have to be like, well, this is 10:00 your time and 09:00 my time. It's just 10:00. Right. It's just 10:00 means different things to different people. Yes, exactly. There would be no more shootouts at high noon or we party till two in the morning. We party till seven at night. Right, exactly. All around the world, depending on where you are. It would totally take some getting used to. But I just think it's like, why not explore this? Well, because it would be a significant undertaking, but I guess it would be to get the whole world to throw away all this stuff and just start over on UTC. It would take some we can't even agree on the metric system, for Pete's sake. That's a good point, but I agree with you. I think it's neat and interesting, and I think it could probably, over time, be very beneficial or the rest of the world would do it in the United States wouldn't. Right. Which is kind of sort of what's going on. I mean, Europe is on a 24 hours clock, right? Yeah, I believe so. And I know the military in the United States, so it is kind of like metric. Like we do kind of secretly do metric on the down low here there. That's true. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay, well, if you want to know more about this, go find out about it yourself, because your stuff is done. Stuff you should know is a production of Iheartradios how Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-12-27-sysk-living-without-bank-account-with-tags-final.mp3 | Can you live without a bank account? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-you-live-without-a-bank-account | Seems like it would be nearly impossible to live without a bank account these days. But it is possible! Learn all about banking and personal finance in today's riveting episode. | Seems like it would be nearly impossible to live without a bank account these days. But it is possible! Learn all about banking and personal finance in today's riveting episode. | Tue, 27 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=8, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=362, tm_isdst=0) | 48435287 | audio/mpeg | "I was in the at and T store for an upgrade. I left with at and T's best deal on a smartphone and a choice of plan. But on my way out, here comes this new guy. A noncarrier phone and a plan that raised eyebrows. I felt for him when I tell you we left the store store grinning from ear to ear with the same deal. I love watching people prosper. You feel me? That's when I learned that whether you joined today or have been with at and T for years, they'll have the same best deals for everyone on every smartphone. Eligible plan required. Offers vary by device. Restrictions may apply. See att. Comdealsfordetails 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. San Francisco. The s YSK treat. Yes. San Francisco, Oakland, the entire Bay Area. And dare I say, all of Silicon Valley. We love you. And we're coming back to Sketchfest this year in January. Yes, we're going to be there on Sunday, January 15, at 01:00 p.m.. A very rare afternoon show, and we will be ready to go. So you guys better be drunk from the night before or getting drunk for that evening. However it crosses over, I think it will be proof positive that we endorse afternoon drinking. Yeah, a couple of drinks, maybe. Sure. Maybe a Bloody Mary. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah. We're promoting our show. Oh, that's right. So we're doing that show on January 15. You can go to the SF Sketch website to get tickets, and it's awesome. It's a great comedy festival. Lots of awesome shows that weekend and for the following weeks. So I encourage you to buy lots of tickets. Just buy ours first. Yeah. In hurry. Hurry. Because they're selling out fast. No joke. That's not a ploy. That's not a marketing ploy. No, they're really selling fast. We get emails every time. Guys, you told me to hurry. I didn't hurry. I'm shut out. And since this promo is petered out, it ends right now. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Nurse. Charles W, chuck Bryant. And it's just us. We've been abandoned this week. I know no one was in there for a second earlier, but it's like Home Alone. Boy, I love that movie. When it came out oh, yeah, yeah. I thought the sequence, the big break in sequence where he had everything rigged, that 15 or 20 minutes. I thought that was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. It was a pretty good movie. I just laughed and laughed and laughed. Was that a John Hughes movie? Yeah. Okay. Makes sense. Chicago suburbs setting. Sure. That he loved. Yes, he did. R-I-P-R-I-P. Chicago. Suburbs. No. Rip. John Hughes. Oh, I see. That makes way more sense. Yeah, it was just a couple of years ago, right? Not too long ago, for sure. Within the last five, I would say. Man, all those great movies. Crybaby In Flamingos. No. Apocalypse now. Yeah, he's good. Oh, wow. He passed away in 2009, so seven years ago. Wow. Yeah. I thought it was way more recent than that. Time flies in a world without John Hughes. You know, where time doesn't fly. Chuck at the beginning of our episode kind of drags. That's funny. So today we're talking about the possibility, the potential of living in this modern American life, this modern world in general, without a bank account. Yeah. This ended up being a little more interesting than I thought it was going to be. Oh, yeah. I'm glad that was the case. Is it less interesting than you thought it was going to be? No, but I mean, we've had some of those before. Like Jackhammers comes to mind. That was better than no, it was the opposite. I was like, Wait, there has to be more on Jack Hammers than this. No, that was your pick. Yeah, it was. They'll forever bear that cross. Yes. So you would think that banks in general is ubiquitous and huge and powerful and gross out of control as they are. Have been around for millions of years, right? Maybe not millions. Tens of thousands of years. Sure. It turns out, actually, that the bank the concept of the bank as we see it today is actually only about 500 or so years old. Yes. I would have guessed way older than that. Yeah. And I'm glad this article did a little history there because I didn't know any of this stuff. The first actual bank, kind of modern bank that we think of as a bank was the bank of St. George or the Banco de Sanjiorgio Nice in Genoa, Italy. Or is it Genoa? I've always seen Genoa. Genoa. Genoa. Genoa. And they point out in this article that wasn't the invention of banking because banking is different than a bank. Yeah, banking actually did start several thousand years ago, as far back as Mesopotamia and Egypt. And this article says that grain started to be kept in temples in a green bank. I saw gold. Oh, yeah. But the upshot of it was that these temples that were built were basically sacrosanct. The armies would protect them with their lives. So it would just make sense that if you wanted to store something extremely precious and valuable like gold, we'll just put in a temple. So the earliest reserve banks, I guess you could put it, were temples in Egypt and Mesopotamia. And then at some point, some of the local people or local rulers came along and said, hey, I really need some money. You guys have tons of gold just sitting in there. Can I borrow some of it and then I'll give you that amount back plus a little more for letting me borrow it. And they said, Why should we call this and they call it banking. Yeah. Do you know where that word came from? No, I don't either, because they probably didn't call it banking. They probably called it like suncro or something like that. So let's go back to 14 eight in Italy. And this is when Italy had city states. Oh, wait. I had more. I had more. Oh, you did? Yeah. Sorry. It actually is kind of interesting. All right, well, let me fire down the way back machine. Okay. Yeah, just keep it idling keep the AC on. Yeah. So you had the initial banking practices and they kept developing and developing, and then Greece and Rome really kind of took them and went to town with them. Things like book transactions where you could go into a bank in one city and deposit some money, and then the bank would handle arranging credit for you in another city, so you didn't have to travel from one city to another, which is very dangerous with a bunch of money on you. The book transaction, that came from the Greeks and the Romans and things were going along smoothly, and then Rome fell and it was replaced by the Holy Roman Empire, which was the Christian Empire. And Christianity had this very strict rule against usury, and usury today means extremely high interest rates, whereas at the origin of the word, it meant just charging interest at all. So there was no money whatsoever in banking, so there weren't any bankers. Well, the Jewish faith didn't have any rules against usury. So as the Holy Roman Empire was in power for these several hundred years, they fulfilled the banking industry until finally, about the 13th and 14th century when the Italians started to get into it and they kind of created that modern banking system that we see today. Can I get back in? Yeah. Can we go to 14 eight? Yes. Specifically, March 14 eight. This is like I teased before in Italy. This is at the time of the city state when you would go to war with one another within your own country. Specifically in this case, Genoa was getting trot upon by Venice long, long war with Venice big rivals. And basically, as what happens many times in war is it sort of bled that city state of Genoa dry and it was in bad shape. So these folks got together. I did look it up. I can't remember who it was, though. The initial investors that started the bank of St. George, and they said, hey, let's create this thing. And like literally in a building, it will be a bank and we can finance repayment of all these war debts and earn a little 7% on top interest on top of it all. And in fact, I got a better idea why don't we even have the power to go and collect a city taxes and customs and stuff to make sure we get paid back? And it worked. Yeah, it did. They brought Genoa out of bankruptcy and apparently the bank went on until the 19th century. Yeah. Like 400 years. The bank of St. George. It's really cool. Yeah, it is cool. One of the reasons probably why it was successful is that the people who were overseeing it were directly invested into the bank substantially. Like, if you were one of the treasurers, you had to invest at least 16,000 lira, which is several hundred thousand dollars in today's money, directly into the bank. Right. So you wanted to see that bank succeed like crazy because you were directly invested in it. And if the bank went under, you stood to lose quite a bit. That's not the case with banks today. I mean, companies, and I'm sure including banks, too, like their employees to be invested in the company. But certainly it's not a requirement that you have several hundred thousand dollars worth of your company's stock to be a director of the bank. Right. And then the bank itself can very easily be overextended just because of what are called reserve requirements. Right. Yeah. We should do like a whole episode on banking, by the way. Yeah. Boy. Especially that big fallout recently with Wells Fargo oh, about the fake accounts. Yeah. Dude, have you seen that ad that they have about it? Oh, no, they have this ad, and it's almost like they shaved off the first 5 seconds where they admit that their people created all these fraudulent accounts. Right. And then the ad comes in at everyone who is affected will be fully refunded. We want to gain your trust back. But they never say specifically what they're talking about. Like, they never cop to it. It's bizarre. You know that thing, it makes it stand out like a sore thumb, I need to say. Right. Yeah. It's an oily weasley ad, and they have it like they've got the Wells Fargo guy, like, running in the background to distract you and make you think about your childhood playing with stage coaches and stuff. Yeah. And Elizabeth Warren is somewhere like blood dripping out of her eyeballs in her living room. Yeah. Elizabeth Warren, Circuit 2010. Right. No, I mean, she's watching the commercial and crying blood tears. No, I'm saying Elizabeth Warren Circus 2010 would have I think these days she's like, whatever. No, man, she laid into them. Did she go after him? Oh, yeah, you got to see that video. It was pretty awesome. Well, good for her. When was that made? When she lambasted him? Yeah, it was right after it happened. It was like a month or two ago. Okay. Because I feel like she was a little more lionized in the last several years than she has been lately. Yeah, she went after specifically I mean, she just read the riot act to the CEO. That's good. And was like, are you going to give back your bonus money? She's like, this happened on your watch. Why don't you give that money back? He was like, Are you talking to me? One of the things I wanted to say, though, about banks that is just such in such stark contrast to the idea where you used to have to contribute your own money, the reserve requirements of banks. I was looking into this, chuck, are you ready? Yes. If there's a 10% reserve requirement that a bank has, and they have $100, they can loan out 90 of that $100 to somebody, right? Okay, so they have a 10% in reserve. Now, let's say that that person writes a check for that $90. Like they borrowed that $100. They borrowed that $90 to pay off a debt. So they write a check for that $90 to somebody who banks with that bank, so that $90 comes right back to that bank. Right. They can loan $81, 90% of that, and so on and so forth until this $100 chunk can be like loaned and repaid and loan and repaid all over the place, which makes sense, and it keeps everything kind of going financially. But the problem is if something happens, if a panic sets in this is why runs on banks are such travesty. And everybody calls in their loan all at once. Well, there's a lot of people who are calling in that one single $100 rather than having the time to pay it back and then calling in from somebody else and use that to pay the other person back. It's just a big cluster all at once. Oh, wow. That makes sense. That's just one of the many interesting things about banks. Yeah. I mean, there are clearly other podcasts that we should tie to this one, I think. Sure. But since this one is about not banking, we'll take a break here, they'll withdraw our funds, and we'll be right back. 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. 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 all right, so if you live in modern society today, it is pretty tough to get by without a bank. Most cases these days you have well, I don't know about most cases, but in many cases you have automatic deposits of your work checks. Sure. A lot of people pay their bills wirelessly, online, directly from their bank. You might have a student loan, you might have a car loan, you might have your house mortgage, you might pay your credit card bills. All this stuff is running through a bank, most likely. And you would think it's probably impossible to not have a bank account these days. And I would say pretty much all Americans have them. Not true. Well, pretty much all Americans do. Like 93% do. Yeah, but that's not all. No, it's true. Yeah. 7% of Americans do not have bank accounts. About 9 million people last year in 2015 did not have bank accounts. 9 million people is a lot of people. No, it really is. And apparently that's household sorry, not people. Yeah, right. You're that is a big distinction, too. And the FDIC said, man, that's the lowest since we've been tracking this by far. And someone said, well, how long have you been tracking this? They said, well, the last six years. Really? Yeah, which I'm like. Really? That's when they started tracking it, but apparently so 2009. So if you want another number, the 9 million American households don't have bank accounts at all, then there are 25 million households in addition to that. So that makes almost like 34 million households, which that's a substantial number at this point. Sure. The 25 million are what's called underbanked, meaning they may have a bank account, but they don't use the bank account. Yeah. They don't use it because they are probably afraid of overdraft fees. Or they have maybe a bank account that got grandfathered in so that they don't have to pay minimum amount fees. And who knows? There's all sorts of reasons for people to not use a bank account that they have, but probably cheap among them is overdressed, which you'll talk more about. Yeah. And the majority of these underbank people in the United States are poor, usually. A lot of times they're minorities, a lot of times they're less educated. And these communities, there's a few reasons why they may not want to use a bank one. Maybe they don't trust banks. And if you look in the history of the United States or certainly even we're just talking about the Wells Fargo scandal, when you see stuff like that on the news, it should be upsetting to everyone. But obviously if you're poor and you don't have a lot of money, that may scare you into not wanting to use a bank at all. Right? Yeah. And another one is that the overdraft fee? Basically, I guess in 2001, the current overdraft fee idea, scam, you could call it, was set up as a way to generate, like, way more money for banks. Right? Yeah. And the way that overdraft fees generate money for banks is when you are overdrafted on your account, they can charge you a fee for covering that amount. Right. And then you still have to deposit that amount, but they don't return your check. They cover the check that you paid, but they charge you a fee, say, like $35 for that amount. And it seems fine and dandy and everything is fine, but there's something called clearing checks from high to low right, okay. Where the bank will clear checks in descending order of value. So if you have $100 in your bank account and you have a check out for $150, check out for $25, a check out for five, and a checkout for $15, right? Yes. If they cleared the lower amounts first and then the last one, only the last one would bounce and create an overdraft fee. Right. If they start with the bigger one, well, you got an overdraft fee right out of the gate, but then you also have three more because the other smaller checks all balanced as well. And so instead of one overdraft fee, they get to charge you for overdraft fees. And that was a huge thing when that was finally reported and exposed, and that actually resulted in that rule that now I think you have to opt in for overdraft protection, whereas before you had to opt out. Yeah. I remember back in the day when I was broke as a back and I would overdraft things here and there, I remember I knew nothing about how things worked with finances. Still don't, really, but I just remember thinking, like, I would rather it say, no, you don't cover me and then charge me. Just say, no, you don't have the funds. Right. That's the smart way to do it. So I never understood I think they even called it overdraft insurance. Maybe at the time, I might be making it up. I seem to remember them saying that, and I was like, I don't want that. Just let the check bounce and I'll take it up with them. Yes. The way it was marketed, though, was like, hey, we value you. We want to make sure that you can pay all your bills. So if something happens and you're overdrafted we'll cover it. We're just going to charge you a fee. And it sounds good, but again, when you go from high to low and all of a sudden your overdraft fees go from one to four or five or however many, that's a huge problem. Well, and the people that are overdrafting and the people that are at least able to afford those fees. Exactly. So it's a disproportionate burden on the poor, which makes it, as a scam, one of the more evil scams around. Yes. It's just wrong, then the idea that if you open an account, you should not opt in for overdraft protection. And it's easy to say when you're talking about checks for, like you're writing a check for a Mountain Dew and some cheetos. Yeah, who cares if you're short for that? You can go without that. But when you're talking about your rent check or like an actual grocery bill or something like that, it sucks that you can't get that stuff. But it's better to have to put a couple of things back than to pay $35 for one $2 item that you went over by, right? Yeah, that's a good point. And this was in my case, too. This is also back in the day when you I mean, a lot of times it was a mystery how much you had in your account. Right. Like, you couldn't just get on your phone before you write the check and be like, oh, well, no, I don't have enough money to cover this. Yeah, because even if you balanced your checkbook, sometimes you forgot to carry the one, it wasn't always 100% accurate. And if you had a life, you didn't necessarily rectify your bank checkbook every day. Oh, wait, what is balancing a checkbook mean? Seriously? Yeah. Thank God for my wife. So another reason you might avoid a bank is philosophically. There may be a longstanding distrust of banks in your family that you don't want to put your money in, or you may just want to be like, you know what? I don't want to take part in this modern society. I want to kind of drop out a bit. And a really good first move is to shut your bank account down. That's a big statement. Oh, yeah, it is. But a lot of people that are underbanked and don't have accounts aren't there on purpose. It's not some philosophical statement. A lot of times it's simply because they are poor and they don't have a lot of alternatives. Yeah. And the other thing about not having a bank account, not only do you not have a bank account, you also are, like, basically just avoiding banks altogether. There's plenty of other things that banks offer, like loans and mortgage, lollipops, stuff like that. Yeah. Maybe some free nasty coffee. So when you don't have a banking account, that's like the most basic unit of the banking world. Right. If you don't have that, you obviously aren't going to be exposed to all these other things that can help. Things like build your credit history through like a revolving loan or a mortgage or a car loan or something like that that you can build up your credit for and ultimately save money. So when you don't have a bank account, for whatever reason, you are effectively out of the banking system. The problem is you can live parallel to the banking system outside of it, but it can be really dangerous, especially if you're just dealing with cash, because that cash has to stay somewhere, whether it's on you or in your mattress or in a coffee can in your backyard. You're exposed for having that readily available to anybody who finds it or comes into your house with a gun to get it. Yes. Which is another thing that sucks. Yeah, there's no insurance for that. If you lose your cash, you lose your cash. So one thing that people rely on sometimes these days as an alternative source for a loan at least, is something called the payday lender. You might have seen these little brick and mortar shops with the neon sign in the window, cash now available to you next business day, stuff like that. You can go to these places. It's a quick application process. It won't affect your credit score. Sometimes they'll say that if it doesn't and you can get money like the next business day, if you want $300, you can go in there and get $300. But you're going to pay a fee on that and it's big. They say the fees, if you pay back within eight days, it works out. If you put it on a scale of Apr annual percentage rate of like 380% is what you're paying on that loan. I saw one for $100 loan on Cash NETUSA site for a $100 loan paid back in eight days for their flat fee and the interest you pay, 684%. It's one of those things. Then when you see this and you're like, man, how can you not look at it as building poor people out of more money? Well, some people who use payday Lenders say, hey, if you look at this, when you look at their rates and terms, it's all laid out. It's not some crazy percentage I have to figure out and come up with compounding interest or anything like that. It says if you borrow $100, you have to pay us back $115. There's like a $10 service fee and then for $100, it's $5 in interest. Right. So that's what you owe us is $115. It doesn't require a lot of thought. There's not a lot of wiggle room for them to add more fees or anything like that. You know what you have to pay back. But that said, they very quickly can comprise a trap, a payday lending trap that people get caught in, especially when they start rolling over loans. Yeah, and when I said it's, like, hard to not look at it that way, because it just feels like, hey, these people have their backs up against the wall and they really need $200. Exactly. So you can come get it from us. But then, of course, there are another complete other set of people that say, yeah, dude, that's the deal. And you know what? Don't use that place then. Right. The thing is, some people are saying, okay, that's a valid philosophy, but you need to have an alternative that's fair for people, because people need loans. People get overextended, emergencies come up. There's just things that people need money for legitimately and they shouldn't have to be preyed upon. So one of the alternatives that's been proposed is to get the regular standard banking industry involved in small short term loans. What? A payday loan is six to ten times less, right? Exactly. But as far as the banks concerned, the customer would still be paying way more than what the standard Apr that a normal bank charges, but to the customer, it would be way less than what they're paying to the payday lending place. I'm not sure why banks aren't into this yet. I don't know. I got the impression that there might be some regulation that prevents them from being involved or they're just not interested. But that seems to be the key because that also would seem to be a pretty good gateway to getting people who want to have a bank account into the banking network by starting out with a small loan. You would think so. You would. What else? Prepaid credit cards. Those are more and more popular these days. You can get them at a convenience store. You can load money onto it, use it like a regular old debit card. When I say credit card, debit card. Right. And it's just what you think it is here's the deal with those, is they are really easy to scam. In 2013, the Federal Trade Commission got 85,000 complaints, totalling $43 million in scam frauds with debit cards. What do you mean? Like, they're almost impossible to track anything after purchase, impossible to trace. So it's really easy. It's like a prime opportunity for someone to scam someone. Like, if someone says, hey, we request payment from a prepaid debit card, then once they have that information, they can just go use it. And it's not like they have some bank behind it that can trace it and track it down. Got you. It's just a really easy way to scan people out of money. Right. And that's just one of the problems with them. Well, despite that, they've grown incredibly in popularity in the US. Between 2003 and 2012, the amount deposited on prepaid debit cards went from 1 billion to $65 billion. Between, what, 2003 and 2012? Nine years? Up to $65 billion. Right. From 1 billion. And despite the easy scam ability, but also getting kind of scammed by the people. Who legitimately run these prepaid debit card companies. Apparently, there's fees for everything from loading your card, which you usually do at an ATM, using an ATM, checking your balance. There's just a lot of additional fees that really kind of quickly sapped the amount of money on your prepaid debit card. So, fortunately, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau stepped in, and as of last month is that December yet? Yeah, tomorrow. Okay, so as of October of 2016, there's new rules that say that if you are prepaid debit card company, you have to disclose your terms up front. You have to let people find out their balance for free, cut down on some of the fees. They have to be able to have the option to not have overdraft charges, overdraft protection. It's a lot more regulated now as of last month. Yeah, but I wonder, what if it's the same thing as, like, banking? If they're like, sure, we'll disclose that in a 50 page document that no one ever reads. What they need to do is say how they need to disclose this. Yeah, that's true. Some guys to come to your house, maybe bring a little dinner and just tell you straight up, all right, I got a little worked up, so I'm going to go splash my face with eggnog and I'll be right back after this. 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 Comaircover for Hosts. 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. All right, Chuck, so let's say that you don't feel like getting scammed by anybody? No, you just want to be free. Yeah. What can you do? What are some of the things you can do? Well, there are a few things that you can do. You can try an alternative currency. Okay. If you want to be really weird. Canadian dollars is what you mean. No, I'm talking about well, we've talked about Bitcoin. Is that even still a thing? Did that go out? No, it's still pretty much a thing. Yeah. Okay. I think it's just maturing and growing constantly. So we did episode on Bitcoin, but I had no idea that there are alternative currencies in communities all over the world, but right here in the US. Had no idea. And it's a really cool thing, I think. Yeah. Like Berkshires. You looked into Berkshire's, right? Yeah. Berkshire's, very clever name because it is western Massachusetts, and the Berkshires launched in 2006. They have 16 branch offices and four local banks that support where you can actually get a Berkshire trade in your money for Berkshires. 400 participating businesses. That's great. So here's what it is, and in fact, I'm even going to read directly from their website because it just makes a lot more sense. It can get a little convoluted. Can we get some background music here, Jerry? You probably should. Something Berkshire. So there's a 5% discount, and here's how it works. They follow $100 through a day to explain it. Tell us when you start the quote. I'm ready. Here we go. You go to a bank and you purchase your Berkshires because you want to go to a restaurant that night. Let's say you go in with $95 and you say, I would like to exchange this. So they give you 100 Berkshires back. Yeah. Right. So you go to your dinner. Your dinners will say $100. Right on the nose. The restaurant takes your Berkshires, takes all 100 of them. You pay your whole bill in your Berkshires. And so you have actually spent $95 for a $100 meal. So you've gotten your little 5% discount, then. The owner of that restaurant has that 100 Berkshires. They want to deposit that for real money, or let's just say US dollars, return them to that bank, they bring them to the bank, and the bank deposits that 100 Burke shares and gives the restaurant the $95, the same $95 that you exchange. So in the end, you get that 5% discount because of that initial exchange. That same $95 you traded for the Berkshires goes to the business where you spend it. Yeah. And that's the key to this whole alternative hyper local currency, is that it's intended to keep goods and services within the community. Yeah. Because you can't go spend a Berkshire anywhere else but the Berkshires. They'll say, what is this weird looking bill? Yeah. Where are you from, the future or something? And it's actually very cool looking. It's not weird looking. Sure. I looked it up. The one Berkshire unit is Mahikan, the original inhabitants of the Berkshires. Nice. The five is W-E-B dubois. Wow. Born in Barrington. The ten is Robin Van N, co founder of the community supported agricultural movement indian Line Farm. This just keeps getting better. The 20 is Herman Melville. Awesome author of Moby Dick. Of course, the 50 is Norman Rockwell. Neat. Is it a Rockwell painting of Rockwell? No, it's just Rockwell. Okay. And then the 1000 Berkshire. It's a photo of him drunk on a couch. Yeah, pretty much. The 1000 Berkshire is John Hodgman. He's a national treasure. Not just a Berkshire treasure. No, I'm just kidding. There is no $1,000. But it's cool. They have their own money, and it just is a really cool thing. Like, you're spending, like I said, 400 participating businesses. So it seems like a really successful program. And there's a lot of others. There's the Toronto Dollars Salt Spring Dollar, ithaca Hours. But the Berkshire seems to be, like, one of the more robust programs. Yeah, I mean, I'd heard of it before. I hadn't heard of the other ones. I think Detroit has one as well. But the Berkshires I'd heard of before, so it must be doing pretty well. Well, and this is nothing new into the early 1900, local currencies were a big thing. Oh, yeah. Like every bank could legally print money before the federal government finally said, no. We're really the only ones who can print money. There are, I think, like a hundred or a thousand or 10,000 or some ridiculous amount of currencies in the United States up until, like, the 1860s. Yeah. That's crazy. What about the Mpesa? Have you heard of that before? I hadn't heard of that, but it's really pretty cool as well. So Mpesa stands for mobile Pesa. Pesa means money in swahili, and it's this kind of new alternative currency that's come up in Kenya in the last few years. Right? Yeah. And it's for mobile. Right. I forgot that part. It's very key. So, in Kenya, most people don't have bank accounts, but they do have cell phones, and they rely on cash a lot. Well, as we said before, cash can be very dangerous. There's all sorts of bad guys out there who need or want cash for their own, but don't feel like going out and doing anything for it aside from robbing somebody. Right. So cash is dangerous no matter where you are, and Mpesa gets around that by allowing the people with the cell phone I think it's the country's biggest cell phone provider who's created this, and you can go to one of the cell phone companies, Kiosks. There's like 100,000 of them around the country, and you can say, here's some money. I'd like it deposited as credit on my phone. And all of a sudden, you have a phone full of money. The cool thing is you can take that money and transfer it via text to somebody else's phone. And it's as simple as that. It's as simple as that. You go load up your money or your phone with some money at a kiosk, and then it's up to you to spend that money however you want. And you can use your phone to pay things like for groceries, for water, for goods and services, all using your phone. It's basically what everyone who's thinking about the future of money thinks of when they think of the future of money. There's not going to be dollar or anything like that. It's all going to just be credits associated with your name. In this case, with the MPAiSA in Kenya. It's associated with your phone number. Yeah. And it's a big deal now. It's not just in Kenya. It's in Tanzania, Mozambique, Egypt, Lucia, Ghana, India, democratic Republic of Congo. And then even in a couple of Eastern European countries now, Albania and Romania. They don't think it'll spread west, but you never know. It's a much bigger deal than anyone thought it was going to be, I think. Well, supposedly there's a big push to keep it from spreading westward by the banking industry, because one of the things that makes it so attractive is there's really low overhead involved in this. And so the cell phone company is charging very little interest or fees. So it's way cheaper to borrow or get or use money through the MPA system than it is through traditional banks. Apparently, MPZ is just kicking their butts all over the place. Yes. And of course, what has happened then is that the banking lobby has started barking all over the world to block things like Mpeza from coming into their market. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Because they would just completely undermine them. And again, this is basically the future of money, that there's credits associated with your name. Yeah. Which, I mean, if you bank virtually online, where you get your paycheck electronically and you pay your bills over websites and all that, you're already there. Basically, it's just dressed up to kind of look like what you think of as money, too, but it's still just credit and numbers associated with your name. And in this case, bank account numbers. This is just with your phone. And it also removes the bank because it puts it on your phone. So it's up to you a lot more closely. Shout out to our episode on currency. Yeah, that was a good one. Shout out. So then there's this other thing. If you want to get a little more hippie dippy, even if you thought Berkshire's were crunchy, prepare for this. Yeah. Get ready for time banking. Time banking is the thing where it's give and take an exchange of services, with the core principle being it's all equal. So if I babysit for your kid, you build my deck and the hours are the same, the value per hour is the same. Right. No matter what you're doing it's an hour of your time and effort. So it sounded kind of cool. It's like a barter service exchange where basically all you have to do is get people to agree on that core principle, and then you have kind of the same cool thing going on in your community. So I went to their website, and there's a map you can view by map, like the places where you can time bank. And I clicked on boy, I feel like I clicked on about 50 of them, and none of them had any activity within, like, three or four years. I can see that. So I don't know if time banking took off, like they thought. And so then I thought, you know what? Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. I was like, let's go to Burlington, Vermont. And sure enough, Burlington had some time banking going on in the last week. Okay, but other places in Vermont didn't. I was like, Let me go to some really crunchy towns. And a couple of them looks like they were still using it, but it doesn't look like I don't know when this article is written, but I'm not sure how viable it still is. Well, I mean, I like the sentiment. Yeah, it's a concept. It's cool. But are all hours of or all types of effort equal, though? If you agree that they are, they are. Yeah, sure. In that case, for sure. But it just seems ripe for introducing, like, leeches and hard feelings and resentment and stuff like that. Yeah, well, you fix my fridge, I'll watch your driveway. What do you mean? I'll stand out there and watch it. Make sure it's good. I'm a driver. Watcher it's an hour. Did you say watcher? No, watcher rain showers. Said we can't challenge each other's hours and then we got to finish up with this dude, Mark Boyle, the Moneyless Man. Yes. I thought, this is pretty admirable. Yeah, he's written a couple of books. One called I think the first one was called The Moneyless Man colon. A year of free economic living. Then a more recent one called What Have I Done? Called The Moneyless Manifesto, both of which are available for purchase, I noticed. But the money doesn't go to him. They just dump it into a landfill and it goes to him. But I don't want to flag him. He does offer it completely free online. Oh, that's cool. If you want to read it for free, it said, or if you'd like to support the author, you can buy the paper back for 21 95. So he basically just said, I'm going to live without money for three years? Yeah, it's like an experiment. Have you ever heard of AJ. Jacobs? Is that the guy who traded up from a pay per click to a house? No, he's a writer in New York that has done I think they call it stunt writing, which cheapens it a bit. I think, because he's awesome. But yeah, he'll do things like he did one called The Year of Living Biblically, where he completely just lived according to the Bible's practices and stuff like that. So AJ. Is probably down with this Mark Boyle guy. Except AJ. Lives in New York, so he wouldn't look moneyless. Yeah. Mark Boyle went out to the woods, right? Yeah. Well, AJ. Listens to the show. Hey, AJ. How's it going? Yeah, so this Mark Boyle may listen to the show. Who knows? It is free, but he went out and lived in the woods and sustained himself through farming, foraging and bartering. Right. And he basically just said, Money doesn't exist to me. Not like you could give me money and I can use it for something like that. Like, he just didn't use money at all. And apparently he said he was way happier during this time, but it made him more creative. He had to get by with his personality or honest personality, so he had to make sure it was a good one. Yeah, that really jumped out at me as something beneficial. I didn't think about that. He literally was like, my currency was me and my character. Right. And how can you not work on that, if that's what you're counting on? You can't be a jerk to everybody. Right. You got to be a good person. Yeah. No one wants to give a jerk a free bag of carrots. That's a T shirt. Sure. He's Irish, by the way, too. Which means he's a great person. Maybe he was at a show in Dublin that wasn't free. No. I guess he could have snuck in this theft count. I wouldn't mind. He would have had to have explained himself, though. We take stowaways. We do? Sure. Don't encourage that. We didn't talk about this. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Let's see. Don't feed your baby's junk food or alcohol. Wise words across the board. No matter the episode, the greed. If you want to know more about living without a bank account, you can type those words in the search bar@housetofworks.com. And since I said housetofworks time for listener mail, call this cool email from CoolKit. Hey, guys. I am. Ryan Gunsyirovsky, 16 years old. I've been listening to your show since 2010, when I was just ten years old. Cool. Absolutely. I wanted to email you guys for so long, and I'm finally doing that. I found your show through my cousin, and when I first started listening, I downloaded all the podcasts to my small ipod. All it could hold, and I listened almost every night before I go to sleep or to go to sleep with wonderful learning and entertainment. And you two are masters of I like this kid all over the place. I do too. Last year you came to Philadelphia for the live show on public relations, and I was there. I was in awe to see you do your show live. When I was there, it got me thinking I should complete my task of emailing both of you. So he came up with an idea on how to share his story of how he's diagnosed with type one diabetes on August 7, 2014. He said, with that game, a different world than the one I knew before. It was tough, but I knew that others with type one have had it so much harder than I. I'm doing well, and I'm healthy, which is something I'm proud of. Another reason I'm writing is maybe you could take this on as a topic, maybe a two parter, type one as one part and type two as another. Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea. Reason I want to make that request is that a lot of people don't understand the difference between the two, and you two are being the best at explaining things that I know. I thought you could totally explain it. Excellently. Man, this kid has mastered flattery. He's the best. I like this guy a lot. You have shaped my mind. You two have shaped my mind from the very start. Keep doing what you're doing and keep being the best. Much love, ryan gunsyorowski from Pennsylvania. Thanks a lot, Ryan. We appreciate that. If you want to put this on list or mail, I wouldn't mind. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. What a cool guy. Yeah, he's a cool dude. Ryan, we appreciate it. We will put that on the great list of ideas, and maybe we'll do that one day. Yeah. And you know what, Ryan? If we ever come back and do a show in Philly or anywhere near you that you can get to, you, my friend, are on the guest list. Oh, nice. You'll just have to remind us of that by writing it and saying, hey, give me free tickets. In the subject line. Chuck will be like, wait, who are you? You'll have to show us some ID. Though, because there are so many people who will try to fake it now. Yes, and you will probably have to come with your parent, and that'll probably be who the tickets are left under. Okay, so we've hammered all this out. This is a thrilling end to this episode. Yes. If you want to get in touch with us, like cool dude Ryan did, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh Clark. And then the official SYSK one is s YSK podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at charlesw Chuck Bryant or stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housedeverts.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by 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. 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." | |
Geysers: Nature's Innuendo | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/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 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 episode. | Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:52:55 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=15, tm_min=52, tm_sec=55, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=192, tm_isdst=0) | 25146174 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Kabloom. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's, Charles. You Chuck Bryant, and this is stuff you should know. Yeah. Just a couple of regular guys are sitting around chatting. I was good. I know. I genuinely didn't think you were going to say geysers. Really? Yes. 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. Yeah. 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'd spit out lemonade, first of all, and I thought there was a little guy down there doing it. Oh, got you, Leprechaunts. 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 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 I was 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. Yeah. 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 yemengu Valley. Nice. That's good. And it killed all four people and carried them more than a mile away. Yeah. That is sad. And after we explain how geysers work, I think that we should mention that again, because once I understood how guys 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 pretty bad way to go to geothermal Earth property. 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 because when you're talking geyser, you don't ever just talk guys or you're also talking funerals, you're talking hot springs, 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? 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 detached to them it's family. That's right, it's 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 snowmelt percolating through the Earth's crust over 500 or a thousand 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, very old, like in the throes of death volcanic activity, how is that right? Yes. And it can be anything from magma to cool 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 ryelite. 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 riot 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 Ryllite 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 guys 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. For 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. Right? 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, enters 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 from 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 Ryolite, which makes it watertight 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? The weather is so juicy, so water is standard. 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, and it's getting hotter and hotter and hotter a lot of time. Yeah, I guess it depends. But for a 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, then that heat increases. You can reach temperatures of like 4500 deg 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 global 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 steamed 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 skys are 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 guys are pal. Yeah. All of a sudden all the steam in the water just gets shot out. Depending on what kind of guys there it is. It's going to take different formations and be different heights and lasts 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 is that pressure and it shoots out, the whole process just begins again. And you have guys 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 scheduled 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 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 asked for tips on seeing it and 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 the famous geysers, right? Yeah. Actually, quickly, I mentioned I teased about the fourth thing being 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 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. 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 stroker ace. Right. So stroker geyser is after the Icelandic 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 G-E-Y-S-I-R geyser. That's how I pronounce it in Icelandic. Sure. I wonder how bureauc pronounces geyser. Have you seen Kristen Wiggs impression of her? It'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's 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 a little steam valve so it doesn't explode. Right. The guys aren't supposed to have that, right? If they have that, they just don't go off. They're like, well, fine, I'll just let some steam off, put 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 manmade. No, they're natural. They're like little steam releases that come up through fissures. Okay. In the Earth. I thought you meant we put those in to make old faithful, like, safers. No, they happen naturally. 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 People is a cone geyser. I'm not sure I understand the difference. That's a good difference. Is it the outlet, like the shape of the thing above the Earth? Yeah. So with the cone guys, where 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 jet going into the air like hundreds of feet. That one in New Zealand. The YM. Go Geyser. That one stream 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 is 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 was like a rock star that overdue on heroin or something. But anyway, as I was saying, the cone shoots a jet into the air. The fountain shoots in a much more like chaotic stream or 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 would 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 geyser, which is the OG geyser because that's where the word came from. It's a geyser in Iceland. It was discovered in 1294, so it's the oldest known geyser on 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. 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 it? About changing his name? 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 release 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's basically like, I'll show you crazy, so I need to get out of this contract. Boy, one of the best concerts I've ever seen. 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 you me a 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 playing like, I'm going to go over here. Bottled water, evendo Miles. David. Okay, let me think about that. Sorry, Ed. So that's Prince. Oh, yeah. And geysers. Yeah, geysers, too. If you want to learn more about geysers, you can type that word. G-E-Y-S-E-R-S. It'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 barhostofworks.com, which means it's time for plug fest. 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. Sounds 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. So 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 of 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 it says, right? I have to say, in my line of work, violence was not the norm, but intimidation by the employer is 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. Like trying to oh, yeah. That's pretty hairy. Even once when we were organizing at a Catholic hospital, they told the workers they were going against God. They tried to organize. Yeah. Can you see those preach 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, not 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 of the lives lost due to locked 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 him back, and it turns out ade ed is his name. Fox is running for Brooklyn city council. Crazy. I said, you know what, dude? We'll plug your campaign. Wedefox.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 from 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 know, 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. Comstuffysheanow and you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camera memory. It's ready. Are you." | ||
d6afc9ea-3620-11ea-822e-4f72062572ff | Short Stuff: Modern Funerals | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-modern-funerals | The way we deal with our dead has changed a lot over the past 50 years. Learn all about it in 12-15 minutes right here. | The way we deal with our dead has changed a lot over the past 50 years. Learn all about it in 12-15 minutes right here. | Wed, 16 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=351, tm_isdst=0) | 12219498 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Jerry's floating around out there somewhere. And Dave C is here in spirit. So the gang is all ready to go with Short Stuff. Let's talk about funerals. Let's talk about you being dead. Let's talk about all the good things and the bad things that happen to your head after you die. Yeah, man, we should just stop in this episode because it'll be the best episode in the history of the show. All right, well, that's it for Short Stuff, everybody. Short Stuff is out. Oh, wait, we got to stop for an ad break. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. So we're talking about funerals, and we've talked a little bit about this stuff over the years in our death suite, and I think we actually did one on things to do with a dead body way back in the day. Oh, yeah, we've talked a lot about this kind of stuff. But the notion that we're tackling today is that since the 1960s and up until the 1960s, and especially American Christian people had one kind of funeral, and that was largely dictated, aka. Shoved down our throats by the funeral industry. If you wanted to fit in in America, you had to be presented upon your death in a certain way. That meant being embalmed, put in a suit or dress, whatever your preference was, and be presented in a casket, usually open for, like, your friends and family to dress in black and come kind of grieve over you. And it's a very solemn, unhappy affair. When was the last time, not to get too personal, but that you had to go to an open casket scene? I don't remember, honestly. It's been a while for me. Yeah, I genuinely don't remember because it is kind of like old school, but it still happens every once in a while. I don't remember, Chuck, but I have been ever since I was a little kid. My mom was like, it's time for you to learn about death. I was like, I'm only two. She's like, yeah, it's a little late, frankly. Yeah. All I know is the last few that I've been to and in fact, most that I've ever been to, which haven't been that many, I have always just been like, do you want to go up and say goodbye to your grandmother? I've always been like, no, I've done that in my head, in my heart, so I do not need to go see that weird powdery waxy figure that looks nothing like her in real life. Do you want to go smell Grandma's hair one last time? God, yeah. I've never been into it, and we're both kind of on record with that over our shows over the years. But this whole thing started to kind of change with a book in 1063 that I kind of want to read now from Jessica Mitford called The American Way of Death, where she really kind of exposed the US funeral home industry as being not so great. Yeah. Basically, she portrayed it as an entire industry built around taking advantage of people in a really predatory way during a really vulnerable moment when they're grieving, when they're at their weakest, these scales come in and start being like, well, of course you need this. And the deceased would want that. The platinum package. Right. You got, like, the cash register, dollar sign, cartoon wolf eyes. That's basically how she portrayed. I think she wrote an article at first, and it got very little attention, and then it was turned into a book. I think she went on TV and it ended up becoming a book and really had a huge effect on how people viewed funerals from that point on. Yeah. And I guess maybe we should just caveat this now and say, if we have listeners that work in the funeral industry, we're not coming after you here. This was a book that was written in the we realize it's a business, a for profit business, and upselling is part of that business. And it just takes on a bit of, I guess, sort of an untoward feeling when it's dealing with people while they're grieving. But that's also the business you're in. So I'm not slamming you. If you work for if I have one across the street, they're very nice people. I live across from a funeral home. That's lovely. But having said that, stop it now. Things have changed a lot over the years. In the 1960s, the cremation rate was 3%, which is astounding, and now it's 51%, and it's going to go up to about 57% or 58% by 2022, it seems like. Yeah. That was a big effect that Mitford had with her book, The American Way of Death. It was like you just did not get cremated before then. And then all of a sudden and she by the way, she had a very cheap funeral, including being cremated. I read that she spent less than, I think, $800 in today's dollars nice. On her own funeral. But because of this, it kind of made it okay to not go through all this rigorole and to not even, like, preserve the body. And I was reading about that, preserving the body. There's this idea that had been around for a really long time. I don't know if it was so that you look your best when God told everybody, stand up in their graves and be judged or what? Yes, that guy. But apparently it was Abraham Lincoln that really kicked off the American trend for embalming. He had his son embalmed. He was a big devotee of embalming. And then when he was embalmed and he made a whistle stop tour after death, that was, like, the first time a lot of Americans ever saw an embalmed body. And it basically started this trend that lasted for a good century or more. Yeah, so let's take a break and we'll talk about kind of how this cultural shift fit in with all the other cultural shifts that were happening in the 1960s right after this. All right, so 1960s, come along. This book is written in the early sixty s. The counterculture arrives, people start doing drugs, start exploring different kinds of spirituality, including what they think about the afterlife. And sort of one of the natural things that happened was funerals started to change a little bit, to kind of lean toward more what we think of them today in today's terms. Yeah, that was a big part of it. This idea of taking acid and thinking about being involved is not they don't really go hand in hand, you know what I'm saying? That's a really easy way to decouple yourself from the traditional ideas of funerals is to take LSD I only inject heroin into my body band, not suffer maldohyde. Exactly. So that was a big part of it. In addition to Mitford's book. I think her book came at a really good time. Totally. I think it had an impact because the general awakening of people and the movement away from religion in a lot of ways, not necessarily away from spirituality, but there's this guy that's interviewed in this House Stuff Works article who is, I think, the Dean of Religious Studies at Emory University. So he's like bigwood. You know what I'm saying? Gary Lotterman. And he points out that if you are talking about religion, religion is bread and butter. It's basic business, is death in the afterlife. So it has all sorts of ideas and very clear guidelines about how you're supposed to behave upon death and how your body is supposed to be treated upon death. And if you're religious, you follow those. But if as a country America started to get less and less religious, those kind of constrictions fell away, too. Yeah. And the idea that the other big thing that's changed and changed things funeral wise is it used to be very vague in your will. Like funerals were just kind of done one way. So when you die, that was expected. And starting in the definitely in the past couple of decades, people have gotten way more specific in what they want, like for their own funeral arrangements. And it's leaned more toward and they've even changed the nomenclature from funeral service to memorial service. And then eventually the celebration of life. And things have just gotten a lot less rigid, a little lighter and more celebratory. Like don't wear black, I want you to play craft, work, and I want alcohol served, and I want it to be outdoors and scatter my ashes in my favorite dog park and then chuck. So if you're running a funeral home these days, you're trying to keep up with this crazy changing wacko time for how funerals are carried out. Sorry, celebrations of life are carried out. You have to kind of get more creative now than you did before. I came across a blog post on funeral one.com or funeralone.com, depending on how you want to say it. And it's I think, like 20 something creative ideas for a funeral. One of them, number ten, really sticks out to me now. They point out, as long as it wasn't a tragic death, you can insert a bit of humor by passing out mad libs for people to create about the deceased. Okay, sure. And I think it's smarter than the caveat that as long as it was a tragic loss, because it definitely does kind of change the tone of something. Even today, even in today's whacked out, alcohol fueled celebrations of life, if it's a tragedy that led to the death, it's still going to be pretty somber. This is typically for things like somebody who I don't know where their death wasn't a tragedy. I don't think there's really any other way to put it. Yeah. What else? Number 14 create a memorial hashtag. Okay. They give an example. Hashtag remembered Grandma Smith, but they've shortened Grandma to GMA. All right. So it could also be remembered. Good Morning America. I think we settled on I know you've changed your mind since then, but you were going to be shot out of a cannon or something. Yeah, and then I was always into the sky burial, and Emily was just like, nah, I'll make you into a tree, but I don't want vultures eating you, for God's sake. Sky burial is pretty hardcore, man. For sure. Yeah. I used to really be into myself, so I wanted to be shot out of a cane. And now I'm like, I think I'd just rather be cremated and spread somewhere nice. Okay, so I've got one more for you. Yeah, what you got? Number 17 celebrate life fun with bubbles. So basically what they're saying is the funeral industry has gone into the wedding industry, the wedding reception industry, and said we could translate a lot of these to these celebrations of life, because they're both celebrations. That's kind of where we're at with funerals right now. That's right. There's no wrong way to do it. If you are still into an open casket and that traditional funeral service, there are certainly businesses that can accommodate that. And we're not going to yuck anyone's yum even in death. No, we're not. Unless you fall for number 18, which is to host icebreaker games, which it doesn't matter whether it's a corporate function, a wedding, or funeral, icebreaker games are horrible to everybody across the board. Just don't do that. No one wants you to go out like that. Well, since Chuck said we'll judge you for that, that means that short stuff is done. It's short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-11-04-sysk-exorcism1.mp3 | SYSK Selects: How Exorcism Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-exorcism-works | In this week's SYSK Select episode, is the idea of possession a misunderstanding of physiological and psychological conditions, or has science failed to account for unknown, legitimate factors? Learn whether exorcism and psychology are mutually exclusive | In this week's SYSK Select episode, is the idea of possession a misunderstanding of physiological and psychological conditions, or has science failed to account for unknown, legitimate factors? Learn whether exorcism and psychology are mutually exclusive | Sat, 04 Nov 2017 13:00:02 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=2, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=308, tm_isdst=0) | 19600279 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. Chuck here for my weekly stuff, you should know selects, pick. And this week I'm going with January 6 thine exorcism. How exorcism works. And I'm sort of just tagging this saw because in real time, it's right around Halloween. And I remember the Exorcism episode was pretty cool. And we talk about the real kind of exorcism. We obviously talk about the movie The Exorcist a little bit, but we try to break it down into what's really going on there with real life exorcism. So enjoy how exorcism works. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. That's, Chuck. And this is stuff you should know. We're about to tell you some stuff you should know, aren't we, Chuck? We are. You never intro our title like that. I like that it's new. I tried it before. I know that you like it, which is why I instituted it. I do. I'd love to tidulate and arouse you. Yeah. Moving on. Have you ever heard of a guy named Philip K. Dick? Yes, absolutely. He's an author. Correct? Yes. He wrote Blade Runner. Correct. Well, I do Android's Dream of electric sheep. Right. Which was made into Blade Runner. Exactly. And he wrote a Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly. Some other ones you may have heard of. Good stuff. And if you can't tell yet, he was a science fiction writer. But one of the more notable things of Dick's life one of the more notable aspects of Dick's life was that at one point he became possessed by a being. Really? Another intelligence, he called it like a super alien or something like that. And it basically took him over and got his life in order. He was a total pill head, loved drink wine, really. Just kind of chased friends off. He just wasn't a really pleasant soul to be around. Right. And this alien kind of comes in and takes him over, and all of a sudden he's getting back pay from publishers. Wow. He's writing more. His office is cleaner. I think he started wearing ties and just all around. Basically, this thing got his life in order. Right. And it wasn't Scientology or anything. No. Interesting. As a matter of fact, I think he may have been a critic of Scientology. I'm not sure why, but he was possessed. He believed it till the day he died that something had taken him over and at the very least, was helping him. I've never heard that. Yeah. So that kind of, I think, is a really good segue into exorcism. Right. This is an exorcism that actually benefited somebody. Well, he wasn't exercised, and I don't think he needed to. A possession. Sure. Now, I think for the most part, when people feel like we're inhabited by something, we feel like it needs to be exercised. Right, right. Yeah. Got the demons running through. Yes, exactly. So kind of in the Western world, in the 21st century, we don't really believe in spirit intrusion much anymore. Right. Some of us do. Some do. True. But for the most part, the average American walking around probably doesn't believe that they're going to ever be taken over by a demon or something like that. Or even an angel, probably, right? True. But this isn't the case for much of the rest of the world. Right. It's very commonly held. Spirit intrusion can occur. Remember when we were talking about carrying a bride over the threshold? Spirit intrusion, it can be a bad thing. It can cause disease, illness, and it kind of makes you wonder, there's this dividing line that crops up. Is this really just a misunderstanding of a psychological problem or is psychology missing the point when there actually is something going on? Right. A lot of demonic possessions are really people that are psychologically distressed or sometimes even physically epilepsy and things like that. A lot of times are mistaken. Some parts of the world. Well, with epilepsy in particular, you can tell. You can throw somebody in an MRI machine and look at the parts of their brain and see this person is definitely epileptic. Of course, the convulsions often give them away as well. But with schizophrenia, say exactly. For many eons, that was viewed as a spirit intrusion or spirit possession. Right, which makes sense. I mean, these people with dissociative personality disorder are different people at different times. So you can understand how that would be mistaken as a possession. In the past, I could, sure. But still today I kind of wonder, is it just a clash of worldviews? Maybe. So is a psychological disorder just another term for spirit possession when they're really both talking about the same thing? Right. And does it matter? Interesting angle. Thanks, buddy. So the point is this psychology has its own methods of exorcism. Antidepressants psychotherapy. Yes. ECT electroconvulsive therapy, which is still used to this day. Did you know that? I didn't. I think we have the method refined a little more than we used to. Right. But yeah, they still hook people up with the electrodes and juice them. Actually, I did know that because it happened on 6ft under. And don't tell me, don't tell me. I'm in season three. It definitely does not happen on 6ft under. Thank you. Thank you for that. Sorry about that. Yeah, no problem. This method of dealing with disturbance through psychology, we also have it through spirituality, and specifically the Catholic Church is really, really big on exorcism. Yes. They're the only church that I know of that really still practices it. Yeah. I was raised Catholic, and as you get older, when you're raised in the Catholic Church, everything seems totally normal. This guy is wearing a robe and chanting and burning frankincense, and everybody else was responding with some weird mystical words. Right. The thing is, as you get older, it becomes stranger and stranger because as any catholic knows, the older you get, the further you get away from the Church. Right. So you get a little more objective. You get an objective view of it. I think. It's not necessarily true for all people, but certainly when you look at the Catholic Church objectively or Catholicism, it's deeply rooted in mysticism. And it doesn't strike me as odd at all that the Catholic Church is still very much believes in exorcism. In demonic possession. Yeah, I believe it. Which we should probably give an actual definition of demonic possession. Right. As the Catholic Church sees it. Well, possession or exorcism? Possession. Well, I know some of the telltale signs. Yeah. Let's hear about it. Speaking in tongues a lot of times is considered no. Pardon? No. It's not considered part of a democracy. Speaking in tongues is considered an expression of religious ecstasy. Speaking in foreign languages that one's never encountered. Or dead languages. Right. That's an example. I actually said speaking in foreign tongues. I just said it very quietly silent. Yes, that is true. Knowing things that a person has no way of knowing. Yeah. Like what the Pope's wearing at any given time. Right. That he's wearing a robe and a tall hat underneath the robe, if you can call that. I imagine they're going to be like yeah. Amongst them. Too much physical strength beyond what you normally would have, which we've addressed as well. Right. And a violent aversion to God, the Virgin Mary, or a cross or other religious images. Yeah. So that's pretty much it. If you can fit all these, then there's a chance that you are possessed by the devil as far as Church is concerned. I didn't see in here head spinning around or vomiting pea soup. No. Or the spider crawl. No. And of course, Chuck's referring to the classic horror film The Extra System, which I watched, actually, this past Halloween. Really? Not as scary as I remember, but psychologically thrilling. Great. And after researching this, I found that if you take Linda Blair out of the scenes yes. And you just have the exorcism, the rights of exorcism that are performed by Max Von Sideau and the other guy accurate. It is very accurate, absolutely. It's pretty much the opposite of the website Garfield minus Garfield, where if you take Garfield out, it turns out that John is either schizophrenic or addicted to methamphetamine or possessed by the devil. Possibly. Full circle. Yeah. So it's the opposite of that, really. A Catholic exorcism or rite of exorcism, is a series of special prayers, and actually it's a combination of fairly familiar prayers. There's a lot of call and response. There's doubling the possessed individual with holy water using crucifixes and relics right. Which can be anything, anything associated with the saints, including a body part. There's actually the saints. If you were a saint several hundred years ago, you were destined to be chopped up into as many little pieces as possible. And sent to churches around the world. Yeah. Relics are huge. Interesting. Yeah. Well, there you go. I didn't know that either. Well, before this all happens, there's an investigation. I mean, this is when there's a real threat of a possession. You can actually lodge a query to the Catholic Church and they'll send someone out. A lot of times that priest will come with a psychological evaluator just to rule out other things. Sometimes they'll go to a medical doctor, but they actually do a full fledged investigation. And they said, I think one in 5000 turns out to be what they consider to be a real demonic possession. Or at the very least, worth using an exorcism for it. Yeah. Worth giving it a shot. Yes. I didn't want you to get the impression that I think that the Church's approach to exorcism is hokey in any way. I think they take a very methodical approach. They do. And they rule out everything else that it could possibly be. I think if you decide to perpetrate a fraud like you're possessed by the devil right. You're in for a really long, painful evaluation process where you really have to be committed to the bit to follow it through and finally get to the exorcism. And if you're basing it on movies, you'll probably be really disappointed. Right. There's this book that this guy wrote. I cannot remember his name or the name of the book but he was a sociologist who basically went to exorcisms performed around the country for several years during his research period. And he describes one where a guy named Warren who is basically depressed drinks a lot. Really? His life is pretty out of sorts. And he's come to believe that he's possessed by a diabolical presence I think is the church vernacular for it. And basically the priest just prays for him. And there's the holy water and the crucifix and all that. Warren just kind of sits there looking a little gloomy the whole time. And then that's about that. Right. And apparently in the book, Warren reported feeling like something had left him, which is good. Sure. It's a good thing. He said he felt fine, but it was fairly anticlimactic. Right. No head spinning or anything. I have that book title if people want to read it's called American Exorcism. Expelling demons in the Land of Plenty by Michael C-U-N-E-O kuneo Kuneo. Yeah. They're kind of anticlimactic. Right. But if, at the end, people like Warren feel like that their life has changed if it's just using their faith to maybe manipulate them even if there's no intentional manipulation but if that's really what's going on in the most objective view, how could it hurt? Why don't we just run around performing exorcisms all the time? I have an answer for you playing on me, sort of because there aren't enough priests, really to go around that are capable of doing this. The Catholic Church actually appointed ten priests in 1996, and I think there was already previously won the only guy doing exorcism. So there's now eleven at that time, at least. And they have a group called the International Association of Exorcist, I noticed. Yeah, they meet every year horribly newsletter. You know what I would do to get my hands on that newsletter? Yes. Apparently they share tricks of the trade and tips for one another for exorcism. I would love to get my hands on that. Right. I'd love to sit on one of those meetings, but that's a lot of fun. It is. That's one reason why we just don't have or the Catholic Church just doesn't have the manpower to go around performing exorcism. Right. But also there's a couple of other problems with exorcism as far as controversy generated by them. One is what we've talked about, the psychology versus religion clash, right. Which has been going on pretty much since medicine came about and basically labeled everybody else's witches or at the very least simple or what have you, archaic primitive. Right. Yeah. And that's one problem. If we just ran around performing exorcisms and there were people who had very treatable psychological disorders exactly. Would the exorcism work or would pharmaceuticals be better or some sort of immersive therapy be better for them so we could actually do damage. That's true. Which is why the church, I imagine, has psychological evaluations done. Right. And these are done by professionals, from my understanding as well. It's not like the priest is like, hey, are you crazy? Right. They get a psychiatrist or psychologist outside of the Catholic Church. The other problem is there are groups that do exorcism for profit. Yes. And this is where it gets a little, I don't know, greedy, possibly fake, maybe. There's one group that is well known for their exorcisms. There's a guy named Bob Larson. Yeah, Bob Larson Ministries. He actually has a show called The Real Exorcist on The Scifi Channel. That should be your first click right there. Exactly. He runs the Spiritual Freedom Church as far as I know. And he does exorcisms. I don't know that he actually charges for exorcisms, but I think he's really good at drumming up donations. Well, yeah, and he does this in front of a crowd and he charges for tickets. Does he really? Yeah, because apparently you can get a family rate on your tickets to go see these exorcism. Okay. What gives you a break if you bring the kids along? Well, was I reading on the Spiritual Freedom Church website a testimonial from a girl named Autumn from my dear esteemed hometown of Toledo, Ohio. Let's hear it. Apparently, the Spiritual Freedom Church rolled through town and held a mass exorcism or whatever spectacle. Right. And Autumn, it turned out, had been possessed by a several centuries old African woman named Mushita. Okay. Now, Mushita apparently means HoR in whatever ancient African vernacular that her name comes from. Okay. And she basically was pretty much into committing acts of hoardom in reverence for an African deity. Okay. So she became promiscuous. Yes. It was really mashita. But it was Autumn who was running around committing acts of horedom. This is not my word, by the way. I actually didn't realize hoardem was a word until this is very afternoon. Is that her right there? That's her. She's kind of cute. Yeah. So Autumn goes to see Bob Larson, who exercises the demons, and apparently you could see an immediate change in Autumn, and she was very grateful. So, again, we come to this fine line, as far as I'm concerned. Right. If Autumn is no longer running around being promiscuous, as you said, she no longer feels like she's out of control with her life, does it matter whether it was an exorcism or antidepressants or whether she paid for this or not? Right. I come to Jesus moment, a sing of the light. Does it matter? No. There's all kinds of ways of reaching that moment of clarity. I agree. If you ask me. I agree. So as far as I'm concerned, to each his own. Sure. That's our motto. Yeah. It pretty much keeps us out of hot water. Right. So if you want to pay for your exorcism, there's plenty of places you can do it. Just go on to a Google search, and I believe you type in exorcist and you will find what you're looking for. And good luck. So stick around because we have a new bit here. We like to fill up time as much as possible. We're going to call it correction time. Right? It's a good title. It's coming up right now. So, Chuck, we have a correction from one of our listeners, right? This was from a couple of our podcasts. We mentioned this famous study in Massachusetts. Let's go to a clip of Chuck being wrong. So what they've learned is that there was this big study. I know that you love the study, the farmington heart study. I love the study. It's enormous. It's sweeping. This is what a study should be like. Right. So that's me and that's my voice. And it is not farmington. No. It is actually framingham. There's no ton involved. There's no farm. It is a frame. And this is pointed out by one of our listeners. Glenna Carpenter wrote us in. Thank you, Glenn, for pointing that out. Yes. We do not want herself a new Ford Focus. Actually pointing that out. Yeah. So if you want to point out something that we've done wrong or tell us how much you like us or hate us yeah. I'm more like us, though. Okay. You can send an email to stuffpodcast@howtofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com." | |
Can your grandfather's diet shorten your life? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-your-grandfathers-diet-shorten-your-life | Epigenetics is a fascinating field of genetics that studies how the epigenome and environmental, nutritional and social factors affect gene expression. Josh and Chuck explain how epigenetics works in this episode. | Epigenetics is a fascinating field of genetics that studies how the epigenome and environmental, nutritional and social factors affect gene expression. Josh and Chuck explain how epigenetics works in this episode. | Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:51:11 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=18, tm_min=51, tm_sec=11, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=161, tm_isdst=0) | 28642004 | 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. There's Charles W. Chuckle. Chuck Bryant. And I'm Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And I'm Josh Clark. And that makes this stuff you should know, right? Yeah, I hope so. This is our podcast. We've been doing it for a while. He's welcoming new listeners. Yeah. Here's another one. Okay. All right. And actually, I'm pretty excited about this one. I've been wanting to do this one for a while. You've been bugging me, epigenetics. Chuck, let's do it. The cutting edge of human of our understanding of life. Not just human of all life. My mind was blown. It's pretty big deal. Yeah, real big deal. So, Chuck, you've heard of the genetic revolution? Charles Darwin, he had a long beard, he loved sea turtles, that kind of thing. He used to vacation in the Galapagos. Right. He wrote on the origin of the species. And it was a pretty groundbreaking book, I would say. So basically what he came up with was, we are driven by our genes. Right. We have genetic code and our DNA. And that makes us redheaded. It makes us timid, it makes us courageous, prone to cancer. Right, exactly. And it makes us thick toned sometimes. Yeah. And we are slaves to these genes. There's nothing we can do to alter and we get them from our parents. But if we find out that over time, being thick tongued is, say, advantageous to human survival, we're all going to talk like me, but millions of years from now, at least hundreds of thousands, that makes for good podcasting. It definitely does. And I just look for it in the future. Yes. Okay. When we're all running around with robot bodies. Right. There is another guy, and actually, Darwin, just to show off, once came across a type of orchid, right. The moon orchid, I believe is what it's called. Okay. And it had a very deep, I guess, pistol or stamen. I can never keep those things apart. And the nectar was down in there. And he looked at that flower and said, you know what? There is an organism out there, probably a flying organism that has a probosis that fits perfectly into that flower. Was it the hummingbird? It was a hawk moth. And sure enough, a few years later, at some point in time later, they discovered the hawk moth, and it was pretty much, literally made to fit. Right. There's another guy named Jean Baptiste Lamarck, who I know you've heard of as well. Right. And all his Lamarcke and stuff. Right. He was about 60 to 80. He was working about 60 or so years before Darwin. He had his own ideas based on giraffes. Right? Yes. He said that giraffe's necks grew to reach the food, but it was just over the course of a few generations. Right, right. And that kind of flies in the face of Darwin sure. Who said, it takes hundreds of thousands of years with this stuff called epigenetics that we're about to talk about today. Suddenly people are starting to go back and look at Lamarck, who was kind of dismissed as a quack yeah. And say, you know what? Lamarck may have been right in this one. Yeah. Prepare for your minds to be melted. That's all I have to say. Let's talk about epigenetics. Chuck okay, Josh, let's first talk about the genome. Right. I heard a computer reference analogy that I thought was pretty spot on. If you think of the genome as computer hardware, then the epigenome would be the software that tells the computer what to do and when to do it. But in this case, the epigenome tells your cells what to do, what kind of cells to be, when to activate or deactivate. So, like, I guess every cell yeah. The DNA in every cell in the human body has the exact same DNA? Yes. You have, like, half of your mother's and half of your fathers, and it comes together and gives you your DNA. Right, right. And if you look at the DNA in every cell from the kind of cell that makes up your fingernail, what would that be? A keratinocyte. Sure. Okay. To a sperm cell. Right. Very specialized type of cell. Yeah. They all have the same DNA, they have the same genes in there. But what makes them different and what makes a keratinocyte and a sperm cell? Those things are the tags on those genes. So some are turned off, some are turned on, and in a specific combination, you have either a caratinocyte or sperm cell or a neuron or a cell that makes up your eyeball. Right. All of that stuff. Yeah. So it's essentially it's a chemical tag that literally changes the physical structure of your genome. Right. So it'll bind tightly, let's say, to an inactive gene and make it unreadable. Or it'll stretch out an active gene and make it really accessible. Right. Physically changing it. And epigenetics means above the genome, because these tags, they're called methyl tags, which is what? One hydrogen and two carbon. Carbon and hydrogen bundles. Yeah. Okay. So it's a group it's a really simple compound, but they attach to the gene at a place where other proteins or enzymes normally would attach to activate it. So basically, what they do is block a gene from being activated and they can silence them. Yeah. It's like a light switch, literally. You can turn off some genes and turn off others. Right. Honeybee actually is a pretty good demonstration of this. Did you read about honeybees? No. Okay. So you've got a worker bee right. Which is a sterile, kind of mindless, dumb bee that just does what it's supposed to do. No offense to any worker bees. I agreed. Hey, I'm all down with Mayday. All right. With a queen bee, first of all, she can reproduce. She goes and kills other rival queens. Right. She does kind of all sorts of other stuff that a worker bee isn't capable of doing. And what they found was a queen bee larvae are raised in this royal jelly, right? Right. Which worker bee secrete from their heads. It's a nutrient rich jelly. So the larvae grows in it. And what they found yeah, I know. Sounds kind of good, doesn't it? Just because of the jelly part. That works. What they found was that the royal jelly adds a methyl tag to the queen bee larva's DNMT three gene. Okay. And this gene is, like, literally the on off switch. If this gene is on, it goes to the default worker, B. Right? Right. If it's off, then all the genes that make a queen bee a queen bee are able to be turned on. Crazy, isn't it? So epigenetics happen in bees as well, and mice. Yes. They've done a lot of studies with mice, obviously, in the agony gene in these mice, and they experiment with these mice, affecting, basically turning on and off the epigenetic switch. So an unmethylated gene would affect the mouse's size and weight and then coat color. Right. It makes them real fat and, like, yellow. Yes. Instead of skinny and brown. Have you seen one of these things? Yeah, they're huge. They should all be named Wilbur. The cool thing is, though, they showed the difference between the skinny brown one and the fat yellow one, but then they also did experiments where they did half and half, like, turned on half of them and turned off half of them, and they literally showed them in a sequence. I don't know if you saw this picture, but they went from fat yellow to skinny brown, and in between, they got thinner. And with spotted coats along the way. Crazy. Like, yellow and brown spotted coats? Yeah. Weird. It's that specific. Yeah. And one of the ways that they have found that they can manipulate these what is it? Agoie. Yeah, the agoi. The agoi gene. And these mice that I guess are bred specifically for this gene to be easily observed or something yeah. Manipulated, too, is through diet. Right. So they've actually taken a goodie gene. Mice, mothers who are pregnant, fed them a bunch of B vitamins in their diet. Yeah. Soy, right? Yeah. Soy is a really easy grab for B vitamins, I believe. Right. Fed these pregnant, big, fat, yellow, ugly mice B vitamins, and their kids came out that healthy, skinny brown. Right. They had identical moms with the same, like, a guti gene, same upbringing, same everything, just fed them in the normal mouth diet without vitamin B, and they had the big, fat, yellow kids. Right. So diet is a really big factor in epigenetic changes. Let's think about this for a second, okay? What Chuck and I are talking about right now is that science has found evidence that you can change the genetics of your children by eating B vitamins or by being abused when you're pregnant. Well, see, that's what gets me. Some of the diet makes a little bit of sense, but the fact that an environmental stimulus placed on your mom or even your grandparents can affect your children or grandchildren, something you didn't even experience at all. Right. It's kind of unfair. And actually, I have to tell you, the more I study this, the more worried I am for my own child or children. Like, really what they are finding is the decisions that you make, especially at a youngest age, are going to affect several generations, because what you're doing is adding methyl tanks. What we're talking about is pretty much the definitive answer to the nature and nurture debate. And what we're finding is both you have nature, which is your gene, and they're very much active, but you have nurture, which is the environment, whether it's diet, whether it's stress, whether it's lack of exercise. Your body responds to these changes by saying, okay, all right, well, then if you're going to lay around and be fat, then we have to deactivate this gene who will punish your grandkids? And your grandkids who are trying to be normal are going to be fat little kids that live shortened lives. Right. And this is where it came from. Right. Chuck, there was a study in Sweden that kind of broke this ground. Yeah. Didn't they find that? It was a very isolated group of people in Sweden, and at the time, they were very isolated, at least where they couldn't get help from the outside world very readily. And I think they studied the famine. Isn't that right? How the famine affected the generations afterwards? Well, they had, like, feast or famine. It was like an agricultural town. And they looked at these agricultural records that this town kept for some reason, like really detailed records throughout the 19th century. And some years there was nothing, and people starved, death. The next year, there was everything. And they found that the grandparents, the grandfathers who feasted and starved within a year of one another right. Their grandkids lived an average of 32 years shorter or less than the grandkids. Are the same people who didn't have that kind of feast or famine experience right. In the same town. Right. With the same socioeconomic conditions. Yeah. So, yeah. That's three generations right there, right? Yeah. Did you hear about the Angelman syndrome and the Pradavadi syndrome? No. Don't lay it on me. Actually, it was a PBS documentary. It's called the ghost in your jeans. Did you watch that? Dude, it's on YouTube. It's in, I think, five or six sections of 10 minutes apiece. It's a full show. Mind blowing. They found that there are these two different syndromes, and I won't get too deep into what they are, but Angelman syndrome and Pradavilli syndrome is what it's called and they found that sounds Italian. It's pride ofille yeah, sorry, I dropped the ball there. Basically what causes each of these is a missing piece of DNA and it can cause two different disease where they found it cause these two different diseases that are completely unrelated depending on which parent it came from really? Which missing part of the gene it came from so basically it's as if the gene knew where it was coming from like gene imprinting the gene had a memory that oh, it came from the father so you're going to have Angelman syndrome or it came from the mother so you're going to have protein and right. And this is a relatively recent discovery we were talking about them looking at agricultural records of the 19th century in Sweden that was a doctor named Doctor Lars Olaf Bygren but he was working in the mid eighty s and he didn't really start to lay the foundation of epigenetic research until the mid to late 90s so this is a very new field but what they're finding and what Chuck was just saying is that your parents can pass on these epigenetic changes that happen within themselves right? And your grandparents can too right but this isn't supposed to happen what happens when an egg and a sperm meet? Right? And it's like, hey, here's my DNA, here's my DNA they get together. There is actually a process where the specialized cells go through and basically clean the DNA of methyl tags right? But they found that not all methyl tags get cleaned off so diet can affect certain genes these methyl tanks can be passed down with abuse as well. Have you heard about PTSD? Yeah they covered that in that special as well they did a test with pregnant women who were in New York at the time of 911 did you hear about this one? Yeah, this is really recent study right? Yeah and they basically found that pregnant women that experience that were pregnant at the time the towers came down and experienced posttraumatic stress disorder they found that their babies had lower levels of cortisol just like their moms did which helps you deal with stress. Helps you how you deal with stress so these little babies basically inherited post traumatic stress disorder from their mothers in the womb, in utero and cortisol is a hormone and it would be produced by a gene or expressed by a gene right? And how much or how little is expressed depends on whether that gene is silenced, whether it's altered and that alteration comes from methyl tags which can be passed down so PTSD can be passed down right? Yeah and they're speculating now that and this is obviously speculation because these kids are still young but they're speculating that it's going to happen to their kids as well and that's going to be the real gold nugget right. They do go away eventually they think metal tags. Well, they have in, like, fruit flies. With fruit flies, it's like 400 generations, but fruit flies have a generation every 5 minutes. And then I think with mice, it's like 40 generations or something like that. And with humans, they expect it to be somewhere around three, maybe a few more. Oh, really? Yeah, because what's happening is our bodies are responding to environmental cues to change, and then after those environmental cues go away, the body's like, okay, well, we can go back to normal now and get rid of this methyl tag. So we've got nutrition. Right. You are what you eat. You are what your parents ate. You are what your grandparents ate. And then there's things like stress. Yeah. Which parenting. Right? Yeah. I think they found. With mice. Mothers that didn't nurture their kids or nurse their kids. Produce kids that were kind of jumpy and I guess had the mice version of PTSD. And they theorized that the body had undergone an epigenetic change to prepare these mice for a very stressful life. And they need to be on guard. Which. If you think about it. Chuck. I wrote a blog post about this. It's possible what we call PTSD is an epigenetic change that says you live in an environment where you can't relax. Right. So we're going to make you jumpy, you're going to be edgy, and you're going to have flashbacks so that you're always on point. And it's the result of an epigenetic change from a stressful event. Yeah. And the same I think you mentioned abuse earlier. They found that one out of every five suicide victims was a victim of child abuse as well. So they're still kind of theorizing now, but they think there's a positive correlation there between, like you said, stressful upbringing and epigenetic change. Right. So what else? Well, are we going to talk about what could be good about this? Potentially? Yes. Because it could be really good. We're talking about and it's still early going. We're talking about potentially curing things like Alzheimer's yeah. Cancer, mental disorders, multiple sclerosis, you name it. Tonguedness, thick tonguedness. Potentially being able to cure this, because they found that it's really hard to fix, like, a cancer cell. And so what the doctors are thinking now is, it's really hard to fix a cancer cell, but it's a whole lot easier to turn these epigenetic switches on and off, which may in turn help defeat cancer. Right. Like, you want to get a tumor suppressing gene going. Yeah. But you want to get a cellular growth gene turned down a little bit. Right. Like that. And that you just cured cancer. Yeah. This one doctor put it like this. He said that it's almost like a diplomacy instead of a war. Like, you'll go tell the cell, hey, you're a good human cell. You don't need to behave this way. You should not be behaving this way. Yes. It's called asydeen. That's good to me as a citadine. It was originally marketed for something else entirely, probably Alzheimer's, everything was. And then they come up with they figure out that it's actually turning down these growth cells or these growth genes, and they say, hey, how about we use this for leukemia? Right. Bada bing. There you go. Yeah. People all of a sudden in remission where they hadn't been before. Right. So it's pretty startling. Yeah. It's still in the early stages, though. Right. The other thing too is it's easier to fix the epigenome. That's the good news. As we move forward, it's also a lot easier to mess up your own epigenome diet and smoking and things like that. Yeah. There was the guy who was studying Sweden hooked up with a guy who proposed the entire field of epigenetics in. They got together with another researcher who was running that. You remember the framinghamton farmington? Farmingham? Farmingham, framingham, framingham. The Massachusetts study. The heart study. Yeah. It's 40 years long or something. Right. Remember Great Britain's version of it. It's like the Avon Longitudinal study. Yeah. Okay, so this guy had a friend who had access to these files, and what they found was that 166 fathers in this study started smoking around age eleven. And so they started looking at these guys and found that their kids were shorter and fatter and just generally unhealthier than other kids, even controlling for other factors as well. So smoking is a problem, drugs are a problem. Cocaine addicted mice, past memory problems, on to three generations of their offspring. Yeah. It said that cocaine especially triggers epigenetic changes that affect hundreds of genes at the same time. Yeah. Because memory is just such a complex process. Yeah. So don't do cocaine. No. And don't smoke. Just a bad idea, especially at a young age. And Chuck, there's a project underway. You don't remember the Human Genome project completed in March of 2000. Yeah. Which is now, like exactly. Did you read this Time article? No. At the end of it, the author is talking about the epigenome project. That's the big daddy. Right. And he was saying that the Human Epigenome Project is going to make the Human Genome Project look like the homework that 16th century school kids did on their abacuses. Think about this. What they found in the Human Genome Project is 27,000 genes that were mapped. Right? Right. Just fiddling with these combinations increases the map that needs to be created exponentially. Right. Like Domino's Pizza has 27 ingredients. They do. I went and counted. It produces 88 million different combinations from 27. Now imagine 27,000 ingredients, how many different combinations that produce. This is the scope of the Human Epigenome Project that's underway now. Wow. What about Pizza Hut with all their, like, stuffed crust and eat it backwards and the ingredients are underneath your pizza, probably even more stuff. Yeah, but I think Domino's has more pizza because they've got like, the Philly cheesesteak one and they have like the cheeseburger, the bacon cheeseburger sandwich is good. They do like the Reuben sandwich pizza that would be really very good. Yeah. So epigenetics is changing everything. I think at its core it's going to point out that all of our understanding of medicine is just an odd way of describing an epigenetic change. Like psychology, psychiatry. I predict that our future and complete understanding of humanity is going to be a combination of sociology and epigenetics. We thought we were on something with mirror neurons, but forget what we said. Just kidding. Actually, yeah, I think that you could probably explain that epigenetically and with sociology as well. Have you heard of this guy? Dr. Bruce Lipton? No. He's got a documentary out called The Living Matrix. And at first I was reading, I was like, wow, this guy's really onto something. But then I started reading other people saying, this guy is a quack. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Basically he's a big epigenetics guy. But he thinks that your brain can essentially change your genetic expression by manipulating the epigenome, like concentrating. He thinks the placebo effect could potentially be explained by this and like spontaneous remission and cancer, spontaneous combustion. Spontaneous remission, obviously, is when you go into remission with no known cause, not from any treatment. And he says this is explained because you have a profound change in your perception of your life and what life is all about, and that can potentially alter the epigenome. Well, you could also make a case that this guy, what this guy is talking about is decreasing stress, which stress just wreaks havoc on us and could create methyl tags and alter gene expression. So maybe he's just using a quacky way of describing lowering your own stress levels by increasing self confidence. Yeah. It's interesting when you see these people, though, and you watch a YouTube video and you think, wow, my gosh, that's the secret to the future. Right? And then you see all these other people that go, that guy is such a quack. Yeah. But at the same time you could say, well, maybe those other people are unimaginative. Yeah, good point. So if you want to learn more about epigenetics, I strongly recommend University of Utah's website. Have you been on it, Chuck? Yes. Why didn't you recommend that to me? Did you see it? I don't think so. I did there's like a month ago. Yeah, you can turn up gene expression, turn it down. A lot of foods that you should eat if you want to alter yourself, epigenetically, especially if you're pregnant or go to YouTube and watch the ghost in your jeans. PBS is literally mind blowing. Well, not literally. People I would say literally, figuratively mindblowing just explode. Talk about changing your genetic expression. And if you want to read some very beautiful pros on epigenetics chock full of flight simulator references, read how epigenetics works by typing epigenetics in the handysearch bar@householdworks.com, which means it's time for listener mail. Yes, indeed. Josh. Josh, do you remember Sarah, the amazing eleven year old fan? Not eleven anymore. It captured our hearts when she first emailed early on in the days of podcasting. Yes, I do. She was one of the first fans, actually. Yeah. Sarah the amazing eleven year old fan is now Sarah the amazing 13 year old fan. I know. I feel so old now. We shouldn't do this a while. Well, yeah, and we should keep like once a year, we should update people on Sarah's age. And then if we're still doing this in five years when she graduates college, we should go like or high school. We should go to her graduation. We should give the commencement speech. We should. I call valedictorian. Well, yeah. And the principal would be like, who are you guys? Can we get security in here? We'll say I'm the valedictorian. He's a salutatorian. What do you mean? So this comes from Sarah. She checks on us from time to time, and she's still just as cute at 13. She's not all Brady now that she's a teenager. Hello to some of my favorite people. Today I earned some strange looks from people about my knowledge of Legos or Lego bricks. I also tried making a sphere of Lego, but I couldn't figure it out. Also, today is my birthday. I'm really excited that I'm finally a teen yahoo. Do you remember what I asked for and what she asked for? She's got a blog now, and she asked if one of us could comment on her blog. And I went to her blog and commented. And her blog is basically her and her little friend talking back and forth to each other about stuff. How cute. They got their eyes with hearts. No. Well, I don't think you can do that. But it is really cute. And I'm actually going to encourage people to go to her blog. I hope she gets mad traffic. And her blog, Josh, is Sarahlovesaustraliancommercials Webscom. And here's the clincher. It is. S-A-S-A-R-A-H. There's no www, right. No. And she Misspells Australian all over the place. All over the place. Which makes it even cuter. She spells it A-U-S-T-R-A-I-L-I-A-N. So it's like OSS trail inaian. Right? So spell the whole Urlmercials webs.com. And I hope people come out there and check it out. I hope so, too. So she turned 13. She says, by the way, can you please not tell Kristen, Molly or Katie that I think you guys are better than them? I think that would be kind of like bragging. It would be kind of like bragging. Which is why we would never do it. We would never tell them. And I'm sure they don't listen to our show, so they'll never know. And then she closes and this is emily just thought, this is the cutest thing ever. Well, so long, farewell. Or Alvir saying goodbye, ado ado to you and you and you. And then in parentheses, she says, in case you didn't know, that was from The Sound of Music. So long, farewell. Yeah, and that's one of Emily's favorites. Well, you should sing the rest of it, too. So, Sarah, happy birthday. You're awesome. You're a dedicated fan. Clearly she is. We just think you're super cool. And good luck with the blog. If you do learn how to dot eyes with heart, we want to know. Sarah, happy birthday to you. If you want to become a fan who has captured our hearts, send us something interesting. We want another super fan. And be a cute little kid. Otherwise you're not going to help as well. Broken. English doesn't hurt too. Sure, you can send an email to stuffpodcast@housterworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstep works works.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blogs on the houseofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you." | ||
97512cb4-361e-11ea-938d-6f703a703047 | Short Stuff: Body Under The Bed | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-body-under-the-bed | A couple unknowingly spending the night above a dead body stuffed under their bed is a longstanding urban legend. And a true one. | A couple unknowingly spending the night above a dead body stuffed under their bed is a longstanding urban legend. And a true one. | Wed, 12 Feb 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=43, tm_isdst=0) | 11259867 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, there's Josh. And this is short stuff. Like I said twice now, I'm wasting time. Let's just go. So this is about finding your worst nightmare realized it's pretty universal. Worst nightmare stuff. Yes. This is about the idea that if you go to a hotel and you're sleeping and you get up in the morning and you're like, what is that weird smell? And you check out, you will probably never know this. I doubt if they would follow up and let you know, but there could be a dead body under that bed. Yeah. And what's weird is this is an urban legend, very widespread one. Some friend of my cousin who he works with went to Vegas with his wife once and got on an elevator with Eddie Murphy. Right. And he had a dog, and Eddie Murphy said, Sit, lady. And the wife sat down and Eddie Murphy said, no, I was talking to my dog. And then gave them paid off their mortgage. That's right. No different than that. Your cousin's friend, co worker went to Vegas and this happened to him. What's weird about this, Chuck, is Snopes is on the case. And God bless Snopes for doing everything they do. They said, not only has this happen, this has happened many times over. This is one of those rare urban legends that is actually true. That's right. And a lot of hotels, it's sort of a platformy box spring situation where there is a cavernous area under the box spring, but above that platform that turns out is just right for storing a body. Yeah. Every criminal knows you want to store a body. Every motel in America has you covered. Pretty much. Should we go through some of these? I think we should, because, again, this has happened many times. One of the first ones Snopes talks about happened in 2003 at the Capri Motel in downtown Kansas City. And one of the recurring themes that I've seen, Chuck, is management sometimes won't do anything. They'll be like, Sorry, nothing can be done. This is the only room we have. You have to stay here. And people will stay there despite the stench of what turns out to be a decomposing body. Like in this case. Yeah. A dead thing is a very specific smell. I would not for 1 second even unpack my suitcase and give it a shot. Right. Well, this guy in Kansas City not only unpacked his suitcase after complaining about the room and being told nothing can be done about it, he stayed there for three nights from July 10 to July 13 and finally checked out because of the smell. And I looked on those dates in 2003 in Kansas City. It got up to around 90. Oh, good Lord. So I'll bet it was pretty smelly. And finally housekeeping was like, well, let's figure out what this is. And they lift up the mattress and there was a body in the state of advanced decomposition. 64 year old named Saul Hernandez was discovered inside and under a bed at the Burgundy Motor Inn. I hate calling out these hotels, but I guess it is what it is. Room 112. Yeah, this is really specific. Yeah. Don't stay there in Atlantic City. In fact, it's Atlantic City, so it may not even be there at this point. Yes, I was wondering that myself. But a German couple, God bless them, they didn't know any better. They spent the night there sleeping over his body. They complained to the manager about the smell. They said, Mine got to do something about it. And that's when they found the body. Yeah. German tourists are recurring motif in this urban legend come to life, because in 1994 in Florida, there were two cases in Florida, 1994 alone, and both of them were bodies that were discovered after complaints from German tourists. So they have really bad luck with this kind of stuff. Lovely pasadena, California. The wonderful Colorado Boulevard Travel Lodge. In July 1996, a woman was found under a mattress. They discovered her ten days later after guests complained for several days of a foul odor. At this point, I would think if someone says there's a bad smell, I would just immediately assume it's a body and look. Yeah, you'd think it would be like a recurring kind of, like, column that pops up in the Hotel Times or Motel Industry news magazine or something like that, but I guess not, because it still continues. Snaps traced it all the way back to I think was the first report that they mentioned. I don't know if it was the first time it's ever happened, but between 1982 and 2010, they found ten cases. And this is not just a body being discovered in a hotel room. Apparently that happens multiple times a day, every day, everywhere in the world, I guess, from what this looks like, but what snopes are saying is, like, no, we got to stick to the urban legend where the body was discovered because somebody slept above it overnight, and at least ten times between 82 and 2010 that happened. Yeah. And that cut it off, like you said in 2010, if you just Google a dead body hotel mattress, that happens a lot still. Yeah. There was one in Austin last year, one the year before, somewhere else. I can't remember. Yeah, but they're kind of all over the place. Yeah, it seems like an annual event, like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or something. Yeah. One smells way worse than the other. I'll let you guess. Yeah. So do you want to take a break and come back a little bit? Yeah, we'll come back in a second and talk a little bit about another way that bodies find their way to hotel rooms. So what we talked about before was specifically, like you said, the urban legend of bodies under a mattress under a box spring. My thought was, like, how are they getting there? The answer is they're all murder cases generally pretty much murder. Or, say, like, a couple of people are partying in a hotel and one of them dies, and the other one doesn't want to get questions, put them under the mattress, man. Stash the body. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think there's two things about this, right? Average people who check into a hotel, people like you and me, we stay in hotels. We stay in motels, right. Sleeping unknowingly above, just inches above a decomposing body. That's part one that's horrible. But I think the second part of it that makes it so horrible is like the indignity of having your body just stuffed under a mattress in a CD hotel. Yeah. So I think those two things combined and the fact that it actually happens in real life, it makes it horrific. Well, one of the other ways the body, very sadly can be found in a hotel and not under a mattress is obviously suicide. People apparently check into hotels to do this a lot, for obvious reasons. You don't want your family to have a mess, necessarily. Another reason is to avert exposure, maybe to the media. And I think it just sort of gets buried in the news if it's just a random hotel suicide kind of thing. Casinos apparently had the highest suicide rate, and Las Vegas has the highest suicide rate in the country. I could see that if you just lost a bunch of money, that has something to do with it. They said that's not all of it, but a lot of people show up in Vegas desperate and destitute, trying to gamble their way back to not necessarily even prosperity. Oh, man, that is a sad thing you just painted. Yes, but you were joking. In the thing about it being in the hotel industry. There was an article called how to Properly Respond to a Guest Death in Your Hotel, published in a journal for hotel managers that I found. And they said a big thing in Vegas is they don't. And most big hotels now don't let you just open the windows. No, but a lot of them do have balconies still. Vegas, they don't even have balconies because of the suicide problem. So they said that leads some people to make a final leap, like in an atrium style lobby. And he says in this article that hotel managers should keep a very large, dark colored tarp made of impermeable material on hand and available at all times. Oh, my gosh. Just so you can run out there very quickly and cover that mess up. But not only the mess. It's really dangerous. I mean, people walk through atrium. That's really irresponsible. Yeah. You could land on someone, obviously. Yeah. And I imagine that would probably kill both people. Yes, I would think so, too. And we did an episode on crime scene cleanup. 99 times out of 100, that's what's going on here. If something happens in a hotel room. There's a guy in San Francisco based company called Crime Scene Cleaners that he said that hotel chains are as big as clients and that suicide cleanups is most of his business. It definitely makes sense in a very grisly way, like, not wanting to put your family through that, but unfortunately, you're putting some housekeeper through it, necessarily. The good news is that almost everything is thrown away that they're not just, like, pull the sheets and we'll watch them. They're like, this killer. Kids are still mostly good. Yeah. They don't rip up the part of the carpet that's stained. They kind of gut the place, basically. Sometimes even the drywall. They get rid of all the clock radio and everything, because they were like, if there's a little tiny piece of brain that you don't notice on something that heats up, like via electricity, that will stink. Plus, it could be haunted. Now, it's obviously haunted, but those are in decent hotels that even, like, kind of cruddy. Hotel chains, I think, still do a good job. The scary part is if it happens in a really not great place, because there's a reddit thread called Tales from the Front Desk. Oh, I've got to get on that. No, don't do it, dude. You'll never tour again. You'll never leave your house, because these are all insider stories. And this one guy was like, yeah, guy died by suicide on my shift. The owner found out how much it costs for a professional clean up, and he said to flip the mattress. No. Yes. No. Did they ever say where they work? I don't know. Anonymous, I think it's probably this one was anonymous. This is just a hotel house cleaner. And the other thing, too, is I guess we can close with, is when people decide to do this, oftentimes, they pick, like, the best room, the nicest suite oh, yeah. Because you don't have to pay for it. Sure. Yeah. So don't think if you're getting the high roller suite, that room is safe from ghosts. Right. Wow. That's something else. Chuck, you really brought it. Thank you. Well, since Chuck brought it and we're out of info, that's it for short stuff. So short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts from my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
86c28a46-3b0e-11eb-9699-dfd72a93e692 | How Trepanation Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-trepanation-worked | One of the oldest medical procedures in human history is also one of the riskiest. For thousands of years humans carried a type of proto brain surgery where a hole would be cut into the skull. And they were pretty good at it too. | One of the oldest medical procedures in human history is also one of the riskiest. For thousands of years humans carried a type of proto brain surgery where a hole would be cut into the skull. And they were pretty good at it too. | Tue, 31 Aug 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=243, tm_isdst=0) | 48693154 | 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, and Jerry's even here, which means this is a bona fide, had a bone a fee day, shut your mouth episode of Stuff You Should Know, right? Until Jerry's, like, go to Goo. I wasn't going to outer like that. But you did, so she'll probably end up being sore at me about it, though. We're all busy these days. Seriously, life, man. Lifetime is 100 right. Yeah. I mean, 13 years and we're still working out. Technical difficulty. I know, but we're working it out. We're working it out. Chuck, like a brilliant scientist, one of my all time favorites, and a frequent guest star of the show in the early years, Paul Baroka. Yeah, it's been a while. Yeah, like, he worked out a little puzzle that he had handed to him almost literally in the that's right. This is one of those where I was positive we had covered it before. Oh, really? No, I knew for a fact we had. And I'll explain why in a minute. It had to be on an Internet roundup or something. I don't think so, ma'am. I know we talked about the movie Pie when he drilled a hole in his head. I forgot about that. I just can't remember what episode or what format it was. Maybe you're right. Maybe it was an Internet round up because I could see us talking about that Internet group doing that kind of stuff. The International Trepidation Advocacy Group. I'll bet. I even went to our Wikipedia page because they have a place where they list things that we've redone. Oh, yeah, I didn't see that. Yeah, and by the way, I wanted to put out a call if you are a Wikipedia editor, our pages years and years and years out of date, it says that we're writers for how stuff works. We haven't written for them in, what, like, eight years? It's been a little while. Yeah. So if anyone wants to update it, I mean, God bless her, I miss Rebecca, but it said that Rebecca is our web publisher, right? That's a long time ago. Yeah, it has been a little while. So anyway, if anyone feels like blowing the dust off of that thing, feel free. Okay, well, that was a great call out, Chuck, but let's get back to trepidation. Okay? And like you said before we started recording oh, no, chuck said he has no trepidation about trepidation. And that was for your ears. That was great, though. It was definitely worth sharing. Terrible. But so maybe I mentioned it before then because I always associate trepination with this little 1 second long snippet from those Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown book ads from the 1990. There's like one moment where they show somebody doing a trepidation surgery on somebody else's head in like, a cave by torch light. I think I remember that. Yeah. And I was like, Wait, what is that? I want to know more about that. So this has been sitting in our back pocket all this time, and I guess we busted it out at least once before. It had to have been Internet roundup. It definitely wasn't an episode. Yeah, I think you're probably right. Unless we talked about it during lobotomies. I don't know, it could have been Chuck, because a lot of people say, well, yes, the lobotomy was the natural progression to Trepination. Not really. No, actually, that's incredibly false. It turns out Trepination is maybe one of the oldest medical techniques, if not the oldest medical technique we have, aside from slapping someone on the back when they're choking. That might be older, but we don't have any evidence to back that up. We actually have the evidence from Trepidation. And to get back to Ms. Broka, famous for the Brokers area, which is the first region of the brain that demonstrated localized function like the speech center. It produces speech, and it's the first time we could ever say this part of the brain is responsible for this function. And Broko is the guy who did that. He had a skull handed to him in the it turned out to be an ink and skull. I couldn't find out anywhere how old it was, but we can guess that by the time Broker got his hands on it, it was at least a couple of hundred years old, if not more than 1000 years old. Yeah. Can you imagine the feather in your cap? You're just sitting around with your other cohorts. I have a part of the brain named after me, by the way, so I don't know what you guys have done. I know they're like, Paul, you and every argument with that. Hi. I'm Paul Broke, a broker's area. It says it on his card, too. Paul broke a comma broke his area. Yes. Yeah. So he was obviously like, well, this is an interesting thing because what he was looking at was a human skull where a piece of it had been purposefully cut away and removed remarkably well, and it actually started to grow back, which indicates that whoever had this performed on them, that means they survived and was trying to heal. Yeah. At least for a little while. Yeah. Like, it takes a little time for the bone to heal around, like a skull cut away, so yeah, they had to have lived. I think in some cases I've seen when the skull starts going back, it indicates at least a year of survival. Oh, wow. Okay, I was going to ask that. I only saw that one or two places I didn't see exactly, like, I don't know, 100%. But it seems like it's a little while. Right. It's not like a day out of two. Right? Yeah. So the thing is, Broker is sitting here saying like, okay, this is evidence of, like, this is a purposeful medical procedure. I believe that this person had their brain cut into to treat some form of malady or something like that. It's a protobrain surgery, basically, and it's called trepidation ation. And Paul Broca went to the French Anthropological Society, I think what she founded that was another thing. The Anthropological Society. Yeah. And they still were like, no, you got this one wrong, Paul. But he went to them and said as much, and they're like, no, that's just not possible. And here's the thing that stuck out to me, Chuck. It wasn't that they were saying it's not possible that somebody could cut into someone else's head, because these people, these members of the Anthropological Society, or just people in general in France in the 1870s, were well aware of that procedure. It had a name trepanation. And you could go to the hospital and get trepand, depending on what kind of problem you had with your head. So it's not like they were just totally unfamiliar with this. They were super familiar with it. What they refused to believe is that some other society, a non European society, especially when removed in time, was capable of performing the surgery and in performing it in a good enough way that the person could possibly survive it. Yeah, they were like, I just don't know. That sounds like they certainly weren't performing medical procedures. The incas weren't doing that. And he was like, I don't know. Look at that hole. It's pretty purposeful to me. Yeah. And so what Broker figured out was he was the first one to really stumble upon this evidence that this medical procedure that they were carrying out in the hospital's, trepidation, and was part of, like, a really ancient medical procedure, virtually unchanged in a lot of ways. Like, yeah, the tools that they use were kind of changed and kind of updated, but basically the procedure they were carrying out in the hospitals of France in the 18 and elsewhere in Europe and America was basically the same thing that people were doing thousands of years ago and had been doing for thousands of years as well. Yeah. I mean, they were doing it so much in Europe in the 18th century, it was known as the is it Trepen or Trepen? I say Trepen. Trepen. The Trepan century. Or because it's us, we'll call it the golden age of trepination. Although now I'm doubting myself. It seems like the golden age might have been a thousand years ago. Yeah, I think you might be right about that, too. But it started out as a veterinary practice, and we'll get a little bit we'll get to the famous cow later on. Right, ancient cow. But in the 18th century, they think that it started out as a veterinary practice. Correct. And then we'll get to the ancient cow a bit later. But it extended humans after the veterinary procedures, and doctors at the time were like, we think it's useful. We think it helps out with certain things that we'll get to as well. But they said it's also killing a lot of people, and it's got a survival rate of about 10%. And here's the little, like, whopper of a detail here. The survival rate in ancient times was really high. Yeah. It made the modern survival rate just look embarrassingly low. It was flip flopped, really, wasn't it? Yes. And that golden age, like you were mentioning, it seems like the golden age of trepination occurred thousands of years before modern medicine ever came around. And that when modern medicine came around and kind of took over trepidation. It really dropped the ball kind well. Yeah. And then, of course, once he finds that one skull, other skulls start coming forward. They start walking forward and saying, hey, check me out. I'm out here, as evidence as well, which was pretty remarkable. Have you ever seen that Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode on the screaming skull? No. It's like the villain in the movie is like a skull that can move around and fly at people. Kind of like the bunny from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but it's a skull version of that. We now know that the oldest trepan skull comes all the way back from about 8000 years ago in the Stone Age during the Mesolithic sorry, I think back my first, and that was 8000 years ago. And this is the beginnings of sort of planting things and eating vegetables and building cities. Like the very beginnings of civilization, basically. Yeah. And we're, like, cutting holes into one another's heads. And we found evidence of this stuff, like, all over the world. This wasn't just like one weirdo city doing this. This was everywhere in places that were really removed from one another. Like, there's evidence of ancient trepidation among indigenous peoples in Canada and North America. There's the same thing in Ukraine, North Africa, Portugal, everywhere. The Scandinavia, the Iraq, all over the place. There's evidence of Trapan schools that turn up. South America is another one. And so it just kind of goes to show you, either it was something that evolved independently in all these places, or it's so ancient that it originated somewhere and then managed to spread out as people spread across the globe, which is pretty interesting either way. Yeah. And it got really popular. This stat really got me. During the Copper Age, which was just after Stone Age, they found that about five to 10% of all skulls that they found from the Neolithic area were trapped. Yes. Up to 10% of all the skulls that have ever turned up had holes cut into their skull. And the thing is, like we were saying, if that had just been it, if that were the sum total of it, that, you know, well, that's really interesting. People used to cut holes in their skulls and that was it. It would still be worth remarking on or talking, probably would have just stayed at the internet roundup. But the reason that it's worth the whole episode is because of that survival rate that not only do they cut skulls in each other's heads with rocks, actual rocks, the people survived these operations and may have actually been improved as a result of these operations and that it had been going on for thousands of years and still kind of continues today. That's what really makes the whole thing noteworthy. When you look back at trepidation in, like, the Mesolithic and Neolithic era, that's part of medical history. It's not just some weird thing that people used to do in other cultures. That was the beginning of a surgery that we still carry out today. I don't think we can get that across enough. Yeah. There's a neuroscientist named Charles G. Gross that put the estimate of survival sometimes up to 90%, 50% to 90%. And then a survey of skulls from the Iberian Peninsula 75%, showed evidence that they had healed, or at least were healing at that site, which means they lived for a while. Like you said, skull just doesn't grow overnight. It takes a little while. As long as that blood is flowing, I guess it's healing. And then that actually dropped. So, like I said, that's flip flopped from success rates thousands and thousands of years later in Europe. And then when the Holy Roman Empire was doing this in medieval Europe, they weren't doing it as good. They had a higher mortality rate. And the thinking is because they used knives and then wiped them off and the knives got really dirty, whereas in the olden days, they would fashion, like, brand new tools out of bone and rock and stuff, and they were, I guess, comparatively pretty sanitary. Yeah, because if you nap, cut off the face of a rock to create a new stone tool to perform a trepidation, that rock hasn't been exposed to anything. It's basically sterile now because you just cut off the face and now you're using it, whereas if you're performing surgery using the same tools and all you're doing is washing it off, that's just bacteria city. And it's not that hard to get a brain infection when you cut into a skull using reusing tools that have just been kind of washed off with water a little bit. So, yeah, that was probably a really good reason why the survival rate went down. But one of the reasons why it was so high also earlier is because people, like, even back in the Mesolithic and Neolithic seem to have understood a couple of things. And one was you stay away from the durator, which is that really hard tough not hard, but really tough membrane that encases the brain and the spinal cord and protects it from the outside. Even if your skull cracks open, as long as you stay away from that and don't cut into that, your chances of survival are pretty high. And ancient people seem to have really understood this. They also need to stay away from sutures, which is where your skull, the pieces of your skull which are not fused together when you're born, they fuse as you grow older. The places, the lines where your skull plates form together, those are called sutures. And they also need to stay away from those as well. So apparently, if you just do those few things and create a new stone tool every time you perform the surgery, your survival rate is going to go through the roof. Yeah. And before we get called out, maybe we shouldn't refer to those stone tools as sterile. Maybe we should just say, like, pretty clean for the time. Clean enough. How about that? Clean enough for rock and roll. Yeah, that's right. All right, I guess we should take a break. Great set up. Yes, I thought so too, man. And we'll come back and try and answer the big question after this, which is why the heck were they doing this? All right, so they know this was happening. They know it was working pretty well and that people were surviving at remarkable rates. But the big sort of $54,000 question that they had then and that we're still trying to kind of figure out and we don't know for sure, is why would they do this to begin with? Why would they dig into a person's head and cut out a piece of their skull 8000 years ago and we've got some decent ideas that all make sense to me. Yeah. And the whole problem is kind of like you have to put yourself in the mentality in the shoes in the worldview of somebody who had no shoes. Right, exactly. There's a huge difference. People who are still humans, they were modern humans in every sense of the word, aside from not living in the modern era. But they didn't have the benefit of a general knowledge of medicine that just about every human alive has today, just from living in the 21st century or just kind of having read about something on the Internet. There's just so many pieces of the way we see the world that we take for granted because there's just so many ways that we absorb information and there's so much information available to us that wasn't before that to kind of remove yourself from that and put yourself in the position of somebody 6000 years ago and to understand what they were thinking when they were cutting into someone's head that drove that purpose. It's really tough to do, but yeah, like you were saying, there's, some researchers have come up with some pretty good ideas, general ideas, broad categories that you could probably put just about anything into. There are actually three researchers that are worth shouting out. There was Lopez Caro and Pardon, three Spanish researchers who wrote a 2011 paper that was a pretty one of the better recent comprehensive look at trepidation and ancient trepanation. Yeah. So one of the reasons and like you said, I don't think it's lazy, but you could kind of slap these reasons on anything that happened back then. One of them was magic or religious, like free the demons from someone's head. I kind of read that as possibly to help cure mental illness, which they were definitely doing in Europe thousands of years later. So I don't see why they wouldn't have maybe done the same thing. But it's remarkable though, to think that 8000 years ago that they knew enough or were guessing enough to know that there is even a brain in there that was really important to the human body. We call in the shots. Yeah. How they even know that, I don't know. And similarly, that whole idea that like the third eye, that part that kind of connects you to the metaphysical world was located somewhere in the front of your head, which I think is actually right where the pineal gland was, which was later associated with that, too. That kind of falls into that same tranche as well. The magic religious, which is to kind of open yourself to a greater plane of spirituality. Like they think that in some dimensions or in some cultures, like shaman or medicine people or the high priests, whoever were kind of responsible for that, would possibly be trapping to kind of connect to that different level, that other way of thinking. Yeah. Another one, and this is definitely one that you could probably say explains away a lot of things is some sort of initiation, right? A child passing into adulthood at the age of seven or if you want to turn someone to into a great warrior, maybe before some big battle, hopefully a little bit before that big battle, just to give them a chance to heal up. Yeah, but that makes sense. They did all kinds of things back then for rites of passage, so why not this also? Those to me are the ones that are the hardest to grasp, I think even harder than magic religious. The ones for initiation is not grasp. I mean, to pin down definitively to say yes, it's exactly what was going on here, you know what I mean? Yeah. And then follow like real legit medical purposes. Like if someone if took tuk, had epilepsy or something, or chronic migraine headaches, any weird changes in behavior or convulsions or anything like that. Maybe tumors as a literal way to maybe relieve like brain swelling or pressure on the brain, which is I mean, if that's real, then that's remarkable because that is very much a medical procedure that they still do today. Craniotomies right. And then kind of tied into that is the treatment of trauma, specifically head wounds. And there's an anthropologist who specializes in, I think maybe the Inca. His name is John Rizzo. He thinks that with the Inca at least. And the Inca went on to become prolific tripanners. I think maybe half of all of the tripan skulls that have been discovered came from the Inca. They were big time into Trepany. He thinks that their trepidation may have started when somebody was picking bone out of a Headbound to clean it or treat it. And that that person went on to survive and they thought, well, okay, maybe this is a thing. Maybe like you want a hole in your head. Or if you have a hole in your head, it's supposed to be a little more cleaner than just bone sticking out. And that, you know, it's not hard to make the leap to, OK, we're actually going to carve a hole in your head to maybe treat something else that is associated with the head. To us, that's not really a big stretch, to tell you the truth. I definitely buy into it. Yeah. The one I didn't see, which I think is sort of plausible, is just like ancient curiosity. Sure. What happens when I carve a hole in my friend's house? Sure. Or what's in that thing? What is in this round thing that has this very hard protective covering? Like maybe something important is in there that we should take a peek at. I wonder because I know that there's like a mechanism among people against self harm. And I feel like there's a mechanism against harm as well. I don't know how old letting someone do that. Yeah. Or harming somebody. Like doing that to somebody else, you know what I mean? It's almost like there's some innate sense of like, you shouldn't crack open ahead someone's or yourselves or your own and there's like some innate instinct against it. And I would guess it's older than 10,000 years old, you know? Yeah. And you made a great point and you put this one together yourself, that even if it was because there was a head injury or something like that, that's a big difference. Like treating a wound with some sort of surgical procedure is way different than that being the surgical procedure to begin with. Yeah. And it's there. That's where it's like murky. That's where it's like, okay, you're really kind of making some assumptions and leaps here when you put yourself in that person's position and try to say this is why they were doing it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like the medical thing to reduce like maybe they did have some really vague understanding of what swelling was on other parts of the body and maybe it just made sense. I don't know. I think it might be an overlapping of all these reasons. And also like, hey, we did this for this thing, so why not try it for this thing? That kind of deal. Yeah. And you know, I think I get what you're saying with the curiosity, but I think tied into that is observation too. Like somebody falls down and hits their head on a rock or they're attacked by some other group and gets hit on the head with a rock and they see brain. Yeah. And people like the other people around watch what happens just out of natural curiosity, and they learn from that. So I feel like it was probably a series of accidents and that knowledge was gleaned from that kind of got passed along and then developed into an actual procedure. Yeah. And then there are other cases where they may not fall into any of these categories. I think people in modern day Hungary during the Neolithic, they did this after death as a funeral. Right. Which I think I guess that could fall into magic. Religious reasons. Sure. Or rite of passage, even. Especially if you believe that there's some part of the body that survives after death that maybe needs to escape or whatever. I could see trapanning a skull to let that out, to go on to the afterlife again. I'm well aware I'm falling victim to the very thing I was warning about that I'm just totally putting myself into their shoes and answering for them. I'm not a professional anthropologist, just an intense hobbyist. And what was the deal with the Russians that were trapped in where the man bun sits? Yeah. So that's obliian, I think. Yeah. Which is a really risky place to trap in because that's where the blood supply to your head collects. Like where I saw it described, I think, on the BBC is where a high ponytail would be gathered. That's where the headband yeah, that's where the blood that's going to be distributed throughout your brain first collects and gathers. So it's really risky to cut in there. And I think something like 1% or less of all the Japan skulls ever found show a trepidation site there. And yet there's a number of calculistic Copper Age skulls that have been found that are endemic to Russia only that have the trepination at that site. And they seem to have been healthy and most of them seem to have healed. So they're like we're pretty sure this is some sort of ritual, maybe an initiation. I could see that being like a warrior thing or like a priestly class kind of thing. Early KGB. Yeah, probably they stuck some sort of protomicro chip in there to keep an eye on everybody. So I mentioned the famous cow. Like we mentioned, it was a purposeful veterinary procedure in Europe in what they call the golden age of trepidation in the 18th century. But they found a cow skull from about five to 6000 years ago in France that was, so far, the first sign of trepidation on an animal. And this is another one where it was like it was clear that it was very purposeful. It wasn't a fracture, it wasn't a cow scrap, there wasn't a tumor, or at least no signs of anything like that. But they did find a very purposeful trepination. And either way it's cool. It could have been them practicing on an animal before they did it on humans, which shows pretty decent amount of sophistication medically, or it's just early veterinary medicine, which is also remarkable. Yeah. And either way, it's, as far as we know, the earliest example of either one of those. So, yeah, it's a cow skull worth hanging onto if it ever comes. They all are into your position. You can get over the door, put it on your front bumper. But I mean, it's a special one because it's got a hole right in the front. I've seen a picture of it. It's pretty cool, right? So once we enter history, things become a lot clearer because by definition, everybody wrote stuff down. That's when you enter history. Right. It's recorded. And the ancient Greeks continued trepanning. And I would guess, Chuck, that the reasons and the procedures from pre history as well. Yeah, like you said, once they started writing stuff down, we could read it in the Hippocratic corpus, which was a collection of ancient Greek medical texts from the teachings of Hippocrates. Obviously they talk about therapeutic reasoning behind it. Some of the ones that we already talked about, basically including something called Places and man, which is one of the texts in there. And it recommended trepidation for the prevention of probably swelling because of skull fractures, swelling. And then they were also preventing infection of that dura mater, that membrane that encases the brain. And they were saying, basically, if you have a fracture, especially a fracture along one of the sutures, you want to actually trepan and open up a bigger hole because pus can get into the fracture that suits you and it can't get back out and it's going to infect the dura mater and the brain and cause all sorts of problems. So you want to open up a larger hole to let some of that puff out and clean some of the pus out. And that's pretty sophisticated. That's brain surgery they're describing right there. And Hippocrates was in the third or fourth century BCE. If they understood this by this time, keep puss out of the dura mater, what did they understand 1000 years before, 500 years before? They just weren't writing it down, but they still had that knowledge, you know what I'm saying? That's my guess. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and throw in this is so official it can go on the Wikipedia page. I'm going with plus as my worst word. Worse than moist? Oh, pus is way worse. What about really moist? A turkey can be moist, but a turkey with pus, that's true. A turkey could be moist with pus. Oh, man, I can't take that word. It's pretty bad. It's the worst for a three letter word, usually three letter, it's not packing a big punch. You need four to three letters. P-U-S. Oh, yeah. I guess. Never mind mentioning earlier that mental illness, like releasing the demons or something, could have been a reason thousands of years ago, and that they also did that in medieval Europe, there was something called the Stone of Madness, where they believe there was an actual stone inside your head, like a literal foreign object that caused people to go crazy. And there are even painters, specifically Heronimus Bosch and others, who depicted this surgery. Removing the stone of madness. Yes. Have you seen that painting? It's a pretty famous one. Yeah, it's pretty great. I mean, I wouldn't want it on my wall, so it's almost like understanding you wouldn't want it next to your frame poster of the guy melting with stone again written underneath it, and then that's right next to the kitten. It's going to hang in there. Hang in there, baby. So it's worth pointing out again that by the time the medieval era and even the Renaissance came around, we had gotten really bad at Trepination as far as survival rates go, and our reasons for it possibly had degraded as well. Yeah. And just real quickly, my favorite part of that painting is the funnel on the surgeon's head. Yeah, well, I was reading about that, and I read, what's the Deal? So if you notice also there's a nun seated at the table where the man is being trapanned, and she's wearing a book on her head. Yeah. Maybe that was for balance practice, at least. Supposedly, Bosh was basically mocking the doctor and the nun, basically taking them to task, suggesting they should know better that A Stone of Madness was BS, and that they shouldn't be inflicting this on this poor individual who wouldn't necessarily know better because I think he's depicted as a fool in it. So he wouldn't have any no, the patient, the doctor and the nun should know better than to perform this kind of surgery because there is no Stone of madness. That was the interpretation I read, which makes me like Bosh even more with the armadillo and his trousers. Yeah. Really nice work there. So you want to take a second break and come back and explain a little bit more about how this might happen? Yeah, okay. And how they even did it. Sounds good. Yeah. We'll be right back, everybody. All right, so our old pals Lopez, Caro and Pardinius, the Spanish researchers who wrote that 2011 paper, also kind of said, hey, we've got some general ways, from what we can tell, there's, like three, maybe four, I saw. But you can really lump them into three categories of how Trepanation surgery was performed. And they are basically they boil down to grooving scraping and boring and cutting. And if you just wiggle in your seat, that's the appropriate response to hearing about that. Yeah. The first one I get that makes sense to me, if I had a skull and primitive tools, the way that I would cut a hole in it would probably be to groove it. That is, to take a hard stone, something really sharp that you probably even sharpened further, and basically do little digging, little half turns or full turns in a circle, carving in till you can kind of just pop that thing off or lift it off. There's nowhere to pop it into. Yeah, you don't pop it into your brain. You know, one of those, like, apple cores that's kind of like an open tube. It's like open in the middle. Yeah. And there is such a thing as an apple core, by the way. But if you took one of those and you put a handle, a crosswise handle on top to grip, that was kind of the tool that you would use for grooving. And there's actually the Romans had it. The Greeks had it. I think I saw a picture of a 16th century trepidation kit that had one of those. It's a really ancient tool, but like you're saying, you could also do it with the stone. And I think groovin sounds pretty bad. Scraping, I think, would be worse. Yes. I didn't quite understand scraping. It sounded like grooving to me. Oh, no. But I'm no dancer. Imagine that somebody has peeled back part of your scalp. Yeah, this is worth pointing out. Like cutting into your scalp is far and away the worst part. Once you do that, your skull and your brain, they don't have pain receptors. Yes. So it's the scalp being cut back that actually really hurts and produces the most blood they do brain surgery with. You awake now precisely because they can you don't feel any pain because there's not pain receptors there. So once you have the scalp peel back, what they do with scraping, or what they would do is take a very sharp rock and then later on, tools, too. But they're basically taking advantage of the fact that your skull is curved and just making a straight motion. Kind of like you would with like a wood is it a wood blast? A wood grass, something like that, where you're just scraping away little by little wood. But you're doing this instead with the skull until you finally wear a hole into the skull. That's the scraping technique. Okay, I guess that sounds a little like grooving to me. But no, grooving is like taking a circular tube, putting it down on top of the skull and twisting it back and forth until you like that. Yeah, it's different. It's definitely different. I'll show you. We'll get a cow skull and then I have one. No problem. Okay. Boring and cutting. This one was not used much in Europe. I think this is more of a South American Arabic jam, also in Africa. And this is something that is sort of a carpentry trick. If you're ever carpentry trick, if you're caught without the right saw, maybe let's say you wanted to make a hole in a piece of wood, and all you had was a drill. You would drill little holes in a circle and then as close together as you can. And then from there, it's not too hard to kind of punch out the areas in between. But instead you're doing this with a skull. That's right. And you don't have a drill. And this one, to me, would be the one that's the most rough around the edges, probably, right? Yeah. They know that this is the technique used when they find a skull that has, like, a serrated opening. Apparently the inko, we're super fond of that one. Right, sure. I did this just last week, actually, but not in a skull because I was stuck without a saw and all I had was my drill. So I did that, and it works. Okay. You just got to have, like, some sandpaper file or something to kind of smooth it out. Yeah, I saw, like, one of the ways that they thought they might have done the drill is by rolling the pointed sharp, I guess, rock in between your two palms like you're trying to start a fire, which is actually something I saw that the ancient people would have known. You want to avoid heating the bone. Whatever technique you're using, you got to stop and rest for a little while to prevent the bone from heating up because you don't want to transfer that heat. You don't want to start a fire inside the skull, which is essentially what you could all be doing if you're not careful with letting the friction the heat produced by the friction to cool off in between little sessions. Yeah, it's funny that this came up now because I mentioned a couple of times watching that survival show and History Channel alone, where you can bring, like, ten things and then they throw you out in the woods. There's a new spin off series now called Alone Beast, where it's only 30 days, but you take nothing but the clothes on your back. So the people that are dropped here are literally fashioning stone tools and stuff, and it's kind of cool to watch. At least they have clothes on. They have clothes, and that's it. I guess the next step would be naked. And the beast thing comes in is that the only thing they give you is one large dead animal. Oh, it's dead in the bayou. It's an alligator and the art tickets or a boar and the art tickets, like a moose or a buffalo or something. I see. But it's not for companionship. No, the animal is dead, and they're like, this is all you got, so you can use their bones. An animal's jawbone is really useful because that's, like, super sharp, and a boar's tusk can be really sharp, so they make knives out of that stuff. And they use some of these carving and boring grooving techniques to break off bone to make, like, sharper things. Yeah, I was going to say, I bet getting your hands on that first tusk or that first jawbone to get started is pretty messy. Well, it is. And they have to get in these I mean, it's kind of gruesome, especially if you're a vegetarian. But they have to get into these animals without a knife to begin with. So they have to start with a sharp rock as they can get, basically, and go from there. How ghastly. This is pretty gastroity television now. Well, I mean, sure, I guess so. Well, next up is the Stone of Madness. Well, I think it's kind of interesting because it's not like, look at some cool modern reality idea. It's like, well, let's take people back to the Stone Age and see how they could do. No, I get that. That's cool. But you just know there's a coked up producer 15ft away. You're really kind of dragging the whole thing down as far as the Stone Age goes. Yes, correct. So you might be saying, chuck, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. They're cutting into your head here. And yeah, maybe the bone doesn't hurt and the brain doesn't have pain receptors, but it's going to hurt to get to the skull. What are they doing here? And it depends on where you are. A lot of places supposedly just use restraint. Like you were awake, you were not anesthetized. There were just a couple of dudes holding you down while whoever was performing the trepination perform the trepination. Yeah. That's rough. Another thing they would do, and to me, this is one of the better band names we've had in a while. They would use omniferous agents. And that depends on where you are in the world and when it is. It could be cocoa extract, it could be poppy, it could be just getting them super drunk on wine. Just basically anything to kind of dull somebody out a little bit. Yeah. And one of the places that just used restraint was among the Kisi, I think I'm saying that right, the Kisi people in Kenya who were practicing this as recently as the mid 1960s, using basically the old traditions. And I think an anthropologist, I'm not 100% sure, el Margaret went back 25 years later, a decade or two ago, and reported that they're still doing the trepidation and surgery, but now they're using local anesthetic and some other stuff. Right. But this is still performed in some places. And for that reason, there's like a group of people in the Western world on the Internet, even, believe it or not, who basically say, like, hey, you know, what the key see people are doing in Kenya? That's part of a really ancient tradition and we are here for it. And there's a trepidation, basically, appreciation society that has developed preinternet, but really took off when the Internet came around. Yeah. And there are people, and I know this is what we talked about at some point because I remember self trepidation. Yes, I kind of do too, now and talking about that. But there was an artist name and a lobbyist name, amanda Fielding, Countess of Wess in March, whatever that means. Is that what that is? Yeah, she's royalty. She's a minor royalty. But for real? I thought it was just something she made up. No, I think she's Ratual royalty. Alright, well, in 1970, she performed an act of self trepidation. A couple of years after that, a man named Peaver Halverson did it. Peter. What did I say? Peter? Why am I sticking Vs in there? Leave it to peever. What is going on with me? Can you just see Peter Halverson listening to this? And he's like, oh, they mentioned Amanda feeling. I know I'm next, I know I'm next. You hit him with the Peaver and he's like, Peaver man, I'm so sorry, Pete. Very sorry. And then there's a guy named Bert. I'm sorry, Bart. You know what the real problem is? I have a light off in here and I can't see as well. Oh, I would say that might have something to do with it. Yeah. Bart Hugis. Well, he's Dutch, so I'll bet we would say Bartis. Sure. Oh, really? Hugis. He is a former med student and he got really into this in 1962. He wrote something called Large Mechanism of Brain blood volume all one word. Yeah. And he said that, you know what, a person's level of consciousness really depends on how much blood is flowing through the brain. Maybe there's something to that. And he said, it falls as we get older. And so maybe what we should do is paying ourselves, basically and open up our creativity. Yeah. His whole point was that if you look at kids, kids are way more creative, they're way more free, they enjoy life more. And it just so happens that their skulls haven't fully fused. So his whole thing was, if you are an adult, your skull is fused for the most part. You have a few skulls. Some very lucky people don't ever have their skull fused, according to Bart Hughes. And he actually apparently talked John Lennon out of self trepanation or being Japan, because he said you probably wouldn't notice a difference because I suspect that your skull isn't fully fused. You're a very creative person. Yeah, I don't know about that. But is it real? Yeah. But then John Lennon went to recommend trepanning to Paul McCartney, who said, man, I can do that. This got a hole in your head. This guy was like a guru of trepination and ended up, like, creating this following, including Amanda Fielding and Peter Halverson. And they went on to basically carry on this guy's vision. Halverson formed the International Trepination Advocacy Group. Fielding runs the Beckley Foundation, and both of them help people get trepidation surgery, I think from this one surgeon down in mexico. And they all believe that it's like this basically shortcut to psychedelic existence and opening up the third eye and becoming more spiritual happier. There you go. Yeah. And so Western researchers are like, no, this goes against science. It doesn't make sense. Yes. If you have a problem in your brain, if you have inflammation, opening up your brain will help with blood flow. We know that. We perform that surgery. It's Trepidation. We call it craniotomy, but we do it. But if you're healthy and you don't have inflammation in your brain and everything's just normal, this is not going to help you. And the Internet said, I can't hear you. All I heard was what these other people said, and it kind of took off on the Internet to some extent. I don't want to say it's like huge, but it's still got some sort of traction. And following online, I believe. Well, it took off so much that the British Medical Journal felt the need to say, hey, medical establishment, be on the lookout for this. If someone shows up that has drilled their head, at least you know what's going on. Yeah. And all the Trepidation people were like, yeah, establishment. Yeah, exactly. My freedoms. So, yeah, that's out there, it's a thing, and it's probably not helpful at all. So it's not going to cure depression or anxiety or anything like that, which is some of the things that tout. So be careful out there, everybody. Meaning to wit, don't Trapan yourself or have somebody else to bean you. Okay. Now the only grooving you should be doing is on that wooden floor. Yeah, I love it when we're grooving together. Very nice. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, I don't either. So that means that this episode of Trepanationin has oh, yeah. I keep trying to end everything like a short stuff. Let me do it differently. Everybody. If you want to know more about Trepination, go read up on Trepidation. It's pretty interesting stuff. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Let me call this. Josh made me quit vaping. Oh, I saw this one. I was so proud. That's great. Hi, guys. I never thought I'd have a reason to email, but now I do want to say thank you for essentially making me want to quit vaping. I was listening to your child labor episode and got to the part where Josh said he'd been smoking, started smoking in his young teens, and then quit in his adult years. I only started using a vape one year ago and hadn't really considered quitting anytime soon. I just kept telling myself I would get around to it. You guys made me get around to it. I paused the episode wow. Through the vape away, and now I'm one week off of it. And that's awesome. As a goal, I told myself I couldn't listen to the rest of the podcast until September 1. Wow. I love this and could only listen if I avoided vaping. So far, I've had no urge to go back. Thank you guys for helping me get a jump on quitting early on. I believe you saved me from some unnecessary future misery. I appreciate everything you guys do. And that is from Tim. That's awesome, Tim. I was so glad to hear that. I haven't written him back quite yet, but he's in my inbox. Well, I'm going to tell him he made listener mail, so hopefully Tim won't be like, I started vaping again, right? No, don't do that. Congratulations, Tim. I really do think that was a very good move. And if you want to be like Tim, then you just throw your vape away to throw your pack of cigarettes away and get started. It's like Bob Hope always said, journey of 1000 miles begins with one step. That's right. And that was from Tim, of course. So if you want to write to us like Tim did, you can send us an email. Everybody stuffpodcast is iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2018-01-23-sysk-hoarding-final.mp3 | How Hoarding Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-hoarding-works | You may be familiar with compulsive hoarding from TV, but something that’s often missing from those shows and the news is the deep and overwhelming shame that this disorder creates in its victims who are neurologically incapable of parting with their stuf | You may be familiar with compulsive hoarding from TV, but something that’s often missing from those shows and the news is the deep and overwhelming shame that this disorder creates in its victims who are neurologically incapable of parting with their stuf | Tue, 23 Jan 2018 15:04:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=15, tm_min=4, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=23, tm_isdst=0) | 59305552 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And here we are doing stuff you should know about. Hoarding. Yeah, Jerry's over there under a stack of pizza boxes and newspapers. Yes. But Jerry proudly displays them to anybody who comes into the office and makes eye contact with her, which makes her a collector of those things a big difference. Well, yeah, I didn't save your hoarder. She's a pizza box collector. I got you. Okay. She likes those greasy after stains. Yes. Supposedly that prevents you from recycling pizza boxes. I think we talked about it in one of our episodes before, but I think that it's a PSA that bears repeating. Yeah, I never got a final answer on that, so I throw mine in the recycling anyway. I don't know if that comes up to work or not. Is there a spectrum or anything like that? Or you're like, oh, this one is just so obviously loaded with cheese that I can't possibly recycle this. Well, mine are always loaded because I specifically request that the pizza be delivered face down in the box. Do you? Yeah. It's a little weird, but I like it that way. Some way to do it, for sure. Upside down pizza. Actually, you know what I should do is just tear the box in half and at least recycle the top. I think you may have just solved the real problem. Yeah. All right, from now on, work. I think we do need to do a follow up recycling episode, because I would imagine it's probably advanced by leaps and bounds since we last discussed it. Yeah. And here in my area of Atlanta, they quit taking glass. Really? A few months ago. Too heavy, not enough payoff. I think it was just yeah. Or word got out that they weren't even recycling it. So since then, they have set up places around Atlanta. One specifically at the edgewood. Target parking. There's a bunch of stuff there, but in the Target parking lot, they have these huge glass recyclers there. And I meet up with the fellow Winos about once every two weeks. We all shamefully toss in dozens of bottles of empty wine. So much dead yellow tail. Yeah. And now I don't drink that stuff, but it's nice. It's sort of like a wine meeting. So much Dead Palmisson, like a wine clutch. I'm like, oh, what are you throwing away there? How is that? Is that right? Really? Have you gotten any recommendations from those encounters? It literally happened where I would meet a fellow winner, we're throwing away tons of bottles, and then we decide to own our shame and be like, hey, this one was pretty good, by the way, and start up a conversation. And then I get Maced. Yeah, you take the bottle and go Night Train. I haven't heard of this one. Right. I'll give that a try. And I like the handy grip of the bottle. I never tried Night Train. Did you have that? Dude, it's a nightmare is what it is. Yeah. I would drink the like you don't even sober up before you get a crushing headache from it. Right? It comes with a headache. That's what it says on the bottom. What would I drink? Mad Dog? I mean, there's a reason they are sold right next to each other. Yeah. Can you even call those wine? No, it's not wine. It's wine. Like wine. Like malt liquor is beer. It's related, but liquor, too. Drinking college. Sure. Remember the Nicky's big mouse? Yeah. And cold 45 came in, like, gigantic bottles. That was one of the big attractions of it. Yeah. That's inexpensive, man. That was our jam for a little while. I never got into this. I know what you're talking about. Didn't they have like, a question or a trivia thing or something on the underside of it? The bottle, the lid? I don't know. Well, there were the little green hand grenade bottles, little barrels, and I don't know which came first or after. It was either. I guess they switched to just the regular, like, Coca Cola style twist off cap. Metal twist off. I think they did have something underneath it, actually. There is something under there. Maybe it was like a poker game or a car game or you've just won liver disease. But before that, then I think they had these really unique pull tabs because it was a big fat mouth. Mickey's. That's why they called it that. Mickey's big mouth. So they had to have a very unique bottle cap. Pull cap. That was just sort of interesting. Nice. Back in the day, man. Back in the day when I was I'm not going to rap now. We're now refined with our beverage consumption. Yeah, we are. I only drink cold 45 out of a chilled glass. Now I got a nice whiskey bar set up at home that's separate from the regular bar wow. With just, like, rice and bourbons and Scotches and Irish. It's very nice. And a bunch of nice little additional. I've got now to where I will put in little drops of little tinctures and shrubs and things. Oh, yes, occasionally. Shrubs are great. I made my own once, and it's actually worth the effort. Yeah. My buddy Eddie, you know Eddie, he actually does it in the bottle, but he'll do like a cherry bourbon or an apple or a confused bourbon. Yeah. The shrubs, though, man, it's actually not very hard. And they last forever, because what you're doing is basically I don't know if it's fermenting or pickling or something, but you're doing something to the fruit that you're macerating with the sugar, and it just lasts forever. And it's just such a nice little tangy pop. It's like kimchi. You got to bury it in your yard for kind of it's close to that, actually. It's like the Yankee version of kimchi, but with fruit and you put it in your booze. Well, this is all very Hoardy like. Well, hold on. Even before we get into Hoarding, we still have another tangent to go on. Oh, are earl buds? Yeah. Yeah. Let's announce it. Okay. So Carolyn, Irvine and Kristen conger. Seriously? Well, I know it was Conger, but she's since gotten married and I don't know. She took her husband's last name. I thought she couldn't remember. No, of course. Kristen Conger. No. I don't know. Something tells me Conger did not take his last name. Right. I could see that because then I would no longer be able to call her Kong, which I know she loved. That's true. And she was probably there at the Social Security administration thinking, I can't do this. What about Chuck? I'm sure she thought of that. At any rate, carolyn and kristen, the former host of stuff mom never told you. Yeah. Which is now hosted by our pals Emily and Bridget. That's right. Right. So Kristen and Carolyn went off on their own, and they have now started a new podcast. This is the grand announcement here on stuff you should know. That's right. It's called Unladylike. And I've heard the trailer, so it sounds great. And anything they're going to do is going to be great. They're pros. I know stuff Mom Never Told You was started with Molly in Congo, but when Caroline came along, it really just found its true voice. No offense, Molly. She just trashed her home office. It's just a great show. And Unladylike is going to be awesome. And I believe it's got a bit of a different flavor with interviews and stuff like that, but it is definitely going to be dealing with feminism and women's issues. Yeah. Advocacy. And their logo is great. It's a big middle finger, which is just so them. Yeah. So they have a site, but I think you can get their podcast anywhere. You get podcasts. That's kind of how it works. But they have a site as well called Unladylike. Co superbritish, not.com CEO. Okay. That's right. The best of luck, ladies. I'm sure it will be great. And you are always on our minds and in our hearts. How about that? So nice of you. Good luck, Carolyn and Kristen. It's going to be great. Now, can we hoard? Yes. Finally. Long last. Let's take a commercial break, shall we? No. Can you imagine Molly would trash her home office again? So we're talking horny today. Believe it or not, everybody, and basically everyone is fairly well aware of Hoarding, thanks to a couple of high profile reality TV shows about Hoarders and Hoarding. And then there have also been appearances of Hoarders and literature. So even before it kind of became, like, part of the cultural awareness, it was also already kind of there. Like, everybody thought there's some guy out there who has a house full of something that he picked up on the side of the road, and it's just accumulated, and he can barely get around his house. Like that was there before. But thanks to those TV shows, which actually sprung out of the first real research on hoarding as its own disorder from the early 1990s by Smith College psychology professor named David O. Frost and then two of his students, rachel Gross and Tamara Hartle, those three people together actually form the basis of our knowledge about hoarding, the disorder. They took it out of the cultural reference, they took it out of the realm of Freud, and they got it ultimately all the way up into the DSM five in 2013, which is about the best you can hope for as an undergrad psychology student. Yeah. You get your DSM tattoo? Tattoo. And I believe those shows. One was called Hoarders and one was called Jerry's Pizza Box Collection. No, Jerry's a collector. Well, it was Jerry's Pizza box collection. Colon. I'm not a hoarder. Right. It was a little mouthy, little wordy. The log line was, if you're looking for a show about a hoarder, keep looking. But if you like pizza boxes and a lady who doesn't speak, it'd be very David Lynching. Just this mute woman walking around, poke with the boxes, blackout bar over most of her face, everywhere she goes. That'd be great. Yeah. All right, so we'll go ahead and get it going with a stat here. Back in the day, I was statman. Remember that? Oh, of course. So I'm going to reprise that role. Okay. Do you have a cape still? Oh, yeah. It's on. Yeah, I see. I couldn't see it. You weren't turned the right way. Yeah, well, it's a thin cape for a broad fellow. Right. So estimates no one really knows, because, as you said, it's very recently, that it's been recognized as its own disease and not a symptom of another thing, even though it is, as we will see later, very much comorbid with other issues and mental illnesses. But despite the fact that we don't know a ton about the stats, there are estimates to say anywhere from zero 4% to as many as 5% of as high. Is this humans or humans? Americans. Humans? Yeah. I think the general population that would make its prevalence higher than schizophrenia. Oh, wow. Yeah. Which I actually kind of believe, if I stop and think about it. Sure. Well, the thing is, though, and we're going to talk about all this stuff, but it's not often the kind of thing that presents itself out in public because these people are hiding in their houses full of stuff. No. And one of the things, one of the early misconceptions about hoarders that we'll see is that it was mostly older people who were hoarding. Yeah. But it turns out that they're the ones who get thrust into the limelight because it's a progressive chronic disease. It's been holding longer. Exactly. So by the time the news media becomes aware of this and drags these poor people out into the limelight, their horde has gotten very big and they have aged. So that's why we initially thought that just older people were hoarders. It turns out it actually starts far earlier in life, typically. Yeah. Like I show about a twelve year old with one corner of their room too messy. Yeah. Just looking at it like, this is going to be huge one day. We're joking here, but this is a serious mental illness. But we joke about all kinds of things, so I don't want anyone to get upset about things like that. No, if you're new to the podcast, goes into the comas episode, that'll set things straight. All right. So some of the symptoms of hoarding and we're going to get into also in a bit. The myths and separating those two is really important because it's very easy for someone to very dismissively say. Oh. They're a hoarder. Because they have a lot of stuff in my family. My in laws well. Let me let Steve off the hook. Specifically. My mother in law. My grandmother in law. Mary. The eldest general. The stuff you should know. Army and my aunt sue. Sharon. Sue and Mary. They have a lot of stuff. And we call it the disease sort of as a joke. Actually. Well, they're not hoarders at all, but they got a lot of stuff. They have a hard time throwing away the stuff that they had that they think someone in the family might want. But I think that stuff that's pretty typical. A lot of people are like that and a lot of people have a basement room with a lot of junk in it out of being too busy or lazy or maybe just a bit of the disease where you just like, I can't bear to part with it, even though I really should. But that is not hoarding. Well, so my question would be, then, have you ever seen them and do you feel like they have the ability to clear out the attic or donate some of the stuff? Like they have the ability to part with the stuff. There have been pushes at various times, like when they're moving and stuff like that. Of course it's a good time to do that. It is always a bit of a painful experience. But I think, like I said, everyone's got a little not everyone. Some people are so unsettlemental that they'll just back the dumpster up and just empty their house into it and say, I'll get new junk. Sure, it's a good way to move. Yeah, exactly. But it is a little bit of a hard time. And very famously, Charlie, Emily's grandpa, who left us on our wedding day, he famously passed away with buckets of bent, rusty nails. But he was not a hoarder. He was legitimately one of those guys who was like, I can straighten these and reuse them one day. And he believed in the value of just not throwing everything away, which is great. So let me ask you this, though. He would say kind of with pride, like, look at all these awesome nails that I'm not wasting you chump. No, not at all. It was just was he ashamed of his bucket of nails? No, he would occasionally get out a nail and straighten it and use it, and it was just everyone in the family knew, like Charlie. He did grow up in the Great Depression. And as we will see, that as one of the myths that all these people just grow up in the Depression, so they value things more. That is not the case. There's no tie to that. But he is one of those gentlemen who grew up in the Great Depression, and I love that attitude. We are in such a disposable frame of mind. I think that the Depression thing has kind of come back for the generation behind us where they value things a bit more. Good. Yeah. Because the disposability of products and just everything just pulling a Dumpster up to your back door and pushing your stuff out as a means of moving. Yeah, that thing didn't work. Well, I could probably get repaired, but screw it, I'll get another one. It's only $20. Things like that. It kind of drives me nuts. Oh, wait, my phone has a new version of my phone has just come out. So now the company that made my phone is remotely slowing my phone down, so I have to throw it away and go buy another one. That's definitely part of the problem, as well. You know, it's funny. I can totally see Grandpa Charlie saying, everybody gathered around getting a nail out of his rusty nail bucket, straightening it, and just driving it right through the webbing of his hand as a party trick. That's what I thought of when you said yes. Every once in a while, he'd get a nail out and straighten it and use it. That's what I was thinking. Hey, what are the people that he's a pinhead? The people that would drive the nails through their nose? The blockhead. That's what it was. Blockhead. Yes. I can't believe we did a whole podcast on that. That was a good one, too. All right, so number one on the symptoms, though, is you literally have an inability to get rid of things and to stop acquiring things. So if you go into a hoarder's home, you may go into their closet and see a rack of clothes with tags on them because they're like, oh, this is on sale. It's such a good deal. I feel like I just have to get it, and then it's unworn a decade later. Yes. So the early researchers, david Frost and his two students, tamara Hardel and Rachel Gross I think it was specifically Rachel Gross and David Frost. Sorry. But that first study that they did on hoarders, they assumed that it would be all just junk, like, stuff nobody could possibly want. And they were really surprised when they toured some of the study participants homes and found, like, stuff still in the package, like clothes, perfectly fine clothes that had never been worn, but piles up to the ceiling that were now had now taken over the kitchen. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? That's the difference between being like, oh, this is actually a pretty good deal. I could use this someday, and hoarding. And another aspect of that, too, is if you're buying these clothes, sure, it might be a good bargain, but these are women's jeans and you're a man, and they're, like, half of your size. The people fit that. Yeah. They'll buy clothes that don't even fit them just because people can wear what they want. Sure, but I'm saying, like, don't even fit you. Right. Good point, Chuck. Thank you for that. But they basically won't pass up a bargain. It's one of the ways that they might acquire something. My mum has a little bit of that. Yeah. If you're a man and you're dressed in women's clothing, that is not a symptom of hoarding. No, and my mom doesn't have that. She has a little bit of the, like, oh, it's such a good deal. I feel like I have to get it, you mean? I went through an open house once, and I've never seen more clothing owned not just by one person, by several families put together, but it was just one lady's clothes, and they had built on in addition to their attic and their garage top, and it was just filled with clothes, more clothes than anyone could possibly wear. And we noticed that some of them still had the tags on. We're like, God, this lady has so many clothes. Now. Looking back after researching this, I'm like, she definitely had a touch of the hoarders disorder. I guess she had a little bit of the hordes. Yeah. It didn't spill out into the rest of her house. So either it was just a touch of it, or her family was keeping it in check. But there was definitely you wouldn't believe me if I told you how many just sweaters and shirts and dresses this lady had. Give me a number. How many? Sweaters. Sweaters. Yeah, I know. One of your superpowers is sweater. Guesstimating right. Sweaters and jelly beans. I would say just from what we saw, she easily had 200 something sweaters. All right, easily. And those were just the sweaters, man. That's not including, like, tops, blouses, dresses. She had so many clothes. Wow. Yeah. My friend Ryan I won't say his last name his dad very famously had a I don't know. You know what I asked him last time I saw him, and I can't remember the answer now, but at one point his dad had warehouses with stuff. Wow. He's like the dream hoarder. Yes. But I don't know if it was hoarding either because as you will see there as we go on, there are very specific definitions and just because you want warehouses full of stuff doesn't necessarily mean you're hoarder. Yeah. What was his stuff? I don't know. I'll find out. Okay, and follow up. But getting back to the inability to stop acquiring, one of the key points about not getting rid of stuff is they're holding on to things with no value at all, even sentimental value. Like when you have stacks and stacks of newspapers and magazines for decades and decades, those don't hold sentimental value, any monetary value, unless you happen to have like the moon landing stuff in there or something. It's like literally junk. Right? It can be. It can also be stuff that is actually useful and somebody would want this unopened unworn dress or something like that. Right. So it can go either way. But the point is they can't stop acquiring stuff. They can't help themselves. That's part one. Part two, and these things are part and parcel with one another, is they can't bear to give any of it up, like you said, even if it's totally useless, even if it doesn't have any actual real emotional value. But that is a big one that a lot of them point to is like they say, oh no, this means a lot to me. Or another explanation or another rationalization among Hoarders is that they're just kind of stockpiling, they might need all these clothes one day. That's the big thing. They might some future event that never happens. Right, exactly. And the other one I think is that they use it as a reminder. Apparently there's a correlation between faulty recall or inaccurate memory or lack of trust in one's own memory and hoarding. And so some hoarders will say, well, I keep this to remind me that I have to do this in the future or remind me to get in touch with this person. So they imbue importance into all these objects that from the outside are junk. And apparently the stuff that they imbue these objects with is just rationalization. It's not necessarily really valuable in the way that they feel like it is to them. Totally. Another symptom is that in this one I'm kind of curious about we should talk about it, is the stuff is disorganized and very disorganized. However, I would think that you could be a hoarder and also maybe be anal retentive and have everything organized. But does that immediately disqualify you? From what I understand, it does, yeah. You can have a lot of stuff and even very odd stuff and if you organize it, that's a huge symptom of Hoarding. That's a box that's not being checked and will probably preclude you from a diagnosis of Hoarding because they think that it has to do with your ability in the brain to make decisions. It supposedly stems from perfectionism, which we'll talk about, but this inability to make decisions about what to keep and what to throw away and being so paralyzed by it that you just don't make the decision at all, and all this stuff accumulates. That also extends to organizing and sorting. You can't make the decision about what should go where or what goes with what. You can't make decisions when it comes to your material possessions. That's a huge hallmark of, and I think a cornerstone of hoarding. The diagnosis. I'm going to take issue with that one officially, then on the record, okay? You could literally have every single symptom and you just might be like, no, all the newspapers go here and all the stuff goes here, and it's literally caving in on me and I can't get rid of any of it. And I'm ashamed of it, and I have no quality of life, but I'm anal retentive, so I'm officially taking issue. No one cares. Well, you paint a pretty good picture in that sense. I think if you have stuff organized, it's probably not taking over your life, maybe financially, maybe time wise, but you could still have people over. Your husband or wife isn't leaving you as a result. Your kids aren't ashamed to bring friends over to play, who knows? But I don't think, from what I understand, though, as far as the psychological community is concerned, if you can organize, you're probably not a hoarder. I think all those things you just mentioned could still happen if you were organized. Yeah. And this is just my dumb opinion. It's possible, though, I might start a show called Chuckstum Opinions. That's a good one. Just to follow up each week to this. Yeah, I get it all out. Number three, did you get a little josh said number three is the Hoarder feels ashamed. And we talked a little bit about this here and there, but that is definitely one of them. It's not like you walk into a hoarder's house and they're like, have you seen my collection of dead goldfish floating in bowls? Although that would be a weird thing. Although animal hoarding will get to this definitely thing that's like tracing along the line of performance art, right? But this is the thing is you feel ashamed and that can feed the beast. So you gather all this stuff, you accumulate it, you feel really guilty about it. And then one of the things that hoarders do is it makes them feel better to collect this stuff. So then you start hoarding more. The Grabster wrote this one, right? So The Grabster said it's really not unlike an alcoholic. You drink, you get ashamed, you feel those feelings of shame. So you drink to sort of feel better or forget, right? Like alcohol is to an alcoholic, or like somebody who eats for comfort. These people acquire stuff for comfort. Their material possessions are like food to somebody who eats as comfort. Right. But they do feel ashamed of the whole thing. That's a huge thing. And that's also, like I was saying, what differentiates them from collectors? If you have a collection of some really weird stuff, if you want to show it off to people and you really value it, you're a collector. If you are ashamed of your collection, your horde, and you don't want people to see it and you know that it's weird but you just can't do anything about it, that's a symptom of hoarding. That's one of the reasons also why it makes it such a terrible mental disorder. Because the people who are hoarders, they're not like off their rocker or something like that. They're not mentally impaired, they're not out of touch with reality. They have enough perspective to feel shame about the state that their life is in because of these material possessions that they can't get rid of and can't stop accumulating. They can't do anything about it. And that's what makes it just such a sad disorder. They're aware of this and feel shame as a result. Yeah. They're incapable of change. Well, I don't know if incapable is the right word, but with the right help, they're capable. But I think on their own they're generally incapable. Well, that's what I mean. I'm not saying you seek treatment and you still can't stop. That happens too. Yeah. And then finally another symptom is that it is really impacting your life. So you may have rooms in your house that you can't even use anymore. I can't take a bath because that's where I keep the backing peanuts. Or I can't use a stove because it has seven microwaves that I bought that are still in boxes stacked on it. A lot of times they will, like a snowplow, just dig a path through their home just so they can get around where they can get around. Yeah. Apparently among hoarders or among psychologists who study hoarding, it's called they call them goat paths. Yeah. And they can be dangerous too. Hoarders have been known to have died from walking along the goat paths and there's stuff on either side just coming down on top of them and pinning them and suffocating them. Yeah. And this is the point to where you talked about where impacting your life. They don't get out much maybe because they don't want to leave their stuff because they're afraid of family member might come over and take things. They are hold up. They don't have anyone over because of the shame. So it's just they're literally trapped by their things. Yeah, figuratively and literally. And their houses will also very frequently being disrepaired, not just from the collections of stuff taking over rooms and just totally changing their meaning, but also like if you have a hot water heater and it breaks, you're not going to let some repair man come over. You don't know him. He might touch your stuff, he might take something, or you feel so much shame that you just won't even invite a stranger to come in and fix your hot water heater. So they'll just live without hot water forever. It's super sad, man. Because of documentary television, because of reality television, I think hoarders have kind of gotten reputation as people are like, look at those freaks. But if you really start to dig into it and I'm sure some of these shows do this from time to time too, it is an extremely sad condition. It just makes you want to help them when you come across them. And then one other thing is they're also very frequently in debt. It gives the example of if their kitchen is just totally covered in stuff and they can't get to the oven any longer, they have to order kick out, which is much more expensive than grocery shopping. So their finances are very likely impacted by their hoarding behavior. Good point. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right, let's do it. And we'll come back and talk about some of the myths right after this. All right, so we talked about some of the truths and some of the myths are as follows. And you've mentioned the first one that it affects only older people. Another one is that hoarders are lazy and that is just not true. In fact, they may be very busy in there while they may not be organizing, they may be moving things around and obsessing about it, or they also might be on the recliner, just hoping they don't get caved in on. But the point is, stuff isn't there because they're lazy. It's a mental illness. Right. That's a big one. Yeah. Another early idea about hoarders is that the reason they hoard is because they had some experience previously in their lives where they came face to face with deprivation or scarcity, the Great Depression or their dad lost his job when they were a kid and their family really went through a hard time. So now, in response to that experience, they're just trying to get their hands on everything they can and they don't want to throw anything away. Apparently that is absolutely not the case, that the science doesn't bear that out at all. They do think that they are connected to some sort of difficult event previous in life, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with deprivation at any point. Like they may have been wealthy. I read a Nautilus article on hoarding and they profiled this guy who was quite well off and he hoarded and I don't think he had ever gone through any financial hardship. And that's apparently par for the course. Well, one of the things that says one of the traumas could be excessive discipline, which I thought was interesting because Freud and I know we said it's been mentioned, it's not a new thing like it's been in everything from Dante's Inferno to Silas Marner in 1861. And Freud talked about it in his day. But here's the thing is everyone says Freud was way off, but he thought it could be as a result of overly harsh toilet training, which I thought was interesting because while that is not true, if it came from excessive discipline and you were excessively disciplined while toilet training, maybe he wasn't that far off. Yeah, you're right, he probably wasn't. Like I said before, the guy was one of the history's great thinkers. It's just you shouldn't use the phrase anal character when you're describing what the problem was with Hoarding, which he did. He did. But yeah, you make a really good point, actually, that maybe he wasn't that far off. But if it is disciplined, overly harsh discipline in adolescence, I think that's a big one. I think the loss of a significant other, of a close family member, some sort of loss of love, can trigger Hoarding behavior. And some people have been known to bring the disorder on as well. I can see that, like, I lost that thing, but I can keep all this that I can control. Right. And that also would explain why they tend to imbue emotional attachment into their possessions. These things equal love to me, and now I can hang on to them and they're never going to leave me. Yeah, I'm telling you, it's a very sad disorder. Another myth is that it's a symptom of OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. For many years. We're just now starting to understand more about it, but for many years they thought it was either just straight up was OCD or was just an offshoot of it. But like you said with the DSM, it is its own distinct disease, but it can be comorbid with OCD and other things like anxiety. I see why people get that confused. Yeah, some study took away the criteria, took away the Hoarding criteria from OCD. Right. So it just gave these people a checklist to determine whether they had OCD or not, but took Hoarding out of the equation. And Hoarders tended to not qualify for OCD. Only like 16% of them do or something like that. So it's connected in some cases, but definitely not in all cases. And it's certainly not just an offshoot of OCD itself, like you're saying. Right. And then finally, and of course, just because you finally get a family member in there against all odds to clean everything out of there, that does not cure you of anything. No, I saw that. It just is, first of all, what a horrible experience that would be for the poor horror the county comes in or some family members come in with some tough love and just clear all your stuff out. Yeah, so that's number one. But number two, apparently they say, okay, well, I've got a lot of space to fill now, I better get to work. I'm sure like that's the result of it, supposedly. So it's a chronic disease? Chronic condition. And supposedly recurrence of this is 100% in all cases without treatment. Yeah. The grabster email this woman named Lisa Hale, founding director of the Kansas City Center for Anxiety Treatment and also edjunct associate professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City. Okay, so fighting Hayseeds. Haystacks. I like Hayseeds. I think hayes, isn't that a derogatory name for a canson? It depends on whether they own it or not. Okay, I'm sure we'll hear but she said that it approaches 100%. Like, that is 100% straight up proof. That cleaning things out. And while the family member well, the county just has their directive, but while a family member might think, oh, I've helped them, you really haven't if that was your solve. No. Probably the other part of it, too, is if you come in there all tough love and you need to get your act together and you're just being lazy, what's wrong with you? And clean their stuff out for them. First of all, that's basically abuse. And I don't even know if you need to qualify with basically I think that's abuse of a mentally ill person. But secondly, all you're doing is driving that behavior. That's a very stressful event. And the way they deal with stress is through hoarding behavior. So all it's going to do is just turn the notch up on the hoarding that they're doing anyway, and you can probably say goodbye to ever seeing them again after that, too. Man, what a terrible situation. Apparently we'll talk about treatment in a minute, but one of the key factors in treatment is that the family and friends and loved ones of the person who is hoarding and now undergoing treatment, they have to go through therapy themselves. Because I'm sure quite easy to look at this with disgust, horror, anger. Like, what is wrong with you? I know that's a natural reaction, but you can't follow through on that. You have to approach it from a place of understanding or else all you're going to do is trigger the hoarding behavior even further. Yeah, for sure. If you go in there guns blazing with your broom and your dumpster, yeah. It's just going to get worse. You would just crumble that person. So what causes this is really interesting because we don't know for sure. And they have been everything from lesions on the brain in certain studies that they found could account for it to chromosomal defects to possibly genetics, because they found that other illnesses, or at least that behavior is part of other illnesses that are definitely genetic. And hoarders are more likely to have other family members who are also hoarders. Yeah, like 85% of hoarders surveyed say that they have a family member who's a hoarder, which is way more than the general population. Yeah. So we have no idea what the really underlying causes, but we do know it's what's called and this is what Hale said, who had interviewed, is that it is a neuropsychiatric condition and it's all about like you were talking about earlier, these processing challenges, not being able to process visually, organizationally, emotionally and your brain connections aren't working right yeah. I remember hearing years ago that they would stick these poor people into the Wonder Machine and talk to them about getting rid of their possessions saying, like, I want you to imagine this room and think about all of your newspapers now. Which newspaper do you want to get rid of? And these people would experience basically. Physical pain. Huge spikes in their levels of stress just thinking about this but when you said the same thing about somebody else's stuff. They had no reaction whatsoever it's strictly their stuff and their attachment to it and another study by David Frost showed that when you give somebody who is a hoarder something and say. This is yours now. I think he gave out key chains their attachment to it was immediate right when they knew that they owned the thing and it was theirs. They were now as attached to as if they had had it for 50 years it was as important to them so there's a lot of stuff going on in the brain and it does have to do with attachment. Decision making. Finding comfort and deescalation of stress through these material possessions as well but they just don't quite know what did it was it a bad experience as a kid? Are you born with the chemical imbalance that doesn't begin to show its symptoms until adolescents? It's just too new it only became its own thing in the DSM Five. Which came out in 2013 but it is in the DSM now. Which means that insurance companies will pay for treatment for it which means that a lot more people are going to be studying it than they ever were before man I can't imagine anything more torturous than being strapped in an MRI machine. Which is already stressful and confining and then having to quiz people on anxietyinducing. Mental illness right. Like, we're getting rid of this thing now and I'm sure they're just, like, want to bust out of that thing. I'm sure yeah, it's like torture and it's valuable research so hats off to the people that do that, the people that administer it and the people that are brave enough to go in there and seek that treatment yeah, hats off to them. For sure. Man literal hats off because you can't wear a hat in an MRI machine now take it off. You can only wear a mesh helmet that's right. There was one other kind of general explanation hypothesis that explains hoarding floating around and that is that we all have this innate evolutionary instinct this is great to gather stuff yeah, I really like this it's part of our mammalian heritage and they think that in people who hoard. This instinct has basically gone haywire, like some synapse connected with another synapse that weren't supposed to be connected. Now all of a sudden, this thing, that's a natural thing where you go to the grocery store, you buy some stuff, you keep it in your refrigerator for a week, turns into you can't get enough Sunday circulars to possibly stave off these feelings of anxiety. Yeah, Ed's cool little story reference was like an animal saving food for the winter. Do they work extra long to prepare for possibly long winter, but stay out there and are more vulnerable to getting eaten by the cheetah while they're collecting stuff? Or do they say, you know what? I'm going to go ahead and get in the cave. I've got enough stuff. Eventually there will be that long winter and those animals will die out. So over the course of time, the long winter evolutionary trait will be the one that's passed on. Yeah, it's really interesting. The guy whose paper he based that on, you should see this paper, man. It's got, like, sigma everywhere, and he's talking about squirrels gathering nuts. But there's all these really complex math and statistical formula that he's got on his paper. But the overall gist of it is pretty fascinating, and it proves or it definitely lends credence to the idea that it is a naturally selected evolutionary trait to gather a lot of stuff. Most of us, though, have this cut off point where we know, I don't need anything more than this, or anything more than this is irrational. And people who hoard definitely don't have that cut off point. Yeah, we have a room in our house that is full of stuff, and it's not hoarding. We don't have a place for this stuff. We live in something year old Craftsman. And those houses just don't have the closet space in the storage space. We don't have a garage. We do have an attic that has some stuff. In theory, we could probably move all of this stuff up there, but most of this stuff we kind of need access to more often. So we're not hoarding, but it's just like our house is small and we can go the other route and go a little more minimalist, for sure, and get rid of this stuff. Trust me. Sure. But if you don't want to, you don't want to. Oh, yeah. It's a problem when we have a guest spend the night, which is not often because that's our quote. Guest room. I got you. I was going to say, you guys need to get to the Container Store. No, a lot of the stuff is in containers. You need a container for your containers. And what we do it's funny, when we do have the occasional guest, they are invariably very close friend or family member, and so they understand and we clear the code path. That's very nice. To the bed. Very nice. They're like, just dive over onto the bed, and then when you wake up and you want to get up, just call us and we'll lower the crane harness. That's right. But we are not adding onto our house, but we're finishing the basement, so hopefully that will be the solve. Nice, because we're going to have lots more good storage down there. There you go. Bing, bang, boom, problem solved. Except we're having to do house construction, which is the worst for your stuff. All right, should we take one more break? Yeah. All right, let's do that. And we'll come back and talk just briefly about the very famous Call Your Brothers and then hit on animal hoarding, which could be the saddest of all hoarding. All right. We would be remiss if we didn't mention the Homer and Langley Collier. You said you want to do a full show on them. Yes, but this will be the second time we've covered them. When did we talk about them before Bizarre Ways to Die, which is literally a nine year old episode. Yeah, that is old. I would say we could probably still get away with a full episode, because if you listen to the one in April 2009 and the segment on the Collier Brothers within that 25 minutes episode right. Then you would probably appreciate a more fleshed out version. I would love it. But just the broad strokes of it. Or that Homer Collier went blind, older in life, later in life, and his brother Langley took care of him while Langley was a hoarder and accumulated more and more stuff. And eventually Langley died. He was crushed by his stuff, and Homer, who was 100% dependent on Langley, starved to death in their brownstone. And they were found TADA separately, weeks apart. This is in Harlem, New York City, and if you just look up pictures of this and the cruise and the removing of things, it's really something else. And there's actually a little park there named the Call Your Brother's Park. Yeah. Then in early 2000s, there was a push to get that changed because they were like, we should not name a park after these guys. But as far as I can tell, it's still named that. I don't think that went anywhere. And in fact, I think it was called Collier Syndrome for a while, too. Yeah, for a while. I mean, they were pretty famous because all the New York papers got in there and printed all sorts of pictures and they had just a fascinating story. All right, now we might as well finish on the saddest of Notes, which is animal hoarding. And we're not talking about well, it could be Crazy Cat Lady, but not necessarily. I think she's an archetype of animal hoarders. Right. So in this case, we are talking about, and I know you've seen stories probably on the news here and there, these are people that hoard animals to the extent where it's just like the other stuff. Their house is often filled with feces and smells of ammonia, full of maybe fleas and ticks can't have people over. And it's one of the saddest because these people can't bear, they think they're doing the right thing, these animals, but they're not because these animals, almost 100% of the time, are very much suffering. Yeah, it's like hoarding, but your newspapers and plastic grocery bags don't suffer with animal hoarding. The hoarder suffers and the animals suffer as well, because no matter how great the intentions of the animal hoarder are, and apparently that is one of the basis of animal hoarding is that they really do have the best of intentions. They feel like they're rescuing the animals that no one else wants. They're animal love. They're taking them into their home. Yeah. They're feeding them, they're caring for them. The problem is they can't stop acquiring them. So it reaches a point where the animals there's not enough hours in the day to properly care for all the animals. And even if you had help and you had the money to buy food and veterinary care for all these animals, there's still a huge factor in that these animals are living very close together in ways that they should not be. That is not natural for them. So they're stressed out all the time. Yeah. And another one of the hallmarks could be not always, but a lot of times these are people that are left alone in life, either from being widowed or divorced or just their family has gone, or they just may have trouble interacting with people. And these animals, in this article you sent, they call it a conflict free relationship. And they surround themselves with this thing because it's filling them with something that they can't get oftentimes out of humans. Right. Which is unconditional love. The problem is, again, it is very sad because there's that extra component, the extra very important component of suffering animals. And when people hear about this stuff, you just immediately kind of hiss at the people who do this when you hear about it on the news and don't really know what's going on. But again, when you dive into the psychology behind it, it's extraordinarily sad because these people have the best intentions for these animals. And even while they're caring for these animals, they're suffering as well through this indecision. Like, do I love this dog? Or is this one my favorite? Or should I adopt it out? And they just can't decide, so they just avoid the decision and just acquire more and more animals, again, to the detriment of all the animals involved. Yeah, and just like with regular hoarding, removing these animals, because by the time you see it on the news, it's probably because the county is in there and animal control is in there and you see them, these sad, sad stories where they're literally taking out these dogs, clearly suffering from malnutrition or cats or whatever, and that does not solve the problem. They have to seek therapy. And just like with object hoarding, if you're a family member, confronting them, being angry, even though this one is probably even tougher to not be angry if you're an animal lover, right? You need to just keep that in check and try and be compassionate and help them so you can help the animals as well. Right? So there are some stats on this animal thing. Where did you get this? Where was this from? This is a good article, man. I wish you hadn't asked. I'll tell you by the time you're done with the stats. All right, I'll just take you a couple of these. Every year, 3500 animal hoarders come to the attention of the authorities. 250,000 animals affected each year. This one is really sad. 80% of animal hoarders have diseased dying or dead animals on the premises at the time. It can become more of it up to actually is about 40% of the time. Object hoarders are also hoarding animals. And like I was talking about being lonely or widowed perhaps, or divorced. 70% of animal hoarders who the authorities know about are females who are single, widowed, or divorced. So the thing is, that skewed differently for some reason. Apparently, if you just go out and sample the community, hoarding is pretty much evenly divided among men and women. I'm not sure why we typically think of them as women, but apparently for animals or in general? In general. Well, this is animals specifically. Okay, I got you. There may be some sort of deeper compassion from women. I don't know. Who knows? But I don't want to undermine the efforts of the anxiety and depression association of America, of course, whose site this came from. Yeah, thanks very much. Those great stats. Good website. Yeah. So let's talk real quick about treatment of all kinds of hoarding. That's a big one. Family intervention and loving support is a huge part of it because hoarders apparently don't initiate treatment themselves, even though they know that they're suffering, typically. But apparently talk therapy is proving to be the best treatment for hoarding. And that's where, say, a cognitive behavioral therapist talks you through your own beliefs about things, like what will happen exactly if you have to give away your plastic grocery bags and they make you say it out loud. And when you say it out loud, maybe there's a little part of your brain that's like, wait a minute, that sounds a little cookie. And maybe they say, well, really, what you just said, even if that did happen, even if that negative outcome did happen, is that really as bad as it sounds in reality? And they just kind of talk you through your beliefs while at the same time basically dragging them out into the open so that they're not just in your head anymore, they're out there. And you kind of have to evaluate them in a different way, speaking with this trained professional. Yeah. And I would imagine it's probably a go slow thing. Like maybe next week you bring in something that you care about and we're going to get rid of it together. I doubt if it's like they have some talk therapy and then they just go through and clear the house out. It's probably a very gradual thing to heal someone of this. Yeah, but I think it is gradual, like you said. And again, family has to support it because they may give the person they say, like, your therapist knows exactly how you feel every Thursday at 02:00. I mean, you're there for an hour. Probably more than that if you are a diagnosed torture and you're undergoing treatment. But the point is it's not an inpatient treatment. You go back home afterward and they give you homework. And if you're a chronic hoarder, you're probably not going to do the homework. So you need to have family saying, well, didn't Doctor So and So say you needed to start to clear this room out this week and just kind of be there and know what's going on and support the treatment as well and not just leave them to their own devices. Yeah. And the hoarders that have no family and support system, those are the ones that are just so tragic because they are the least likely to get help and seek help and potentially die a very kind of sad, lonely life surrounded by their stuff. Yeah. I think those are the ones that are the ones you see on the news, the ones that don't have family and friends anymore. Yeah. So I guess the upshot of all this, Chuck, is that if you know a hoarder, maybe go be nice to them and see if you can help them out because they are most likely suffering compassion. Yes. There you go. If you want to know more about hoarding, you can type that word in the search bar. Bring up this excellent article by Ed grabinowski on Houseteporkscom. And since I said that, it's time for listener meal. Short and sweet is what I call this because it cracks me up occasionally when someone is just cracked up by some dumb thing. We said, okay, I know this one. Hey, guys, you made my day once again. I spent December listening to Christmas music. Me too, by the way. Oh, man, I was done in week one. Yeah. I can muscle through generally for the most part not 100%, because eventually Emily can go 100%. It wasn't the Christmas spirit, just Christmas music. This year. I was like, I can't take this at all. Yes. Eventually I have to say, all right, we need to turn on Radiohead or something. And that's what I go to because she can always listen to Radiohead. Yeah, she's like, I love RadioHeads christmas album. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? Now I'm just hearing various versions of that in my head. Very nice. So I spent December listening to Christmas music, so I got behind on my podcast. I'm currently listening in reverse to December. I was just driving to work, listening to cake, and I almost had to pull over because I was laughing so hard at the conversation about oven doors. I'm sorry, Chuck, do you have a window in your oven door? Josh? Of course. What am I, communist? Between that and Chuck baking and his dishwasher, you two made this a perfect day. Got to say, I cannot wait to see you next week again in Portland. My stuffy. Schneider bingo. Board is ready. Travel safe. And that is Jim Hunt. Jim, by the time this comes out, we will have just been in Portland, and maybe we have even met you. Yeah. I hope you enjoyed the show. Hope everybody in Portland enjoyed the show. And as a follow up, I don't know if I officially said, oh, I'm glad you're saying that. I think I posted on Facebook, but I definitely do not have an oven window. No, Chuck is officially a communist. He has an oven without a window, and I've never seen anything like it before. It's like a tank. That's great. Yeah, it's a good looking oven. I don't want to see that jump cooking. Okay, well, if you want to get in touch with us to let us know how we cracked you up, we love hearing about that. You can tweet to us. I'm at Joshua Clark and S-Y-S kpodcast. I also have a website called Rucerisclark.com. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook.com, Charleswchuckbryant, or atstuffyshotto. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housesteporks.com. And as always, join us at our homes on the web stuffyshehnnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com." | |
4238d3f8-53a3-11e8-bdec-6fa224aefbcc | Ed Gein: The Serial Killer's Serial Killer | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/ed-gein-the-serial-killers-serial-killer | Any movie featuring a deranged killer who’s perversely devoted to his mother and makes things out of human skin has a real-life person named Ed Gein to thank for inspiration. He was Buffalo Bill, Norman Bates, and Leatherface all rolled into one. | Any movie featuring a deranged killer who’s perversely devoted to his mother and makes things out of human skin has a real-life person named Ed Gein to thank for inspiration. He was Buffalo Bill, Norman Bates, and Leatherface all rolled into one. | Tue, 03 Sep 2019 14:24:42 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=14, tm_min=24, tm_sec=42, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=246, tm_isdst=0) | 44750565 | 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. Attention. Orlando and New Orleans. Stuff You Should Know is coming to your town October 9 and 10th, which is soon, which means the time to buy tickets is running out. And FYI, our shows tend to sell out. So go to Sysklive.com and you'll find links to tickets and info. And you should probably go now. We'll see you in October. And if you want to come see me do my End of the world live show, I'll be in Chicago on September 12 and in Austin, Texas on October 2. Ticket links are weirdly hard to find, so just search End of the World, Josh Clark, Austin or Chicago, and your friendly search engine will help you out. See you in Orlando, New Orleans, Chicago and Austin. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the horror Show. I'm Josh. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And we are about to pass out from nausea. Yeah, I think we need to issue a strong COA. Oh, yeah. I don't know. Maybe some parents might. It depends on what you title this thing. They might think Edgy was, like, a children's show host or something. Yeah, I guess that's possible. So, yeah, it's a good idea. We preface this with this one is really just not for kids. No. I don't even know what age it would really start. Maybe 1415. I don't know. It's really grisly and gross. Yeah, maybe no one should listen to this. How about that? Before we get even further started, just let me throw one more thing in, okay? Okay. I am doing an end of the world live show in Chicago on September 12. Just saying. So if anybody wants to go see, you can get tickets to come see me do my End of the world live show in Chicago on September 12 at Lhst.com. Neff Said. That's great. Thanks, Chuck. So we're talking about Edge, who is most decidedly not a children's show host, although, ironically, he was a babysitter from time to time. Yeah. The most shocking thing I've ever read in my life. Yeah. Although it doesn't seem like he posed much. I mean, obviously he was a threat to anything, but that was not his Mo. No, kids weren't, which we'll see later. Some people are like, it doesn't matter. He's probably still a child killer. It just doesn't fit. He had a very specific Mo. For sure, as far as killers go, and he doesn't qualify, as far as I know, as a serial killer, although I think that's just silly. But he failed to hit the Big Three. Mark, I guess, is what it takes to be a serial killer. Well proven, at least. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So he's possibly a serial killer, I guess. And if you have never heard of Edge fret Knot, we're going to tell you all about them. But I would wager that you have at least encountered some character based on him, because there's probably no real life killer or criminal. We'll just stick with killer who has inspired more utterly deranged characters than Edge has. Yeah, for sure. We know the big three are, of course. Psycho with Norman Bates, Texas Chainsaw Massacre with leather face. Sure. And, of course, Silence of the Lamps with Hannibal Lecter. No, it's James Gum who is well, that's true. James Gum was the Buffalo Bill character. Right, exactly. Who was one of two teams, none of which are Hannibal Lecter. No. Hannibal Lecter was even like, man, that guy's off his rocker. You think? Yeah, I think, a little bit. I think he was kind of like this, maybe. At least he felt he was sloppy or something. He definitely knew he was smarter than that guy. So I think you look down on him in one way or another. Okay, so edgy. And the story starts as so many of our stories start at birth, back in 19 six in Wisconsin. He was born little Edward Theodore Gain. And I'd like to say, like, things started out normally, but I don't get the impression that there was a single normal day in Edge entire life. He just really pulled up the short straw, as it were. As far as the birth lottery goes. Yeah. His father was an abusive alcoholic. His mother, she had a grocery store for a little while in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. But Augusta was, by all accounts, a mentally ill religious zealot. Overbearing. Overbearing. There needs to be a stronger word in this case. Super overbearing. Super overbearing mother. Yeah. Times infinity. Yeah. And the religious stuff is just off the charts as far as anything to do with sex and intercourse was the worst dirty possible thing imaginable. And that she hammered this into her two boys. She really didn't hammer by, I guess, grabbing their genitalia sometimes and railing at them about how this is the Devil's unit or whatever she call it. I don't know. She probably could have called it the Devil's unit. I don't think it's entirely impossible. But she realized she looked around their town of Lacrosse, Wisconsin and said, this place is a sinkhole of filth. There's a quote from her. I guess it's Edge doing an impression of his mom, which we'll find out later. He really liked to do a lot, and she moved her whole family, sold the family grocery store and moved from Lacrosse, Wisconsin, to a little town called Plainfield, which had a population of about $500 and had been established decades before, but it was still so small that they'd only built the fire station and the local school within the last seven or eight years. It was a very tiny little town, and so you'd think, like, okay, maybe Augusta gang could relax a little bit here. Not so. Yeah. Did you look up a picture of her? I didn't, actually. I don't think I have ever seen her. Yeah, she looks like you would think. Yeah, I think I just had such a mental image of her, I assumed I knew what she looked like. She does not look friendly, let's put it that way. I could see that hair and kind of a tight bun, maybe, and then with the calico lace neck dresses. Yeah. I mean, no one smiled in pictures back then, but she and the only photo that I found was especially good at the photo scowl. Right. So they moved to Plainfield, where she thought things would be better, I guess, and not a sinkhole of filth. And it was not any better. There was no place that Augusta Gain could have gone that would have been suitable for her. I think that's absolutely true. Yeah. Because there were other human beings there, and I think she considered just about everyone Filth, unless they were maybe the preacher. And who knows? She may have considered her preacher filth. I could see that. And she definitely considered her husband filth. Considered her husband fifth and women, any woman that had been on a date with another man, she had bad things to say about it, seems like. Yes. So that was actually not a good move for the family. They've been doing okay, from what I could tell, as far as they could do okay with an abusive alcoholic, shiftless father and an angry mom and Lacrosse. I think they've been doing better financially. They moved to Plainfield, and they started farming, and their dad was fairly useless to begin with. But secondly, the soil, the land, they were not used to farming this kind of sandy soil, or they didn't have any idea what they were doing with farming anyway, so they had a really hard time growing crops, and then apparently the neighbors weren't the friendliest neighbors around, so nobody stepped in to help them and show them what to do. So they endured some real hardship on the farm. That was problem one. Problem two was Edge was not one to leave the house very much, and when he did, he went to school. And it's not like school was a respite for him or a place to escape from. It was just as hellish as it was at home, basically. Yeah. It was pretty bad for Ed. He had a weak eye on one side. He had a growth on his tongue that made him talk different than the rest of the kids. He had sort of a feminine appearance and all of this this is bad at any time in history. Probably when you're a little kid in school, sure. But back then it was really bad. And of course, he was bullied and teased and he would come home crying, and his father would beat him for crying and call him a sissy. And things are really getting out of hand. His mom won't let he or Henry really leave much at all. So they're just stuck in isolation where his psychosis and later found out to be seriously mentally ill, obviously. But it certainly didn't help to be in this kind of environment. Not at all. But this is life for him. This is how we lived. He and his older brother Henry, who had them by four years or something like that, this was their life. And Henry had like this. He was not as wrapped up in their mother as Ed was, not by a long shot. Henry felt totally comfortable criticizing his mother. He saw her as mentally imbalanced. He was just not under her spell like Ed was. But that's how they grew up. That's how they lived. And she made them both promise that they would dive virgins because sex is just so awful and dirty. And then in 1940, the family took a turn for the different when George, their dad, died of a heart attack. And that actually kind of opened up Ed's life a little bit more. Number one, he had his mom all to himself, right? But number two, just by virtue of having to go out and make more money, he had to go out of the house and do things like odd jobs and babysit and that kind of stuff. So it changed his life a little bit, but it's not like it had any big lasting effects for the better. Yeah, for sure. He didn't quite have her to himself yet because Henry was still around. That's true. But Eddie, like he said, he didn't travel much. I think the furthest he ever traveled away from his house was one time when he was 36, he went to Milwaukee, 150 miles away, for military inspection, where he did not get in to the military because of his lazy eye, which could have changed the course of his history, for sure. Had he got accepted into military service and gotten out from under the thumb of his mother. Could have changed the course of a lot of people's history. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. So four years later, after dad dies, he and his brother, they're working at the house, they're burning some brush. The fire gets out of control, and then Henry is found dead. And everyone's like, he died in this fire. He died in this fire. Upon a little bit of investigation and it seems like that's about all they did. There was bruising on Henry's head and neck, and they listed his cause of death as being asphyxiation anyway. And like we said earlier, it was never proven. But it seems like since edit led them to the body, even though he said he couldn't find Henry during the fire, yet here's where he is. It's a little fishy. It was all fishy. So to this day, people say that Ed killed his brother and that was probably his first murder. Yes, which is a pretty significant first murder, murdering your own brother. So now Ed really does have his mom to himself. But apparently, from what I read, her health took a really bad turn for the worst after Henry died. She really took it hard. And so in less than a year, she suffered a stroke and was basically housebound, if not bed bound. And Ed took care of her, which I get the impression that Ed was more than happy to take care of his mom day and night. Oh, yeah, for sure. It was just such a twisted manipulation that was going on, because on one hand, she's just screaming at him and calling, putting him down, calling him a failure and a weakling. And then other times, she would call him into bed to, like, sleep with her and hold her. And she would whisper to him and say that he could spend the night in her bed and stuff. So he didn't know which way it was up. It was just standard elderly mom and middleaged son stuff. But we all go through it. It's true. We've all crawled into our mom's bed and slept tonight at age 45. But this didn't go very well for Ed. He still was lapping it up, though. Here's the thing. He was so devoted to his mom that any attention from her, negative, positive, whatever would have been like, he needed that. That was normal to him. However he got it, he took care of her. He cared for one way or another. And she died in 1945, which is what was that, a year after his brother died? Yeah. Yeah. So she didn't even last a year after Henry died. She died from what I thought was pneumonia and probably another stroke. And now here's the thing. Edge, who is almost never allowed to leave the farm. And when he did, he encountered people who were extraordinarily unfriendly to him. He had turned into a bit of a weirdo, you could say, even just from the outside, just from what normal people knew about him in town, he was considered an oddball and a weirdo, but generally harmless. But now he was totally and utterly alone on this family farm. And the first thing he did was board up his mom's rooms so that he could establish a shrine to her. The rest of the house, though, kind of fell into what you would call disrepair. Yeah, there was serious neglect at that point. He didn't seem to care about keeping the house up except for that pristine room where mommy lived. He started getting into some unusual things like anatomy books and pornography and horror novels, pulp horror, nazi books about nazi atrocities. And he would start to go out a little bit. He generally still stayed around the farm and as we said earlier, unbelievably worked as a babysitter and as a handyman around town. So he started to kind of appear a little bit in town. And no one thought a lot about the guy except, like, the occasional time when he would stop in at this pub, mary hogan in pine grove, and he would say weird things about some horror novel or some nazi book that he was reading to the point where people are like to talk about head hunting and sex change operations is what they called it back then. Right. It's an odd thing to talk about in 1945 at a bar in rural Wisconsin especially for sure. And he had a weird habit of laughing suddenly, apropos of nothing that anyone else could put their finger on. So it seemed a lot like he was laughing at his own jokes, that kind of stuff. He was an odd dude, but again, the town was they considered him so harmless and so trustworthy that they would let him babysit their children. He wouldn't hurt a fly. He had a reputation, from the way that people put it, of not going deer hunting with the rest of the guys, which I mean, like, if you don't go deer hunting in Wisconsin in the is wrong with you? You know what I mean? Yeah, but he was known to be too squeamish to do something like deer hunting, so he didn't deer hunt. That's how the town viewed him. And if you look back, though, there were a lot of red flags that he was putting up that in retrospect, with all of the information that the towns folk later had really seemed very fishy, that they were just kind of waving off a lot of stuff. Like, for example, that bar owner, the bar he went to, mary hogan's tavern. She disappeared, and no one knew where she went for three years. She just vanished. There was a little bit of blood left behind at the bar, but one night as she was closing the bar down, she just vanished. And Ed used to joke about how Mary was staying at his house for the night, and the townspeople thought that was weird, but not necessarily remarkable. Maybe a little tasteless, but in reality, he had murdered Mary Hogan back in 1954. Should we take a break right there? Oh, yeah. That was an abrupt cliffhanger. We're on the wrong side of the cliff. We'll come back right after this. Okay. All right, so we're back on the wrong side of a cliffhanger. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. So mary Hogan disappeared. What happened, Chuck? What possibly happened to Mary Hogan. She was murdered. By who? By Edge on December 8, 1954. I didn't see that coming. He shot her. He shot her with a. 32 caliber pistol, put him into his pickup truck, and took her back to the farm. And this is not something that was known until 1957, when everything really unraveled. It was a full three years, though, that he was still in town and I guess occasionally making a joke about what happened to Mary. Right. So when you say things unraveled for him, one night, they found out everything. They went from thinking he was just an odd little dude who wouldn't even kill a deer to coming across the most depraved, deranged human being in the history of American crime up to that point. There may have been people to come later on, but Edge was the first truly depraved killer in America that America had ever known. Proved me wrong. Somebody who loves true crime. Prove me wrong. Yeah, and here's the thing. He had survived things like the local kids coming by, peeking in his house and saying they saw human trunken human heads hanging in the living room. And he survived all that and laughed it off and said that my cousin served in the south season, world War II, and setting these little heads back in. Souvenirs not that the kids are, like, wrong or mistaken. No, I've got shrunken heads. They're just souvenirs yeah, but as it turns out, they were real human heads. Right? So they were real human heads. They weren't from the South Seas, and Ed had shrunk them himself. Actually, he had read some books on that kind of thing and probably talked about it at the bar, which he probably regretted when those teenagers started running their mouths around town. But he didn't have to worry about that for very long, because in November of 1957, he went to the local hardware store, warden's hardware Store. And Warden's hardware Store was owned and operated by a woman named Bernice Warden. And she was working that day. It was toward the end of the day, and Ed Geeing came in. He needed a jar of Annie freeze, and she sold it to him, filled out a receipt, gave them the receipt, and I guess presumed that that was done. Their business was done. But Ed walked over to the wall and got down a. 22 caliber rifle and pulled a. 22 caliber shell out of his pocket, put it in the rifle, and then shot Bernice Warden in her head. This is where the podcast really starts to get grizzly, everybody. So just buckle in or maybe press stop here. But the amount of blood that they would later find in this hardware store was so much that they presumed that Ed cut Bernice Warden's throat after he shot her in the head and then dragged her to the loading dock, where he took her body away. That's right. So he put the rifle back on the rack, didn't even bother to take out the shell that he had brought, took the cash register. And I don't get the idea that was to make it appear as if it were a robbery, even. I think he just needed the money. Probably that's possible, although who knows? But Bernice Warden had a son named Frank, and he was a deputy. And he came back into town after deer hunting, like everyone did in Wisconsin in the 1940s. Accepted, except that he stopped by the old hardware store, and it was very odd to him because she was not there. The door was unlocked, the back door was open. And then he notices a little trail of blood from the front to the back door. And very quickly and easily just looked at the little receipt pad, saw that half gallon of Annie freeze was the last receipt made out to Edge. Called the sheriff, and they went to GAIN's farmhouse to question him and very quickly found Bernice Warden behind the house, hanging in what's called a summer kitchen. I guess it's where you go when it's really hot to cook that's not inside the house. Yeah. And again, this is where it gets super grizzly. You've got one more chance to stop, return back now. But he basically treated her as if he had been deer hunting. She was disemboweled and dressed like a deer, hanging naked upside down from a pulley, beheaded and fully dressed and butchered like a deer would be. So I want to just restate something. One of the two people who found her was her son. Like, he walked into the summer kitchen and there's his beheaded, disemboweled mother hanging by her ankles in Edge summer kitchen. Just imagine that. If you read all of the accounts of this stuff, no one ever stops and points out that poor Frank Warden found his mother like this. But he did, and the sheriff was there, too. And very quickly they called for back up. And back in the day in rural Wisconsin, backup meant, like, all the neighborhood. All the men in the surrounding county were deputies, basically. So they all showed up, and pretty soon they launched this investigation of Edge House. And in very short order, edge House would be known as the House of Horrors. And that's a pretty good name for it, actually, considering what they found there, because they caught basically right in the act of field dressing Bernice Warden. But this is definitely not his first rodeo, as far as I was concerned. No, but it appears as if it was only the second time that he had ever actually killed someone. What they found was really disturbing. Human body parts used in exactly the way that they were in Silence of the Lambs, as far as using human skin and human bones and skulls to make into other things can be craft yes. I mean, the most horrifying stuff that you could imagine. And they realized it was probably about 15 women in total from all the various parts that they were able to get together. And he had only killed two of them. So that presented a bit of a conundrum until Ed Gain said, basically, you know what I do? I'm digging up people from their graves. Yeah, he said that later on. He was caught just so utterly red handed, it was ridiculous. But they spent hours and hours, maybe 1012 hours, during that first investigation. And it wasn't a big house, but they were just turning up so much horrible, twisted, bizarre stuff made out of body parts that it just took that long to catalog and comb through everything. But he said, no, I've been robbing graves because I am capable of raising the dead. So I go and rob graves. And the first grave I ever robbed was my mother's grave about a year and a half after she died back in 1945. I went to the grave site, dug her up, I opened her casket and I pulled her head clean off of her body with my bare hands, which is the grisliest thing any human being has ever done in their entire life in the history of the world. Yeah, but it's interesting they never went and assumed the grave site right. As part of the investigation, which is really strange. So they're taking Edge word for it, I guess. They had dug up other ones, Chuck, so I don't know if maybe they were just satisfied that, like, one or two, they're like, fine, we'll believe you on the rest of them. And I guess maybe in the 1940s, that was like, they got their man. I don't know. Yeah. I'm not sure what that would have done in the case of his mother's grave. Sure. It's like, hey, whatever you do to your mother's 18 month old corpse is your business, I guess. I don't think that was the case. Okay. But this is where Errol Morris weirdly comes into the story. And I feel like we talked about this on another episode at some point. Oh, really? This is news to me. But Arrow Morris, the documentary filmmaker, he was going to do a story about Edge. Spent about a year in Plainfield in the 70s doing his research, that he never made the film, but his pal Bernard Herzog, they had sort of an interesting relationship over the years. But Werner Herzog said you know what? We are going to go back and dig up the grave in the dead of night. Nice. And Errol did not show up. Berlin Herzog did, though. Yeah, they had an appointed night and day and time and everything, and Herzog was there ready probably with a shovel or two and maybe some coffee and donuts, I would imagine. Snacks were not in order, but you never know. I think Errol Morris made the right decision in that case, because Gray robbing, even for verification for a research project or research for a project, you don't want to do that kind of thing. So as far as we know, then, no one has ever verified Ed's story about him taking his mother's head. But there's a lot of other good evidence that was the case, that he did do that, because one of the things they found in his house were faces, human faces of women. And this is a really important point here. Women all roughly of the same age build, look kind of and all of those women happen to look kind of like his mother. And so, over the years, a lot of people have said, like, why did he do this? What was the problem? But one of the first psychiatrists after he was caught and we'll talk a little more about him being caught, but one of the first psychiatrists who examined him said, I'm pretty sure I have figured out why this guy did this. He was robbing graves and trying to resurrect the dead, when really he was trying to resurrect his mother, and he was robbing the graves of women who looked like her. Both of the women, Mary Hogan and Bernice Warden, who he murdered, they bore a rough resemblance to his mom. And so what he was ultimately doing in his head was creating a substitute mother or recreating his mom, reanimating his mom so that she could never leave him again because he brought her back from death. In reality, if you were a teenager looking through egg Gains window at night, he was dressing up in a suit of skin made from women who he'd murdered or whose graves he dug up so that he could pretend more accurately to be his mother. That's right. He admits, like he said, he was called super red handed, so he admitted fully to those murders, although Hogan's the confession about Hogan was ruled inadmissible because they basically beat him to a pulp while he was in the waiting room. Well, plus, also with Bernice Warden, he always said that it was an accident, which is BS. But that he never confessed to purposefully murdering her. That's right. It was inappropriately or I guess inaccurately relayed that there was a human heart and a frying pan on the stove. It turns out that was not true. But that was enough to get rumors started that he was a necrophile, that he was a cannibal, and was eating human organs because human organs were found all over the place. It seems like that's probably not true, but maybe we should take a break and talk a little bit about the trial of Edgy and what happened right after this. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Before we take a break, Chuck, let's just say he was convicted. We'll be right back right after this. So we're on the other side of a cliffhanger again. That's. Right. Edgy has a lawyer named William Belter who throws in not guilty by reason of insanity plea. And at the time, he was found unfit to stand trial in 1958 because they diagnosed him as having schizophrenia. And he went to Central State Hospital, where he stayed for ten years until they finally did say, you are fit to stand trial ten years later. And then sort of anticlimactically. He was found guilty of the murder of Bernice Warden, but found insane at the time. So basically, just go back to Central State Hospital? Right. And he petitioned years after that in 1974 to be released. He was like, okay, maybe I was crazy at the time. I'm not anymore. They let me out and they said no. He said, okay, and he never tried again. Yeah. I don't think he would have had much of a shot. No. Apparently the guy, the doctor, the director of the hospital, the Central State Hospital, used to receive pretty frequently death threats if he ever let Edge out. Yeah, I'm sure that he didn't even need those. No. So a lot of people, including the judge who presided over Eagle's case in 1968, who went on to write a book, strongly suspect Edge was responsible for other disappearances and murders, not just his brother Henry's, but also some local ones. There were two hunters who went missing in 1009 five. One the only thing that was ever found of them was one of their jackets and one of their dogs. They and their cars just vanished mysteriously. And Edgy was later questioned about it, and he said, I didn't kill him, but my neighbor did, and I can show you where the bodies are. And I guess the authorities went, now, that's okay. There was an eight year old girl who went missing, a 15 year old girl who went missing. And so some people think that aging is really did kill multiple people. And it's possible because he still never admitted to murdering Bernie Warden. Right. So maybe he did and he just would have never fessed up. I don't know. But it does like you were saying way earlier, it goes against his Mo. Murdering kids and then murdering men. What he was after were women that looked like his mother. That was my impression, yeah. And as you would expect, a house like this after something like this goes on, becomes it was already sort of the stuff of legends because of kids poking their face in and seeing heads hanging on the wall. But after this happened, you can imagine exactly like what happens. People are coming by to see the house, driving by the House of Horrors. Vandalizing. The House of Horrors. They posted notice eventually that the contents of the house and the farm were going to be auctioned. And understandably, the townspeople went nuts. They were like, you can't auction this stuff out. We've already got enough problems with the notoriety in our little quiet small town that we all love, population 500 and March 20. If they took matter into their own hands, seemingly allegedly because the house burned to the ground one night and they never caught who did it. But it's pretty clear that it was an entire town of people with pitchforks and torches. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're handing out like koolaid and saltines at that thing as refreshments. I think the whole town did it. Yeah. But it did not stop the curiosity of this house. Of course it didn't. I mean people still came and still do go to see the lot where this was, but it was probably pretty effective to cut down a lot of lucky loose. There was no real pilgrimage or shrine for people to go to with just an empty field. I think maybe the driveway is still there, I don't know. It's not much to look at. So yeah, there's going to be a lot less people that come to Plainfield. But a couple of things were auctioned off, one of which was supposedly is Cauldron where he kept disemboweled embowels, I guess that is not necessarily ever been proven as correct. That actually is his cauldron. It's just allegedly as cauldron. But his car was definitely auctioned off. And there was a bidding war that started between like 14 bidders and the winning bid was from Bunny Gibbon who is a carnival sideshow operator who bought the car to promote at sideshows. And Bunny Gibbon started promoting it as Edgy's Ghoul car, which he used to transport bodies to and from the grave and transported Bernice Warden back to his house. And Bunny Gibbons put a mannequin in the carn as the driver and a mannequin as Bernice Warden's body and charged twenty five cents to come take a peek at it. Yeah. And he sold a lot of those admission tickets, sold like 2000 of them over a two day period. It's a lot for a carnival. It is. And people are attracted to the macabre and kind of always have been. So he made little money, although it was very controversial and he got some good bad publicity because of it, which was fine with him. But at some point some of these fares started to say no, we're not going to let you come in here and bring this car in here. We're basically going to shut you down. The sheriff arrived at one and shut them down and then he basically said, you know what, I'm taking my car onto greener pastures in Illinois where hopefully I'll be able to show my car there. Yeah, I guess Illinois was fine with it or just petered out or something because after that the trail kind of goes cold and no one has any idea what became of Edgy's car. So it may be out there somewhere, it may be in parts, in different cars, it may just be a cube, who knows? It may be part of your refrigerator? Could be. But no one knows what happened to Edge car. Yes, we do know what happened to Edge cauldron, if that was in fact his cauldron. A woman named Evelyn Mayer bought it in, planted flowers in it, representing the victims. 50 years later, her grandson, Dan McIntyre, found it in his parents garage, had it verified by people from the auction that they at least say that was the one. And then four years ago, it was auctioned off and now is on display at the Basin Haunted Museum in Las Vegas. Wow. I would go see that, wouldn't you? I don't know. I don't know if I would fly out to Vegas to see it or anything like that, but if I were walking down the street and they're like, come on in, I'd probably go in. I'm not interested in that stuff. Also, let me give a shout out because I hadn't heard anything about the cauldron before, but I found out about that from the site Cult of Weird. Cult of Weird? I'm not sure. It's a good little site, and I think they might actually be based in Wisconsin, so just want to tip my hat to them for teaching me about Edge cauldron. Interesting. So, Chuck, when Edge was still alive, he was very much a legend. He didn't die until 1984, and long before that, he was basically made into this legendary boogeyman when the first character that was based on him hit the big screen. There was Norman Bates in Hitchcock Psycho. And Hitchcock had made this movie based on a book that had come out, I think, the year before by an author named Robert Block, also called Psycho, and Block was from Wisconsin. So he kind of fashioned the meat of the story or the bones of the story around the Edge crimes. Was that intentional? The bones or the meat? Yeah. You know what's really sad is it absolutely wasn't interesting. I was like, Why are you making that face? I don't understand. The next movie was a little more on the nose. In 1974, there was a low budge movie called Deranged, and it was about a killer named Ezra Cobb, but it was very clearly modeled on Edge. And when you look at even the production skills of this thing, he's, like, eating brains out of a skull and making suits of skin. It looks really pretty horrific. It's a Canadian movie. Oh, man. It starred as Ezrakab Aka Edge. Won Roberts Blossom, one of my favorite character actors who is no longer with us. What else is he in? He played Old Man Marley and Home Alone. Okay. Wow. I'll bet he did a good Edge. He did. And when he was younger, he looked I mean, if you think he was scary in Home Alone, you should have seen him when he was in his twenties. I can imagine. Those Canadians, man, they'll make a ghastly film. Have you ever seen Strange brew. I actually love that movie. Yeah, I bet you. I'm not sure if that one ages. I'd be curious. I was like, Come on, what's a movie associated with Canada? Come on, Josh. Come on. So the next step was actually the same year The Texas Chainsaw Massscar came out, the same year that Deranged did. And Toby Hooper knew about the Edge story because he had relatives in Wisconsin who are like, Listen to this. And they told him. He said, I'm going to grow up to make a crazy movie about this based on this someday. And he did. He made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was one of the all time great, not just horror movies, but indie movies of all time, for sure. There's a Texas Monthly long form article about the making of the Texas Chainsaw massesca. Have you ever read it? No, but Texas Monthly is a pretty good rag. It is a good rag. I think. Maybe skip pollens. Werth road. They've got a few really great writers there. But there was another much bigger studio film shooting in the area at the same time, and the crew from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre would go to that set and act like they work there for catering, like during lunch and stuff like that. They would go steal catering food and just pose like they were supposed to be there. And then they go back and film some more. Although they also frequently get kicked off a set and get caught. I went to a catering truck or two in my neighborhood in La. When I wasn't working on them. Well, you're not ruining their shots. They owe you. Just getting a breakfast burrito occasionally. So as far as Gain well, of course we mentioned Silence of the Lambs in but as far as Gain goes, he was a model prisoner in the home where he was. It wasn't a prison. Well, he was in Carson. He wasn't allowed to leave. Yeah. Do you call him a prisoner, though? I guess. Or patient? Patient. Inmate, maybe. How about inmate? All right, he was a model inmate. There was one quote from a cook that said, eddie was normally a very unassuming, quiet, helpful kind of guy. You didn't know what he had done. You would think nothing of them. And like you said, he died there in 1984 of cancer and respiratory illness on July 26 and was buried in plainfield with his family at 03:00 a.m. Obviously in the dead of night, ironically across from a grave that he had robbed. But they smartly, eventually removed his headstone and put it in storage because it was stolen in 2000 and they found it in Seattle a few months later. They were like, let's just leave this unmarked between Henry and Augustus Graves. Really? What good is it doing? Like, what are they saving it for? You know? I mean, there may be laws against destroying a headstone. Who knows? I'll bet you're right. So, yeah, you can go visit their graves now. And the gap in between their headstones, that's where a gain is buried. And there's one more thing. A lot of people talk about cannibalism. A lot of people talk about necrophilia, but it's not at all clear that he ever ate any person and that he ever engaged in any actual sex act with anybody that he murdered or dug up. And in fact, remember, he promised his mother that he would remain a virgin his whole life? He said that he had never had a sexual encounter with anybody else, living or dead, just himself. You know what I mean? Yeah, that was it. So he's probably not a necrophile either. That's it for Ed Gain. Wow, this is a ghastly episode, wasn't it? Yeah. If you want to know more about Ed Ginmo, there's a lot that you could go read. We purposely didn't really go into the stuff that they found at his house. It was really bad. So if this floated your boat and you want to get all sicko, go check it out. In the meantime, it's time for listener mail. This is called eyewitness identification. Real life story here. Hey, guys. A few years ago, I saw a man crouching by my neighbor's bike she kept locked to a chain fence between her properties. Watch for a few moments to confirm he was working towards stealing the bike. When I asked him what he was doing, he muttered, Nothing. And I said, well, it kind of looks like you're trying to steal my neighbor's bike, so I'm going to call the cops now. First of all, Karen, I don't know if that was you shouldn't probably engage that man. That's true, but it was pretty hilarious line. Yes. He ignored me and continued. So I stood there about 5ft away, separated by that chain link fence. He continued and describing his clothing and features to the police over the phone. When the dispatcher asked how old he looked, it took everything in me not to pause and ask him his age. So unfortunately, the man got away with the bike before the cops arrived, so they drove around looking for him. Came back a while later with a man on a bike who did bear a very close resemblance to the thief. Even the clothes were super similar. The guy matched the description I had given so closely, the cops could not believe it when I repeated, no, he's not the guy. The only reason I was so certain is because I really took the time to look at them for a moment. I'm a terribly unobservant person, and it really made me realize what a poor witness I would make after the fact. How hard it could be to note those necessary details when your brain is on autopilot. They were never able to catch the petty bike thief, but very glad they didn't arrest the innocent man. And how dumb am I for standing next to a criminal while I called the cops on him. Well, at least she knows now. She's got some perspective now. Yeah, she says it's before our camera phones and such. So next time I'll just snap a picture. Yeah. Sir, can you look at me? Great. Thank you. And that is from Karen and Memphis. And Karen said, come to a show in Memphis. She said you guys could sell out the Orpheum no problem. Oh, yeah, I looked it up. The orphanum seats 2500. Karen, we cannot sell out the Orpheum, no problem. No, I don't think so. If you have something about half that size yeah, we could try that. We might be in business. Maybe we can go to Memphis or a special show at Graceland. That'd be pretty cool. Jeez, that'd be wonderful. We could do it in the television room. Yeah. Or in Sun Records. Or on the Lisa Marie. Oh, yeah. Was that the plane? I've been on there. It's great. Okay, well, if you want to get in touch with us like Karen did karen, be a little safer next time. It's a bike. Okay. You can go onto our website, stuffysheno.com, check out our social links there, or 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 shows. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun is 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 Kilgarriff and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
How Temper Tantrums Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-temper-tantrums-work | When your kid boils over in the grocery store, it can be tough to stay calm and ignore it, but that's precisely what experts prescribe parents do to deal with temper tantrums. Learn about the anatomy of a tantrum and the best way to deal in this episode. | When your kid boils over in the grocery store, it can be tough to stay calm and ignore it, but that's precisely what experts prescribe parents do to deal with temper tantrums. Learn about the anatomy of a tantrum and the best way to deal in this episode. | Tue, 27 May 2014 15:08:18 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=15, tm_min=8, tm_sec=18, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=147, tm_isdst=0) | 35765679 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. And again, we have our guest producer, Noel He's. He's thrashing about on the ground, vomiting, screaming, capillaries bursting in his cheeks. Yeah, all because we wouldn't give him a third pork chop. Not true. Yeah. Boy, temper tantrums are always feel so bad for the parents. Not in public, you know? Oh, really? I always think, like, you screwed up your kid already. See, you are so wrong, and we're about to dispel that. Yeah, it's true. Although we're about to talk a lot about why it's not the parents'fault. But I did some extra research, and there are experts that say you can also be a bad parent, and that could lead to temper tantrum. Yeah, we don't want to blame parents, but you can definitely play a part. We as a society have said from this age to this age, temper tantrums are normal. And then after that, then apparently it's like the bad parenting really shines through. And then they think, like, yeah, there's some real problems this kid has, and it's largely because of bad parenting or a bad home environment or troubles during pregnancy, like abuse, things like that, that can all lead to temper tantrums that turn into something else after a certain age. Yeah, this whole thing makes me kind of uncomfortable. But just parenting advice period is so, like, subjective and individual. It's always feel like people shouldn't tell other people how to parent. But I also feel like there are probably some pretty good guidelines to parenting, too. Yeah. And if you go back and look at the history of parenting, it wasn't too long ago that it kind of seems to go on a cycle like in the 18th century. Russo, the Great Enlightenment thinker, basically was one of the first to say, you know what? Maybe kids aren't just miniature adults. Right. And maybe childhood is something special. It's a time of development. We should become less parent centric and more child centric as far as parenthood goes. Right. And that really kind of sparked this different idea of treating kids as kids rather than adults. And then that was replaced later on by the whole discipline and all that of the late 19th, early 20th century. And then that was replaced by the idea that kids, their childhood should be indulged. And then Russell said, boy, fetch me my feather. I need to throw up. Is that from Fletch? No, fletch what came to mind? No, I just thought it'd be funny. I need to throw up. The binging and purging back in the day until you can't eat anymore. Then you stick a feather on your throat and bombing it up. Supposedly the vomitoriums thing is a myth. Have you heard that in ancient vomitoriums? They supposedly had places for that? I haven't heard they were a myth, though. Supposedly they're mythological and not like the Minotaur a real myth. Right. They want you to think it's a myth. Got you. Okay. So we're talking temper tantrums, and we've already kind of said that during a certain period of your life, they're normal. You would be a weird kid if you didn't have a temper tantrum pretty frequently. Not weird, but you would be in the minority. For sure. Okay. But it doesn't mean you're weird, comparatively speaking. It means you're weird. So from age one to age three ish they basically say, have your temper tantrums. It's normal. Yeah. Between 50%, if you want a statistic of two to three year old boys and girls have at least one tantrum per week, and 20% have a tantrum every day. Yeah. Those kids are fun between those years. Yeah. And then there was another study from the University of Minnesota I found even higher rates. Go 1st. 91% of children in this study between the ages of 30 months and three years had a tantrum on a weekly basis. Right. So it happens. If you had a kid, you've probably had it happen. If you don't have kids yet, it will happen to you. And if you have a kid that doesn't have tantrums, they're weird. No, you're just lucky. Yeah. You are pretty lucky. I wasn't a tantrum thrower. I know. I'm sure I was. But I think I was a pretty good kid. Yeah. I'm not saying it never happened to me, but I was pretty chill out of the gate. Yeah. My brother in law and sister in law lucked out. They have a good kid who's, like, more hard on herself than, like, they are on her. That's the best self regulating kids. Yeah. She's good. And she's, like, right in the age, too. And she's very good. So she's weird. Yeah. Weird in all the best ways. All the right ways. Yes. The good news is, by the time they reach four or five, you should be seeing a large drop off or complete cessation of these tantrums. Yeah. And the reason why we say that there is an age for this to end is because we finally figured out that the mechanisms involved in temper tantrum yeah. It's the thing. It's not just my kid's pain in the butt or he's in a bad mood or he's spoiled. There's brain activity that is causing this to happen. Yeah. Specifically in the prefrontal cortex. Or we should say there's a lack of activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is the last part of the brain to evolve. Yeah. Like, up until your 18th birthday, your prefrontal cortex is still evolving, right? Yes. And developing is, I think, what we mean. Yes, we do. We both said evolve. But it's true. The Victorians used to think that if you looked inside an egg, you would see the animal that species go through its full evolution, that that was its process of development. Oh, really? And it kind of makes sense to an extent, especially if you think of the brain. Like, I'm sure the brain stem is the first part of the brain to be constructed in utero, and then it goes all the way after birth. Your brain is still developing, and it's probably the most sophisticated regions of the brain that take the longest to develop. Does that makes sense? Yeah. So the Victorians were right all along about throwing up. All right, well, should we talk about what? The tantrum. There was a doctor who clearly has some masochistic tendencies because he did a study in which he rigged toddlers with microphones. He's the temper tantrum specialist. He's like the guy. He's definitely a masochist. Yeah. No, I'm saying, God bless this guy, because it is not fun work to record and analyze audio tapes of temper tantrums over and over. Yeah, but that's what he did. And he did find some patterns. First of all, they only last a few minutes. Parents, it might seem like an eternity there in Target while your kid is buried in the clothes rack screaming, but it's only going to be a few minutes, and then 10 minutes later, your kid has probably forgotten about it. Right. Even though you have not. Yes. He also found that based on the types of sounds that the kids made, they can basically be classified as sad sounds and angry sounds. And he found that his name is Michael Podigal. And Podago found that rather than one giving in to the other, leading into the other, they're pretty much simultaneous. And then once the anger basically, you have sadness all along, and then it's overlaid with anger. And then once the anger subsides, all it's left to sadness. And now the healing can begin, because when kids are sad, they want to be comforted, so they go to you sure. The parent, hopefully. Yeah. And then the temper tantrum can subside. Yeah. And he broke it down into three stages. You got your yelling and screaming. You've got your physical actions, which is what we talked about, like throwing yourself on the floor. And that's what you typically think of, like, kicking and screaming. Right. Or biting. And then you've got your whimpering and whining, which is the third and saddest stage to witness because the kid has just played out at this point, and it's really sad. Yeah. And Portugal also found that if the kid goes straight into the physical stage yes. The tantrum is even shorter lived, I think, because they tax themselves more quickly. Yeah, that makes sense. And we talked earlier about Noel's Tantrum before we came in, and how his face is flush. That is something that can happen if they are screaming loud enough, they can pop blood vessels in the face and capillaries, and they can induce vomiting. It can get really serious and violent and disturbing inducing. Is that funny to you? Wouldn't you just be like, you stupid kid. What is wrong with you you just screamed until you threw up. Yeah, I think that's a good approach. Well, I mean, you don't say responded certainly thinking. All right, back to the prefrontal cortex. We said it develops very well. I don't know about slowly, but it develops over the course of your life until you're about 18, but it doesn't even start to until you're four. Right. And they think the reason why or not necessarily the reason why, they think because of this malleability and plasticity in the prefrontal cortex, we are able to acquire language skills as humans. So it's kind of a trade off, because while we can acquire language skills while our PFC is developing, we don't have the emotional stability that we have later on in life with the fully developed PFC, because the prefrontal cortex is in charge of regulating our emotional stability and basically saying, like, whoa, it's the joey part of the brain. Right. Your kid doesn't have the joey part of the brain yet. Since you brought up language, there's a conflict between what the kid can understand and then relay back to you at that age. Like, they may be able to understand what you're saying oh, yeah. But they can't speak the words yet. You've got a really frustrated kid because it can't get out what it wants to say. Right. And then you've got the prefrontal cortex not doing anything yet. Right. It's not putting the brakes on. Yes. So that is a tantrum. I mean, that's a recipe for a tantrum. And why don't you stew on that for a minute while we take a message break? Because that was some heavy stuff. Okay, so we're back. We just talked about the prefrontal cortex, and you, Chuck, just explained what a temper tantrum is. Yeah. Because we all have moments of frustration. Oh, sure. We all have times when we act out a little bit, like this light bulb is supposed to work. Right. That kind of thing. Or road rage. That's an adult temper tantrum. Exactly. But we have prefrontal cortexes. We've been socialized to feel embarrassed for acting out. If you took that away and shrunk us down by several feet, you would have what's, the normal temper tantrum in kids? Yeah. And we also should point out that the fight or flight kicks into a big shot of cortisol happens. Right. And so everything is just messed up. It's a wonder your kid doesn't have more of these, when you think about that. So that frustration does trigger cortisol. It triggers norepinephrine, your fight or flight syndrome or responses kicked into high gear. And again, you have nothing to put the brakes on all of this. What's interesting is some of the physical signs that the fight or flight responses kicked in are also signs that your kids about to have, like, a major meltdown. Things like your breathing, fresh skin, sweating, sweating, pupils dilated, drooling, and spitting. Yeah. All these things where if you see your kids starting to do that? You just do tiny exorcist, get them below. Yes. And the reason they stop or at least taper off by the ages of four or five, is because the joey part of your brain starts to work and the kid can now talk to you. And all of these things kind of undo. And the kids, like, that was the problem because they can now tell you that. Right. I couldn't talk. Yeah. It smelled like chili dogs all the time and I just couldn't tell you that. Yeah. And my PSE wasn't working. So what am I to do? Just go berserk? Exactly. The thing is yes, your kid is going to likely age out of this. If your kid doesn't age out of it, then perhaps it's time to consult a specialist, say around five, six years of age, usually six, I think. But along the way, you can help your kid have fewer temper tantrums, have less severe temper tantrums, and basically just be a better human being in general, by how you, as the parent, address the temper tantrum by telling them they're dumb for just throwing up. No. You think that in your head. You don't say it out loud or else you're a terrible parent. If you think it, you're fine. Okay. The number one thing you want to do prior to temper tantrums is giving the kids a schedule. Because apparently a lot of the temper tantrums come from a fear that something that they're not going to get food. Sure. Or they're not going to get held or attention or whatever. If they're on a schedule, they'll know that it's coming, and if they start to freak out, you can say, of course your goldfish are coming. It's almost 02:00 p.m.. Right. Settle down your little goldfish junkie. Yeah. And I know they stress scheduling a lot with kids with, like, Asperger's and autism, but it's a big deal, period. You should get your kids on a schedule. Kids like knowing what to expect. They don't like balls. If you have to make your own bowl of cereal at age like two, the parent needs to take some time and figure out what's going wrong here with water. Yeah. Remember that? Was that Fridays? Yeah. When they didn't have milk. That's funny that you said that, because I just remembered yesterday what a good Movie Friday is. Oh, yeah, it was really funny. It's wonderful. Okay, so get your kids on a schedule. That's a big one. This is preventing temper tantrum, and that's regular sleep, regular feeding, regular interaction, any kind of thing they can rely on is going to help chill your kid out and get them stable. And remember, one of the things, one of the bases of temper tantrums is frustration. Yeah. And one way around that is to give your kids make them feel empowered. Yeah. I like this bit of advice. I thought that was spot on. So, like, in this article, I think Conger says if your kid hates putting shoes on, basically distract them by saying, hey, big boy, do you want to wear your duck boots or your cowboy boots? Yeah, you choose. Up to you. Yeah. Sort of like hitting them off at the templeton. You still have to wear shoes, but you get to choose which one. Yeah, I've heard that's a pretty common thing because a lot of kids don't want to get dressed when they should or put on their shoes when they should. And a lot of parents now are, like, letting their kids dress themselves. Yeah, you can tell. But look around. I know. And I think it's great and fun to see little kids walking around in these crazy outfits that they clearly picked out. It's like many mental asylums all let out. It's like the Reagan era all over again, but for kids, I think it's awesome. Okay, so empowering choices, great advice. Okay. You've taken these steps to avoid it. It's still not going to do your kids still going to have a temperature tantrum. You can expect it. It's inevitable. So when a temper tantrum happens, here's the hard part. You have to stay calm. And apparently the advice du jour from parenting experts, psychologists, is ignore it. Yeah. This is not us talking. No. We research this and they say to try and ignore it. They say that that is the quickest way to put an end to that particular tantrum. If they're not getting the attention, then they will quit sooner. Yes. And that's what they say. So long as they're not hurting themselves or other people or destroying property. If they're just screaming and being a brat, basically, is what it amounts to, then ignoring it is the best course of action. Yeah. The reason why is if you say you are like, oh, I know you feel so bad, and you pick them up and you hug them and everything, you're giving your kid positive reinforcement. You're saying, hey, scream your head off and I'll pick you up and rub your back and comfort you. You don't want to do that. You want to remain neutral and basically not associate this thing with anything during it. That's what I would do, especially in public. It'd just be like, man, whose kid is that? Right. I'm going to go over here and eat a box of neutral green bars by myself while this little kid finishes up, and I'll just pay for it at the register with an empty box and it's all good. Yeah. The other reason, and we're joking around here, I have friends who have had big trouble with this, and it's not a laughing matter. It's really a lot of stress on a family. Oh, I can't imagine. We joke because it's just what we always do. I'm the guy in the grocery store. He gets to go, see you later, good luck. Another reason not to, like they say to muffle. That is because there could be other underlying causes, like hearing problem or vision impairment that you won't notice if you got the kid buried in your chest. Yeah. It's weird. It's like you want to ignore it, let it run its natural course, but watch it out of the side of your eye. You really don't want them to think you're paying any attention to them at all. Right. And apparently when that's done, it just runs its course and it's over with. And as we said earlier, the kid forgets even what was bothering him or her a few minutes afterward. Yeah. What you really don't want to do is punish the kid or reprimand the kid in the middle of a tantrum or right after a tantrum, because it's a natural thing. It's going to happen. That is not a healthy approach to getting your child to not do something because they're two and three years old, and to be punished for something that they don't understand is just not going to help anything. Sure. So what you do want to do is, after a meltdown has taken place and things are calm again, you want to take some time to explain to the kid basically what went wrong or what they didn't do. Let's say it's over the shoes again. Right. They've just told you, we need to talk about shoes again. Right. Now that things are calm, we have to talk about shoes because I just had a meltdown about it. So now that they're calm, you have to say you need to wear shoes because they protect your feet from all the terrible stuff that you can step on. That's why you have to wear shoes and put them on when I tell you to. And it's time to leave explaining it to them. It's understanding the value of shoes. Right. In a very understandable two year old way. Sure. Apparently, you don't want to moralize it and say, you better not pitch a fit when I tell you to put your shoes on. Yeah. This happens every morning. Right. That doesn't help. It doesn't help. And if your kid the next day says, well, I want to pick out my shoes today, mom, because they protect my feet, then you get a toy. Yeah. You get a toy mobile box set. Well, depending on how much money you have, you could at least give them positive reinforcement and a cookie or a pat on the head. You could also get a knock off flood mobile box set. That's fine. The kid doesn't know. We got so many knockoff toys growing up. Have you seen that gallery of knockoff toys that I made? It's great. If you have not seen it, go check it out. I think I had a few of those. Did you really? Yeah. I mean, my parents were teachers. We weren't, like, poor, but there were three kids. We didn't all get everything we wanted. No, I wanted the BMX mongoose. And I got the Sears Goose. Right. I wanted pong again. Sears Ping, basically. Yeah. Nice. Of the round table. Pretty much. You remember that? Yeah. Solo. Look at me. Yeah. I never had brand name clothes unless they had, like, a button missing or the collar was misshapen or something. Again, I don't think I can stress enough how awesome that gallery of beloved knock offs of beloved toys that we made that's on our site is great. Yes. We'll repost it, but you should definitely look under gallery.com. There's some real misses. Yeah. And I have to say, I remember going to plenty of stores as a kid and being told I could pick out a toy, but it was like something liquidators. Yeah. Like, what is this thing? Did you have any rich kid friends? Yeah, they weren't like rich kids, but there was something my parents were like lawyers and stuff like that. I had one particular that I was always just so like, his house was so cool. It was like a modern house. And back then, I'd never seen a modern house. And he had the green machine and television and horses and a trampoline and a pool, horses, go cart, and a motorcycle, everything. And look at him now. He's super successful and wealthy. Yeah. Good for him. His parents raised him, right. They did. Okay, so we're going to hit what you touched on earlier of when you might have a problem that's a little deeper than your average temper tantrum. And they say three or more tantrums per day that lasts more than 15 minutes could qualify as what is now called in the new DSM five disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. That depends. That depends on the age, too. So there's a big hub up over this, right? Yeah. Because it was just added to the new DSM in 2013. Yeah. A new disorder. Yes. And basically it turns temper tantrums into a mental illness, like pure and simple. If you are over age six yeah. Between six and ten. Yeah. And you have that number, what was it? Three per day that lasts 15 minutes or more. Yeah. Or it says here three or more for one year. So I think there's a couple of criteria. Yes. Anyway, then you are eligible for antipsychotic medications yes. And all other manner of prescription drugs, even though you're six. Yeah. And critics are saying there's not enough data on this to create a new diagnosis. Like, some critics are saying you shouldn't have done this at all. Proponents are saying, no, this will actually help because kids are being diagnosed with bipolar at six and this will prevent that. So it's a little awkward right now, but it's funny that they bring up bipolar because when they expanded and basically created children's bipolar disorder, pediatric bipolar disorder is what it's called. When they expanded that, there was a 40 fold spike in diagnosis and as a result, the antipsychotic prescriptions for kids age two to five doubled between 2002. So there's a definite trend of any time a new disorder is identified or described in DSM. I've got that. My kid is that he won't show up. Can you give him some antipsychotics, please? Yeah. And the psychiatrist is sure, right. Because he has this because he fits this criteria. Yeah. It's definitely been a controversial addition to the DSM, as our many additions to the DSM. Sure. But that's not to say that there isn't a larger issue at work, because sometimes there is. So they want to teach you as parents to monitor maybe don't go put them on psychotropic drugs, but maybe monitor them after the age of four and see how violent they are and how long they last. And are they trying to injure themselves or others? Are they holding their breath in feigning? Like, how severe is it? Which is the thing breathing spells, apparently. The understanding of that now, though, is that kids don't necessarily hold their breaths on purpose. Like, it just kind of happens to them. They forget to breathe. They get so worked up that they forget and faint. And apparently when your kid does that for reeks parents out. Sure. And then kids learn that if they hold their breath or even threaten to hold their breath, they'll get what they want. Right. But apparently, if your kid holds his or her breath or it's held for them when they faint, their normal breathing will take over again. And as a parent, you can kick start the whole process by blowing air into their mouth. It almost like tickles their breathing mechanism, really, to take back over normally again, even though they fainted. And the advice is that I read that if your kid is feigning from holding his or her breath during a tantrum, you can't let that alter your parenting skills. Like how you react to it. Yeah, you can't be held hostage by it. Man, that's so challenging. I can't imagine. Yeah, because your kid faints. Sure. It's bad news. Yeah. I mean, hats off. That's like going back to the shark again. Good luck remembering to punch the shark in the nose while you're being attacked. Yeah, but that is a criteria. If your kid is doing this now and it's new and they're, like, after age four and their tantrums are increasing rather than decreasing, these are all red flags for, okay, this may be abnormal, and let's see what's going on. The first step isn't necessarily taking your kid to a psychiatrist for drugs. You can also do a self survey of your house. Is there a new step parent? Do we move recently? Am I an alcoholic? And do we always fight? Yeah, it happens where parents think I like kids. They don't understand what's going on. We keep the fighting away from them, but they understand. And they pick up on body language and emotional cues that you don't think are there, and they're little sponges, and that could be a reason. Did you mention maybe if you've moved? Yeah. Yeah. That's a big one. I think I said moved. Yeah. Did his best friend get a better bike than him recently? Right. You need to go get that bike then, too. But the point is to not be freaked out by isolated incidences past the age of four, because they happen. And it's not atypical if your kid has a problem with this. As parents, you probably have a plan in place. Like, you're not just reacting to each incident. Like, you get together and you huddle and be like, all right, we have an issue because little Timmy is a nightmare, and so how are we going to deal with this? And then let's stick to it. If little Timmy also is breaking your humble figurines all the time now, then good, because those are awful. Well, that's actually it can be a sign, but it's not necessarily a sign. Right. For example, there is a study that had a pretty decent population size from 2007. It researched temper tantrums among 279 preschoolers, almost 280 preschoolers. Wow. And they found that kids who are considered healthy were less likely to become violent, self injurious, destructive, or verbally combative, like during their temper tantrums. But it's also been found that around 20% of mentally stable preschoolers will still become one of these unhealthy things during temper tantrum from time to time. It's not like there goes a homophobe. You have to go to psychiatrists now. Or if your kid rips the head off their Barbie in a violent way, that might be disturbing to you, but that is about as normal American behavior as has ever been generated by a child. Yeah. If your kid is being mean to animals, that's a different story because it's not a good sign. And it's certainly you want to stop any kind of, like, violent aggression toward humans or animals. Yeah. Like, that's not like, let's just see how this plays out. You want to get in there, take care of business. Yeah. In the right way. So you raise your kid, you get them out of the terrible twos, age four comes along, and all of a sudden they're, like, talking to you and making sense and expressing themselves. They're able to settle themselves down. They're just human beings. You made it out of the woods until the teenage years ago. Yes. And then it starts all over again. Yes, and it starts all over again. For the same reason. The prefrontal cortex undergoes a new round of development during puberty from age about eleven to 18. And as a result, the emotional breaks that are provided by that region of the brain are lost again for several years. Yeah. And it's also similar in that teenagers might not feel like they can express themselves, even though, like, as a toddler, you literally can't talk. But as a teen, parents just. Don't understand. That's the old adage, right? And you got the hormones and you've got new things happening to your body and you've got new things happening in your heart for the little girls and little boys. You start feeling those feelings and it's confusing and it's all happening all over again, all these things you don't understand and can't express. And then you've got your prefrontal cortex not helping you out. And that's why you're going to see the same, similar behavior. It's basically temper tantrums, the sequel. Yeah. And it may not manifest itself the same way. They may not be on the floor, like kicking and screaming and vomiting, but they may rampage through your house and slam the doors and scream and yell, and they'll grow out of that, though. And again, if they don't, then psychiatry is there to back you up with some diagnoses and pills. There's oppositional defiant disorder, basically. It sounds like temper tantrums. That it sounds like temper tantrums, basically. Same thing. Yeah. This study from University of San Diego was pretty interesting. I thought they studied kids between the ages of ten and 22. It's not a kid, by the way. And between eleven and 18 years old. During that window, the speed that they identified emotions indicated by facial expressions dropped by 20%. Between ten and 18, if you're like, your kid can't even look at your face and read your emotional cues. That's how out of it they are. Yes. Teenagers. Like, I couldn't even tell dad was mad at me because the wires aren't connecting upstairs. Yeah. And apparently prefrontal cortex is also involved in regulating behavior, which explains why teenagers are prone to risk taking. Well, yeah, because if the prefrontal cortex isn't doing the job, then I think the amygdala takes over and the amygdala is not a good thing to be running your emotions, running the show. No, not emotionally. So is there anything else you want to talk about? That girl from militaryville? Yeah, go ahead. I can actually read that part. There is a girl who in 2012, at the age of six, was arrested and taken to the police station from her kindergarten class because the temper tantrums she threw was so bad, she was wrecking her kindergarten class. She was taken to jail for a temper tantrum. Like knocking over bookcases onto the principal. Yeah. And injuring the principal. Yeah. And she apparently was just on a rampage and the cops took her to jail. Didn't book her process or anything, but I'm sure she scared the daylights out of this little girl. Yeah. And the school said she can't come back the rest of this year. Yeah, she's just invited. Yeah. Luckily it was in April, so I imagine there was only a couple of months left of school still. Yeah. So we hope she's doing better. Sure. We won't say her name. We didn't say her name, did she? No, the article does, which I thought was slightly irresponsible. She was a news item. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You don't want to be in the news, little girl. Right? That's it. All right. If you want to learn more about tempered tantrums, you can procreate and have a kid and then see it firsthand. That's right. You can. Also, before you do that, if you want to find out if you're interested in that kind of thing, type in temper tantrums in the search bar@houseworks.com, and it'll bring up this article. And I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this positive amnesia. Hey, guys. Nearly five years ago. I was in Portland, Oregon. I was in a near fatal motorcycle wreck that not only knocked my brain around in my full face helmet, but also shattered my pelvis, broke two ribs, two vertebrae, left wrist, right thumb, left collarbone. It's just showing off. I know. Evil and evil. I was in the hospital for two weeks, but I only remember bits and pieces of the last few days of my stay. Though I was mostly awake the whole time, the doctors told me that I had a nearly two week gap in my memory, and it was a combination of shock and medically induced amnesia. I learned a lot about the different kinds of amnesia from your show in ways that my team of doctor never took the time to explain me. But you're like, yeah, that always happens. But I didn't hear you mentioned any positive effects of memory loss through my memory loss. Though my memory loss did not prevent severe PTSD after the incident, I think it has ultimately helped me be less afraid of red light running Land Rovers. I think we did mention that that was one positive effect of it, I thought. Did we? I think so. Maybe not. Well, if we're not, then we're glad that Adrian wrote in. He said, also, I don't have the additional trauma of remembering the numerous surgeries and operations. Your podcast made amnesia sound confusing and scary, which it is. But I'm living proof that sometimes it's best if you don't remember. Well, thanks a lot, Adrian. We're glad you are doing okay. Yeah. Be careful, man. Watch out for those Land Rovers. Yes. Red light running Land Rovers got in trouble. Yeah. I got nothing else. If you want to let us know about well, if you want to fill in the gaps on our memories, something we left out of an episode, we always want to hear that kind of thing. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast and join us on Facebook.com at facebook. Comstuffyshknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And as always, check out our homeowners, the Web@stuffyousteneau.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com." | ||
How Feng Shui Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-feng-shui-works | Feng Shui is an Asian concept that strives to unlock your chi by how your home or office is arranged. Or at least that's the simplified "Western" version. It's a little more complicated than that in reality. We'll unlock your chi by explaining how feng sh | Feng Shui is an Asian concept that strives to unlock your chi by how your home or office is arranged. Or at least that's the simplified "Western" version. It's a little more complicated than that in reality. We'll unlock your chi by explaining how feng sh | Tue, 10 Feb 2015 15:29:20 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=15, tm_min=29, tm_sec=20, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=41, tm_isdst=0) | 38563568 | 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 their top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms. Apply Capital One in a member FDIC 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 about tackling some of today's biggest challenges, like climate change, education, access, and global health. Listen in is host baritoonday 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 podcasts. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Charles W, Chuck, Bryant and Jerry's over there. So it's the stuff you should know. Our qi is flowing, baby. Qi or qi. Yeah, there's a lot of different pronunciations that are going to happen today. Well, supposedly, it's just the different spelling, same pronunciation. Q, I and chi are both cheap. Yes, unless they're saying kai for chi, in which case it's something totally different. Yeah, that would be the Greek letter. Correct. That means energy. Are we going to pronounce this feng shui? I usually say feng shui. Feng shui, but it could go either way. I mean, it depends if it's Mandarin that we're speaking. Chuck? Yeah, we should say feng shui. Feng shui, I guess. I usually say it in Mandarin. Feng shui. Okay. If we're speaking in Cantonese, we would say feng sui. Okay. So I guess we're going to go with the Mandarin. All right, great. Is that okay with you? Yeah. And I even looked up because I've always said taoism. Yeah, that's right. Right. Well, a lot of people say there's been some confusion, so I actually looked it up. And this author, Derek Lynn, had a nice little thing. The misconception, he says, is that the first letter in T-A-O dow is an approximation of a Chinese sound that does not have an exact English equivalent, because apparently in England, I think they say taoism. Okay. But he says that's actually not true. There is an equivalent, and it is a d. And he said the misconception was created by an author who had no understanding of Chinese, and that was spread around. He did not name the author, but apparently he had high academic standing, jonathan Franzin. And so he said it is taoism if you're speaking in English, and that this author has spread a mistruth that there is no real translation. I see. So that wasn't Qi feng shui. Nice. There you go. That was the glossary of this episode, pretty much. So let's talk about Qi first. Man okay. Because feng shui is the practice of allowing chi to flow in the best possible way. And chi is the Chinese concept of the energy that pervades and permeates the universe. That's right. Including us. And it is linked to Taoism and goes all the way back to 6th century BC. And like you said, it's supposedly something that can't even be described in language. Right. So why even try? But you did a pretty good job, I think. Thanks. For someone who supposedly is not supposed to be able to do that, the thing is well, I'm obviously an incredible person. The thing is, this energy can be blocked. It can fall out of balance. It's not self correcting, necessarily. Sometimes it needs help. That's right. And so when we inhabit an area, build a home, a community palace, what have you, we need to build it in such a way that it's not going to block this chi or it's not going to throw things out of balance, because we will be impacted negatively if that happens. That's right. Because in the east, there is a long held belief that the space we inhabit is not just the space we live in, but we are actually connected to that spiritually and with our energy and the way you lay out your home and the way you build, like, even where you place your home on your property. Yeah. And the way you align it with the surrounding nature, it's actually a very important part of it. Right. That is feng shui, which is translated literally as wind and water. Right. Pretty neat. A lot of people in the west have jumped on this train since the 1980s. It's a very popular thing to do, often misguided attempts. As far as traditional feng shui. Well, it's like a completely different school. Yeah. Basically. Entirely. Yes. But a lot of people in the west also will poopoo this, and a lot of people in the east poopoo it. Now, apparently only about a third of people in modern China even believe it. Okay. Is the thing. Well, Chairman Mao rooted it out during the Cultural Revolution. Yeah. It's not illegal to practice it. It is illegal, though, to start a business in China, modern China, where you say that you're doing feng shui. Got you. But they can't really, like, I guess they could outlaw the practice. They outlaw lots of stuff. Yeah. From what I've been told. But apparently the younger generation, that's even less than a third. It's just kind of going the way of the dodo. Got you. But, hey, we picked up on it in California and ran with it. Yeah. Especially in the sure, man, that was a super 80s thing. But a lot of people poopoo it, though, as they do a lot of things in the east, and saying this is just a bunch of superstitious goblin cook. There is no such thing as an energy flowing through your house or your body that needs to be aligned. So we're just going to explain it to you exactly. Just save your emails, people. So what's interesting about feng shui initially is that not just China, but also India lay claim to its origins. Actually. That's right, I remember. I think you did a pretty good job defining it, but it's bear saying again, feng shui is this practice of arranging your abode, your life, your work space in a way that allows chi to flow freely. That's right. Okay. And there's evidence, I think, back 3000 years ago no, sorry, 5500 years ago. So about 3500 BCE. There is evidence of what the Indians call Vastu Shastra, which is basically a translation of building science, which is that you should follow certain practices, use certain geometries to allow energy to flow so that you can prosper and not be harmed negatively. Yes. And this has been seen many times. I read a great article in, I think it was history today, by a guy named Anthony Avenue called Bringing the Sky Down to Earth with basically the idea that many, many cities through history have been built with this concept in mind, that the gods bringing the gods down to your city like he's a stonehenge. Beijing, Washington, DC. And this place in Mexico that I will pronounce as teotihuacan. I don't know if that's right. I think it is. It's like a ancient Mayan city, and they all have the same philosophy in mind, which is apparently, if you go to Beijing, it's very famous for its layout, as is DC. You can stand in Tiananmen Square and you can draw a straight line up the bell and drum towers, straight through to the monument to the people's, heroes to the Mausole Liam of Mao Zedong on a perfect north south axis. Everything is planned out. And this is I'm not saying Washington, DC. Was necessarily feng shui, and I know that you shouldn't use that as a verb, but I'm going to. It works. But it's the idea like stonehenge, that these cities are aligned cosmically somehow with the stars in mind. And it can be as simple as the entrance to the dwelling or the city or the burial mound or temple or stonehenge, whatever is aligned so that the sun comes right up through it on the winter solstice. That is the basis of feng shui. And it does show up in other cultures across time. Yeah. One of the famous cities that was laid out, according to this Indian version of it, vastu Shastra, is Anchor Watt. Really? In Cambodia. Very famous temple. Those were built in, I think, the 13th century Ce. So it's not evidence that the Indians were first, but there is evidence elsewhere that there were Indian cities and buildings planned out according to these. Yeah. And the idea was that a couple of thousand years later, some Indian monks, Hindu monks, made their way into maybe Tibet or Mongolia or China sure. And started spreading the vastu Shastra, and that's when China got their hands on it and turned it into what we now recognize as feng shui. That's one interpretation of the origin of the whole thing. Yeah. And either way, what both of them are doing is looking and taking into account the five elements earth, water, fire, air and space, and how they affect your pad or your city, like you said, or community or temple. And some people might say, well, you might want to call it feng shui, but I'm just building a house, and I think we've got this lovely mountain view, and I like the sunrise to come up through my kitchen because I like a bright kitchen, so that's how I'm going to build my house. People that practice feng shui would say, Brother, that's feng shui. They say, TS, that's feng shui. They say, no, it's just how I like to build my house. They say, no, that's feng shui. Yeah. And then they fight. That's right. They leg wrestle for domination. So that, though, would be more Western feng shui. And we'll get into it. But basically, the distinction between Western feng shui, 80s feng shui and classic feng shui is the amount of scientific formula put into it. Okay. The amount of calculations, at least, that are put into it, the amount of thought. It's like Western feng shui is feng shui light. And not even L-I-G-H-T like L-I-T-E like that kind of 80s light. Yeah. Well, we might as well talk about the schools then. It's a great segue before we do, though. Sorry to interrupt the segway, because it was pretty good. Yeah. We should say that most historians now believe that it was actually China that came up with India. Yeah. The evidence is just earlier for the idea that it originated with burials in China. Got you like you buried people a certain way, and you built the burial grounds in a certain way, according to feng shui. So what you're saying is they leg wrestled, they won the leg wrestle. Very good. So the different schools, there are a lot of variations, but the three main categories are the Form School, which was from southern China, and that is heavily based on the environment. Like we were talking about classic feng shui. It's the oldest form, and that's when you're talking about and back then it was practical because what they were trying to do is build a safe place for your house to be. Right. So maybe you set your house up with a wind block at the mountains with that landscape that slopes, or the water flowing down to you is super important. You may want to open your house up to that. Yeah, but it was practical, though, right? Exactly. And another practical way of figuring out where to put your house is found in the Compass School. That one. Just forget about it with me. That's the one I understand the most. Really? This one makes the most sense to me. Yeah, because it's math and you're like weird like that. Well, maybe a little bit. But basically what this says is it's kind of like the Forum School, where you're looking for different features of the landscape to most benefit, where to build your house. Sure. But this is using that same kind of thought process, but aligning it with magnetism and the stars, too. Right, right. Well, you're using the stars to determine magnetism, like which way is north and south and that kind of thing. Sure. But it does combine some math, Chinese astrology, and then feng shui together, and you get what's called the Compass School, which is also very frequently known as traditional feng shui. And it includes a lot of detailed research to figure out exactly what you're supposed to do, what your house is supposed to be facing, if it is facing a certain way, what you can do to kind of correct it. There's just a ton of thought and calculation put into what we'll learn later is called the Bogua Map. Yeah. So that's mostly the traditional school is the Compass School. And it's based on the idea that magnetism dictates which way your whole jam should be facing and oriented. Okay. And I think to the north is the right way. That's the right way, yeah. Where as far as your entryway? Yes. Okay. And then we have what the Westerners have latched onto the black hat section. It does. Or the black sect Esoteric Buddhism feng shui, which was founded by Professor Thomas Lynn Yun, who was known and believed to be an enlightened man. And he basically came to the west and founded this sector, feng shui, and it blew up. And Westerners love this one because it's the one that most easily translates to an HGTV show. Right. Yeah. Like, put this plant there, put a fountain there, put your door here and paint this color. Right. And you're going to be wealthy and successful. Don't put this there, don't put that there. It's a lot of object placement, so it's easy for us dummies over here to understand. It's basically interior design, pretty much. So we'll talk a little more about the distinction and then what some of the commonalities they have are right after this. 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I'm sure there was a great reason I couldn't find it anywhere. What I found instead is that most people call it Western feng shui. Sure. And a lot of feng shui practitioners poopoo Western. They're like, this is some perversion of an interpretation of feng shui. Yeah. It's Americanized and it's taught by people who don't even necessarily aren't feng shui masters, even though they can set up a website and say, pay me $1,000, I'll come and tell you where to put your plans. Exactly. But Thomas Lin Yoon and his followers say no. We hit the basics. Like, yeah, definitely. Traditional feng shui is very detailed, very mathematically oriented, but we're still getting the same point across and coming to the same conclusions in just an easier corner cutting way. That's right. Why go to all the trouble if you can get the same results? What's more Western than that? Yeah, good point. So should we talk about the five elements a little bit? I guess. Yeah. Like I said, there is earth, fire, metal, water and wood. And these are the phases through which the energy or the key moves. And I think this article said it very well. It's like a sort of a game of rock, paper, scissors. If you look at a creative or productive way in which these elements can interact, you have wood producing fire. Right. Fire produces earth. As in ash. Sure. Earth produces metal, metal produces water, water produces wood. Metal producing water. Don't get that one. All the rest of them made sense. My refrigerator is metal and it has a water dispenser in the door. Oh, you have it. Is that it? Yeah. And then you have the destructive. This is when it's bad chi. And if you look at the little illustration on how stuff works on the first one, you have this great circle of arrows and it's just lovely. And this other one has a nasty bunch of arrows just laying all over one another and it's just a big mess. Yeah. Like wood burdens earth. Yeah. Nobody wants that. Water doses fire. That's a clear one. Sure. Metal chops wood. Yes, it does. Yeah, it does. So the interaction between these elements in your house or the way you arrange your house will determine whether these phases of chi are destructive or productive in their interactions together. Sure. And if you have too much of one thing, you need to balance it out with something else productively. Exactly. The other two for destructive are fire melts metal and earth blocks water. Like a dam. You don't want a dam. You want that water flowing, baby. Right. You forgot Hulk Smash. Was that the other one? Yeah, the final one. Hulk Smash all and then the yin yang. We can't go any further without mentioning that. No, it's basically a really clever conception of Qi. Yeah. Opposite state of chi. Light and dark, night and day, young and old. Man, woman. Sure. And there's actually a way that it's supposed to be properly represented. The white is supposed to be on top, because the white represents, in part, heat, and the idea is that heat rises, but they're both constantly in motion. But if you ever see a yin and yang symbol displayed, the lighter one should be on top. That's right. And not only heat for the white, but masculinity and spirit and hardness and activity. It's yang, by the way. Yeah. We didn't find that out. And it's not yang yang, by the way. No. I used to say it that way. I think everybody did it. Sure. At some point. Yeah. I quit in my early 40s. It's yin and yang. Yes. The yin is femininity matter, nighttime, coldness, softness passivity. And as long as you want those things balanced and the way they just fit together in that little circle, man, it's just like it's pleasing to the eye. And I think that's kind of says it all right. It just looks nice. It's not jagged. It's like two people just cuddling up sure. In the form of a tattoo you wish you hadn't gotten. That's right. With maybe Chinese characters that you don't know what they mean any longer. Well, I guess we're at the bagua, right? Yeah. So it made sense to me. Right. Remember, what we're dealing with here is chi. Chi flows through the five elements, and you deal with the five elements in your house. To figure out where in your house you need a little more of one element than another, you have to construct a bogua map. Yeah. Like, this is where the rubber meets the road. We've been talking in esoteric terms, but if you're like, great. Dudes, what does this mean for my freaking living room? Right. This is what it means for your freaking living room. Yeah. And the bogua map is based on boxes, squares. They're the basic units of feng shui. Yeah. Nine squares, three x three. Right. And you take those squares, and somehow this is really clever, too, but even though there's nine squares, you can take them and turn them into a hexagon. If you take the center square and convert that into, well, the center, and then the eight boxes around it become eight sides of a hexagon. If you shave off a little here or there yes. And all of a sudden, what you have is a bagwa. Yeah. And they can represent color as well as these elements, as well as for the actual map that you're going to use for laying out your home aspects of your life, like career and wealth, prosperity and love and marriage and things like that. Right. So there's multiple meanings. And also, if you've seen the TV show Lost, they totally ripped it off with the Dharma Collective symbol. It is just that is nothing more than the bagwa grid with the YinYang in the center. Right. And the YinYang is frequently represented in the center as yellow, correct? Yes. Yellow is the center of the bagua map, which is actually the center of this nine squared box called the low shoe square. And in each of the different boxes, there is a static representation. So this is what you need to know about the bogua map. It is a hexagon that the placement is always the same. What you do is you take your bagwa map and you oriented a certain way over your house, over your actual house or the room in your house or something like that, and that's what changes. So if you look at the bog with square, the yellow is always center, and then black, which represents water and career, is always at the bottom. Okay. Yeah. Aka supposed to be the entrance to that room or your home. Okay, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, it's not necessarily always at the bottom. It's always at the entrance. Well, you place the bottom at the entrance. So if I were to walk into my house, you can either visualize it or you can literally draw this square. You want the bottom, which is the bottom. Center is career or water. Bottom right is helpful. People in travel. Bottom left is knowledge and selfcultivation. You just want to find out where your front door is. In my case, mine is pretty much in the center of my home, which would be career, but it could fall if your door is on your left, it would fall under knowledge and self cultivation. So it's not like you move the map over to help yourself out. Like, where your door is is where it is. You can move it if you want. Yeah, you could move your door, but basically the map is just supposed to be static. Okay. And it's static. Like you said, it's oriented with the black on the entrance. Right. No matter where the entrance is on, the black is there. Yeah. So when you orient your black box onto your entrance, what you're doing then is using your bogo map to show you how you need to change your house in order to maximize the flow of chi through it. Yeah, it's basically and by the way, you shouldn't supposedly use any additions built. You should do those separately. Okay. So if your living room has a big new addition to the left, you shouldn't even include that. So basically what you're doing is you're dividing your space up into zones according to this grid. And so if you were to look at my house according to the low shoe square, my TV would be in the wealth and Prosperity corner, which is probably not good. You're going to make money on TV? No, that didn't exactly happen. My couch is the knowledge and self cultivation. I'm not sure what that means. Then my sunroom would be helpful. People in travel, that's what that means either. And in the center is my coffee table. If I wanted to have good chi, I'd have a yellow rug there. Yeah, but I don't. But you should. We have some nice tile squares of varying colors. Yes. So you can do that, Chuck, for every room of your house. And you're supposed to yeah, like what you just said. Well, now I know where I should put a yellow rug in my house. Like, you would want to put that in the center of where the bogua map falls over that room. That's right. You might also, for example, if you just kind of had a dead space where the red boxes, which is for fame and reputation, and you want to foster that kind of thing. Oh, man, there's a dead space there. You would put something like awards there, animal related items. Maybe a stuffed jackaloped or something would be a good spot for that. Or a good thing for that spot. Yeah. And so basically what you're doing is using the bogua map to say you're just cross referencing spots of your house. And when you add these things and basically do interior decorating, you can maximize the flow of cheap. Yeah. If you look at my master bedroom and bathroom, I have a bad feng shui, because right in that top left corner, wealth and Prosperity is my toilet. Oh, yeah. So supposedly you're flushing it all down the toilet. Yeah. They say you should not put your bathroom or your toilet specifically in your wealth grid. Right. Square. So what we've just described is what a Western practitioner would do. Yeah. Because, again, Western feng shui has a lot to do with interior decorating, and so, too does, to an extent, traditional feng shui. But a traditional feng shui practitioner, if they came to your house and they use the bogua map over your house, they wouldn't just align it to an entrance. Right. They would align it to a magnetic direction. I'm pretty sure it's north. Okay. I think you're right. But the black square in the bogua map yes. Would be oriented in that direction, so it wouldn't necessarily be facing your entrance. Right. And so there's this kind of it reveals this really big distinction between Western feng shui and traditional feng shui. Whereas with Western feng shui, it's like, oh, we'll just line it up to the entrance, and maybe you got a problem with your toilet flushing your fame away in your bathroom or your money away in your bathroom with traditional feng shui, there's no getting around it. Once it lays over your house, according to Magnetic North, it gives you a really clear picture of what you're going to have to do, and you may have to tear down your house and start over and rebuild facing the right way. It could reveal a lot of real problems with your house, and you may have to fill in more areas than others. Whereas if you're just orienting each room based on its entrance, like in Western feng shui right. You're not going to find quite as many problems in a lot more easy solutions. That makes sense also with a traditional feng shui consultant who is basically telling you what you need to do with your house. Sure. They're going to do research on your house itself, too. They're going to find out when it was built. Oh, really? When the roof was enclosed. That's a big one, too. Enclosed. And then they're going to also create this bogua map and a chart based on Chinese astrology as well, because time factors in a lot with traditional feng shui, way more than Western. Again, Western is very quick and to the point and just put some stuff here another example that people criticize Western feng shui and kind of point like it's just basically interior design is plaid is considered a form of the wood element. Oh, really? So if you have too much, like a plague couch in a room, you might need to counter that with, like, a little fountain or something like that. Yeah, but where did the idea that plaid was wood come from? It's definitely not traditional Chinese. No, I don't think so. They have plaid in China, do they? I don't think so. But that raises another thing, too. Another criticism of Western feng shui is that very frequently, feng shui consultants in the west will be like, oh, you just need to add a food dog. Like that kind of lion looking dog you've seen a million times. Is it like a little statue or something? Yeah. Okay. Or you need to add, like, some Chinese padre or dragon mural or something. Yeah. Traditional feng shui practitioners are like, yeah, art counts, but it doesn't have to be Chinese art. Right. So if your consultant is selling you Chinese art from their brother, who's a Chinese art, this is essential. Yeah, that's not correct. Red flag. Yeah. All right, well, we have some more tips from feng shui experts that will get you right after this. All right, so we're talking the bagwa grid. Like we said, it's all represented with the different colors. Those colors also correspond to numbers, and they also correspond to aspects of your life or chi. Sounds confusing. It kind of is. Yeah. Let's just say it. But here are some things that feng shui practitioners say will help unlock that chi black, which is your career. They say a fountain or a mirror might be a. Good thing to have there. Yeah. Blue, which is skills and wisdom. Maybe that's where you put your computer workstation. Or your library. Okay. Yeah. Books. Yeah, books. Green. Your family. Maybe that's where you want to put your family photos. And you want to arrange them nicely, too. Yeah. Supposedly if you have your family photos out of order in your green section, you're going to have misbehaving kids. Yeah, actually, that's the white zone. That's children. Oh, sorry. That's okay. But yeah, that's what they say. If you want good kids, keep those photos nice. I'm not sure about that one. Purple is your prosperity zone, and that's where you want to have it says healthy plants. Don't put your dying plants there. Or sailing ships. I guess that's just sailing towards prosperity. I guess. Maybe don't put a painting of a sinking ship. No, that is Western feng shui there. Yeah, sure. That whole kind of psychology would be detrimental to the health of the area. Yeah. Why would you want that anyway, though? Like, who paints the sinking shit? Yeah, a depressed sea captain probably would be my guess. Red is famine reputation. That's where you want to put your various awards. So yeah, we got a couple of those. And your jackaloped. Yeah. Animal related things. You're right. We should lay out our next studio. Like according to feng shui did. We totally should. You know, I just noticed this. Red supposedly is what you want to put on the back of your chair to block bad chee. Yeah. And we've got a huge red foam thing in between us and Jerry. Oh, wow. So we got to get rid of that. I was going to say that explains why I've been able to put up with her cheek for so long. No, Jerry, she is the good flow our way. So we need to open that up. Okay. In our new place, pink love and relationships. That's where you want to put maybe photos of your family or paired items. Begin with the family photos. Yes. I don't have that many family photos. Paired items. That's cute. That makes sense. Sure. Like bookends salt and pepper shakers. Yeah. Boxing gloves. That's where you hang your boxing gloves. Yeah. Remember Joe Garden from The Onion with those giant boxing gloves he had? Yeah. Those are so much fun. Yeah, he had a thing where he just wanted to get as many people to post with those as possible. Yeah. And take a swing. Adam White. We already mentioned those. Children. Or creativity. That's where you might want to put some art or pictures of your little brats. Gray travel or helpful people. Put your souvenirs from Disneyland there. Not just Disneyland. Any trip you've taken. Sure. The Disney Company wants you to just put Disney souvenirs there, though, in yellow. Finally, health pottery and stone objects will help unlock your chi there. Yeah, but speaking of Disney, Hong Kong Disneyland, they apparently had a feng shui expert consulted and they made some changes because of that consultation. That was probably a nice paying gig. Someone was like, Catch you, or they were saying aging. Anyway, they opened on September 12 because they were told that was a lucky day. According to the astrological chart their consultant drew up, they changed the entrance by twelve degrees. Obviously it was a traditional feng shui practitioner. Sure. And added some boulders. Apparently one of the restaurants has a projection of a fire, which to me that wouldn't count, but maybe it does. It's kind of lame. That seems pretty Western to me because one of the big bases of Western feng shui is psychology. If traditional feng shui is based on magnetism and astrology, western feng shui is based on psychology. And it is as simple as you don't put a painting of a sinking ship in the office of a business that's struggling to stay afloat because the mind makes those kind of associations and it messes up your chi. That's right. And a lot of this stuff as well. Like we said, I think, like you just mentioned, maybe it just seems like common sense, like a horseshoe shaped building that opens up into a courtyard. It's going to feel good. It's pleasing. Feng shui practitioners say that's energy or hey, don't build a house on a dead end street because it blocks the chi. I had a friend who lived at a dead end street and it just felt like every time I went over there I felt closed in and sort of weird. Did he end up killing his whole family? No, he did not. He did move, though. They were saved. They were, thanks to him, moving your office. A lot of times these days people will their new offices, they will take this into account. Some very famous people like Richard Branson and Donald Trump have enlisted the help of feng shui experts to design their offices because they want that chi and ergo money flowing. Yeah. You don't have to be a Richard Branson or Donald Trump to arrange your office, whether it's a cubicle or what have you, so that you can maximize the flow of cheap if you want to do a little messing around. Supposedly the one thing that you want to ensure as much as possible is that you are facing the entrance to your office. Yes. That way the chief flows correctly towards you, not towards your back. Yeah. You don't want the chia at your back. No. Remember the southern China feng shui placement, the form school. The entrance of your house is facing away from a hill, so the back of your house backs up to a hill, so the chief flows correctly. Right. Same thing. You want the entrance to your office to be flowing towards you, facing it. If you can't do that, then you just put up a mirror so you can reflect the tree towards you. Yeah, that makes sense. Like you said, you want to put something red on the back of your chair to block the chief from your back. Yes. Actually, now that I think about it, this isn't so bad in here because the red is to our side. It's coming in that door and bouncing off of that. Right on. So Jerry is really the one who's getting the short end of the cheesesteak here. Shorten? What else can you do? You can put a fountain or a plant, obviously water and wood. And they said even a picture of a waterfall in your cubicle could help your workplace chi. Again, there's a lot of disagreement about what works and what doesn't with traditional feng shui. It's like you need to know where magnetic north is, and you need to orient your building according to that. And whatever you do inside is almost irrelevant. Yeah. Get rid of those fluorescent lights, though. They all agree on that. Sure. I don't know anything about cheating. That fluorescent lights are terrible for you. Agreed. Anything else? No. This is a pretty good overview, I think, right? Sure you feel good about it? I feel better than I expected. How's your chi? It's fine. Yeah? All right. It's not out of balance. It's not jumping for joy today. Got you. If you want to know more about chi or feng shui or any stuff like that, you can type those words in the search bar, how stuff works. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this GED success story. Oh, that's good. Hey, guys. Got my GED way back in 1986 so I could attend college. Back then, the University of Illinois, Chicago co flames allowed you in as a freshman. If he graduated high school and had a pulse, they called the student body. After the first year, though, you didn't perform. You're out. I did reasonably well there and ultimately ended up at the University of Cambridge in England. Got my PhD in archaeology there and worked in the field for a few years. Great. I am now a stay at home dad of three boys. Five, three and one living in Carls rural Germany. One of the things I love most about the American education system is that a guy who dropped out of high school at 17 still had the opportunity to attend college and ultimately end up with a PhD from one of the greatest universities in the world. Thanks for another great episode, guys. Been listening since 2008 and actually remember the before Chuck days. And that is from Chris. So where to go? Chris Way to go, Chris. That is a pretty awesome story. Yeah. GED archaeologist, stay at home dad. Five, three and one. Sounds like he's doing it right. Nice job, Chris. If you want to let us know about your personal success story, we love hearing about those. You can tweet to us at fyskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow, you can send us an email to stuff podcast@howstephorse.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshoodnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. 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How Labor Strikes Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-labor-strikes-work | Labor strikes are the last resort of a workforce frustrated with low pay or dangerous working conditions. A big part of winning a wage war is having the public in your side. Learn all about strikes in today's episode. | Labor strikes are the last resort of a workforce frustrated with low pay or dangerous working conditions. A big part of winning a wage war is having the public in your side. Learn all about strikes in today's episode. | Thu, 07 Apr 2016 13:50:33 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=13, tm_min=50, tm_sec=33, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=98, tm_isdst=0) | 51481360 | audio/mpeg | "Tour. Tour. Tour. Tour. Live shows. Live shows. It's baseball season. Yeah, that's right. It is. That means we're going on tour, right? Josh? Seattle and Portland are sold out. I know. We'll see you guys there. Denver, Colorado, you are very close to selling out. Yeah, Colorado. Denver is, like, right there. Right? And then Houston is doing okay. It's respectable, but it's definitely denver was like, Give us a ticket. Yeah. And I got to say, Houston, we really stuck our neck out for you after Dallas and Austin, we heard from a lot of Houstonites about how big your city is. So prove it. So they call throwing on the gauntlet, Chuck. And we have two more shows to announce. Is that correct, sir? That's right. We are doing night one and night two at the Bellhouse in New York City. That's right. In Brooklyn, New York. Bellhouse has been our home there for many years. Going back home. Yeah. These are very special shows because they're smaller than places we've been playing, and we love it there, and I think it's going to be pretty great. Yeah. So that's June 29. On June 30. And tickets go on sale Friday. This Friday. That is correct. And we will have links at our squarespace website. S-Y-S Klovecom. Make sure you buy tickets to the correct night that you want to go. Oh, yeah. And it's going to be the same show both nights, right? Be the same show both nights. And now all I need are tickets from Lynn Manuel Miranda to go see Hamilton on Broadway. Oh, yeah, sure. Sign me up for those as well, please. It's a pretty tough ticket to get. If you're a listener, sir, you can come to our show. Yeah, totally. Even though it conflicts with the Hamilton performance. Skip it. Yeah. So, like we said, Sysklive.com powered by Squarespace, so you can find all the tour deeds. Yeah. We'll see you soon in Brooklyn. Welcome to Stuff You should Know from House ofworkscom Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. I can hear her. We're working. And that means we're not on strike. That's right. Strike. Remember The Flintstones? No. Betty and Wilma used to wander around shouting, strike. Why? Because they're tired of being subjugated. Housewives no recollection of that. I just remember seeing them, like, pumping their hands in the air, shouting, Strike. Interesting. So, as a little background, if you want to go listen first to our show from May 2012, how Labor Unions Work. Good one. Might be a good little precursor to this. Yeah. Because they are tied together like ham and cheese. Yeah. Because you really can't have a strike without a union. You can. You can. But you're probably in trouble if you do. Yeah. For the most part. Yeah. I mean, technically, we could all at how stuff works. Decide to go on strike. We're not in a union. Yeah. We could all walk out and say, we want free lunch, or we're not podcasting anymore. Free lunch would be great. So technically you could do it, but I don't know about the legalities of stuff like that. Well, that's the thing. Yeah. Okay, so we could do it. You're absolutely right. But we wouldn't be afforded the same legal protections that strikers who are striking under a labor union r yeah. Plus our boss would probably say, let me see if we can work out for lunch. We burned a strike on that. It would be a problem if we burned a strike on that because strikes, they're basically the last resort of any labor union. Yes. Labor union doesn't say, I wish we were paid more. Let's go on strike tomorrow. Yes. No, it doesn't happen. No. You try to work it out with your employer first. Right. Sit down at the negotiating table. Yeah. Well, we're jumping ahead here. Okay. Let's get to some history. You want to talk about the history of strikes? Yeah. Not a lot is known about the very first strike, but they do know that the word was used in the it probably means because I kind of wondered, what does that mean? It probably means come from, like, to strike a blow. Yeah. Like a punch in the mouth. Yeah. To strike someone from labor to capital. That's right. They're saying, hey, man, you can't push this around. And it's a really important right to be able to strike. Or at least for a very long time. Because back in the day. If you worked in a town in Massachusetts or something like that. In the late 18th century. There's probably one company in that town. And so therefore. That company had what's called the monopsony. Meaning that they were the only employer around. So they could decide what they paid you and what were you going to do. You can't take a horse 50 miles to work every day to the next town. So to counteract this monopsony of the employer, the ability for the workers to get together and say, hey, we are going to not work, and you will not have the product that we make for you unless we come to some agreement over these labor conditions and wages and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. That's where they came from. One of the first strikes was in 1786 when some printers in Philadelphia said, you know what, we want to raise. And the company said, no, thank you. We'll pay you just like you're paid. They said, all right, well, you know what? We're not going to print anything. And it worked. They quit working, and they ended up getting their raise. Right. The owner was like, I hadn't expected this outcome. How dare you? Yeah. So because it worked, over the next few decades, other people said the same thing. If we're all in the same profession, let's band together and say, we want to be treated more fairly. We're making this company a ton of money. They're paying a squat. It's not safe. We're working too long. Oh, yeah. Little kids are working here. Yeah. Child labor is going on. So we're powerless as an individual to walk in and say, I want more pay, because they will say, you're fired. But if we band together, we actually have some bargaining power. Exactly. And that's what a union is. It's an assemblage of workers who share some sort of commonality. Either they work for the same company, usually they work in the same trade. Sure. So, like, electrical workers in a company plant will all belong to one union, and the upholsters will belong to another union and so on and so forth. Right. Yeah. So you have a bunch of different unions in the same plant for working for the same company. Right. So usually the thing that binds workers in a union is their trade. Right. And when they get together and they say, no more, we're not working anymore until you guys do something, that is power, and that's the strike. But again, there's supposed to be bargaining that comes before this. Yeah. Strikes are a bit of a double edged sword. Your company is going to very quickly cease to make money because things aren't being produced. A lot of money, which is a big deal. But you as strikers are also not making money. Right. You might have what's called a war chest built up when your union has set aside money in case of a strike, but it's not going to carry you through a prolonged strike, and it's not going to be your regular paycheck. So a war chest is not going to solve your problem. Ultimately, if it becomes a battle of wills, both sides are dug in for months and even years. And apparently so Europe is very well known for strikes. It seems like France is striking, like, every couple of weeks for a while there. Right? Yeah. But it turns out that the US. Has struck, gone on strike. How about that? Sure. About as often as Europe has from something like, I think, the 1880s to the 1970s and has actually had bloodier strikes and longer strikes. So that the mean number of days a strike lasts in the United States or did between 1881 and 1974 was 20 days. Wow. So, yeah. If you're like a wage laborer that's three weeks paid that you're losing out on, that's the mean it could go longer than that. Yeah. And that's exactly what is going on in the boardroom for the company, is how long can we wait them out? How long can they wait us out? It's a game of chess in a lot of ways. Right. And like you said, it is a last resort. A union can't just call a strike a union leader or the upper management of the union can't just say, we're going on strike. You got to put it to a boat. And it's not like 51% generally, it's 80% or up. People have to be behind it. And which is what you want, because if your labor pool isn't strong and your union isn't strong, then you're going to lose. Exactly. They're going to start crossing that picket line. We'll get to all that, of course. But even beyond that, the union leadership has to be smart enough to say, guys, we know that 80% of you are voting for this, and that's the gender neutral guy. Stop your email now. But this is a terrible time to go on strike. Like we don't have public sympathy. Yeah, big time. The economics are against us. The brand recognition and brand loyalty of the company we work for is through the roof. It's a terrible time to strike. So if that happens and the workers are disaffected enough, they may say, no, we're going on strike anyway without the blessing of the union. That's what's called a wildcat strike. Yes. And also, I think, the name of a blackfoot album. Who's? Blackfoot. What, are they newish? No. Are they from the seventies? Eighties? They were a southern rock band. Oh, atlanta rhythm section. No, I used to love them, too. Blackfoot. Yeah. I think either two thirds or three quarters of the band were native American, and so they were blackfoot. And the lead singer was in a very early incarnation of Leonard Skinner and is now with Leonard skinnerd again. I see. Ricky medlock. Wow. Yeah. I've never heard of blackfoot. Yeah. I'm sorry for that. Blackfoot guys, they're a hard rock southern rock band. Cool. It sounds like something I'd like. Yeah. Go listen to the blackfoot song. Good morning. Okay. Good morning. Good morning. A different song. If you want to not strike, one of the first things you might do if you have a disagreement is file agreements. And like I said, when it comes time to sit down, hopefully you can both work things out at the old bargaining table. Well, in the bargaining table, this is a very important point. Strikes occur almost across the board during contract negotiations. Yeah. They don't happen during contracts, or else you're in a major violation, usually of the contract itself. Right. This is our contracts coming up. And we've been thinking, we really don't want mandatory tanselectomies. We want that removed from this past contract. And the employer says, no townsleptomy is for everybody. And then you have a problem. There's an issue right here. It's at the bargaining table. It's contract related, and it can conceivably lead to a strike. So there's different kinds of strikes. There are a few that precede the full on, no one's coming to work strike. Kind of like a warning shot strike is you can have a sick out or sick in, and that is when you're just sort of saying, here's what could happen. Company owner, factory owner, we're all calling in sick today, and this is what it's going to be like. Imagine this for days and days in a row. Yeah. You'd hate it. Factory Owner but we're all not feeling well. Yeah. And there's actually some professions that legally give up the right to strike. Sure. But could still conceivably do this. Like, cops sometimes come down with what's called blue flu, which is a structured sick out among cops, and it's still following the letter because each cop is saying, I'm taking a sick day, which I am legally afforded, but all of them are taking it at the same time. So it's a problem. Yeah. A lot of times, like, if it's a public service that people really count on firemen cops. Yeah. They can't go on strike. Yeah. They can't stick out, though. We can't strike, but we can stick out. Or generally is what we've done is in our contract, we've agreed it's arbitration as a means to settle disputes. Right. But we can just a blue flu. Yeah, blue flu. There's also a slow down, too, which, I mean, this is the most passive aggressive, I think it really is. It's like, oh, let me make sure that that bolt is on again. Where was that bolt? Where was that ranch? Where did I put that? It's where everybody goes to work, but they do their work very slowly. And again, they're able to get away with this because they're following the rules. So if you look at the rule book or handbook of an employee at any kind of manufacturing plant, their job is probably, on paper, way more detailed and structured than the actual job they carry out is just a practical matter. Right. If they started to do their job strictly by the book, the amount of time it takes them to make a widget would slow down dramatically as compared to when they cut the corners that they normally cut. And the company is like, you cut those corners because we want to get more widgets out the door. So is that what they're doing during a slowdown, is they're technically following everything to the letter? That's what the Grabster says. This is a Grabster joint, by the way. That's right. The great Ed Grabinowski. Yeah. The Grabster suggests that that is the case for a slowdown, usually. Although you could also just do your job slower. But if you're doing it by the book, when your boss comes, like, you better speed up. Hey, I'm making sure that we're following all the safety precautions. Yeah. And then finally you can have a sit down. Well, there's a couple of more. You can have a sit down strike that may be the most aggressive. That's when you actually go to work and you don't work and you don't leave. Right. Like, you have people bring you food and water and you're like, I'm going to sit on my stool so no one else can sit on it and do that. Job. Your stool, not your stool. Good point. Yeah. I think that's the most aggressive I have. Hardest core. And then an arrow pointing at sit down strike here on my notes. Right? Yeah. But it also doesn't just not just the most aggressive, it actually affords some additional protections to the worker on strike. Right. So, one, nobody else can come in and do that work because they're in the way they're on the stool. Number two, it prevents them from violence in a lot of ways, or it protects them from violence because they're hanging around very expensive company machinery. So it'd be pretty stupid to come at somebody like that with a lead pipe, because if they duck, you just broke the company's machine. Yeah. And if that sounds crazy, we will go in over the myriad examples of violence and strike busters. Just disgusting. Yeah. So if you think, what do you mean no one would come after them violently? Yeah, it happens. Listen, Pollyanna. Yeah. Just wait. Wake up. So it also keeps the person away from the elements. Like, you're not out picketing in the rainy weather of Flint, Michigan, right. You're just sitting there in the nice plant. That's right. There can be sympathy strikes. That's when you either directly or just they decide to call on your brothers and sisters and other unions, maybe in the same industry that feel your pain, and they know it's good for them ultimately, as well. So they will also go on strike to kind of help your cause. Right, exactly. And some company may call the other company and be like, dude, they're killing me over here. Give them those concessions, please. Yeah. Or else I'm not going to be able to make dues this month at the Billionaires Club. Buffy will kill me. Or it might also be sympathy strikes. Remember I said in the same plant, you might have an upholsters union, an electricians union, a plumber's union at the same company. Other non affiliated unions may go on strike as well. And that will really put some pressure on that company because they can be like, well, we'll catch up with our backlog of upholstery work while these guys are striking. Right? No, sorry. We're on strike, too. The company always. Oh, my God. I hate Mondays. Well, and we're going to get into the very infamous 1980s air traffic controller strike in great detail later. But one of the big reasons it didn't work out is because they failed to get anyone else on board, like the pilots and the flight attendants and baggage handlers. None of them jumped on board with a sympathy strike, which did not help the air traffic controllers. Then you got a general strike, which is not usually directed at a company itself. It's more directed at, like, a government, because that means basically everybody who works in a country goes on strike. Yeah. Like, we want minimum wage raise for everybody. And that's one reason why it seems like France is always striking? It's because when they go on strike, they go on strike. They typically have general strikes when they do I don't want to say typically, but they do undertake general strikes, basically unheard of here in the United States. And it makes big news when it happens. Yeah, for sure. So there's just some time to strike. Yeah. Should we take a break? Yes. All right. But we're coming back. We're not going on strike. Don't worry. Stuff you should know. So, Chuck, we talked about different kinds of strikes. Right. We did. One of the things that you think of when you go on strike or when you think of strike is people picketing. Yeah. Like, you'll very frequently see people around Atlanta especially. It seems like a lot of construction companies have Aggrieved employees. Oh, really? Yeah. And the people marching out in front of the building that's going up, headquarters maybe, or construction site, and they'll say, like, shame on whoever for employing nonunion workers or whatever. Because that's a big part of the ability to go on strike, is you need to have a solid union. Right? Yeah. And one way, especially early on, back in the 18th and early 19th century, we're talking about New England there was this idea that if you were not a part of the union, the union members would be like, I'm not working if that person is working here. Right. Like, you have to fire that person. So if you didn't join a union, you had a hard time finding jobs. Yeah. And so if you're a union, one of your big tactics is you need to make sure your membership is almost complete across the company or else you're not going to be able to put real pressure on that company if half the workers can still show up to work because they're not union members. So they are not going on strike. Yeah, good point. Picketing is one of the main reasons you pick it is to draw, like we mentioned earlier, get the public on your side. It's a big part of it. And also to embarrass the company. Yeah. And this probably says a lot about who I am, but whenever I see that, I always think in my head, well, there's some employees that are clearly getting screwed by the man. Sure. What do they have to say? Right. Which is exactly what they want. That's why they're out there with the picket signs. Sometimes they're chanting something or singing a song. And what they do? Sure. They sing songs, like songs about the picket. They're not they're singing their Way to Heaven or like the Freddie Krueger nursery rhyme. What's that? That'd be unsettled. It'd be the creepiest picket line ever. One, two strikers coming for you. If you cross the picket line, you literally have to. That's why they stand out in front of the factory or the HQ. You have to walk through them and literally cross the picket line to be what's known as a scab. Yeah. And you can be part of that union and decide to go back to work, or you can be just an outside person who says, I actually need work and I'm not in your union, so I'm just going to I don't know you guys. Sorry, ladies. Pardon me? I'm a scab. Or you might be a professional from another part of the country that the owner basically has shipped in to replace you, which will get into all the legalities of that later. But crossing a picket line is not a shining moment for anybody who's doing it. No. And where does the word scab come from, my friend? Apparently, it has to do with how people used to shun people with infectious diseases. The sentiment was that if you cross the picket line, you would be treated in the exact same way as if you had the plague. Right. Everybody's going to keep you over there. No one's going to talk to you. You're not going to be able to find a job. You're going to be cast out of society. You're scabbed. Yes. So it was shortened to scab. That amount of pressure is tremendous. Yeah. And picketing doesn't always mean you're on strike. A lot of times, it's another warning shot. It's called informational picketing when you sort of threaten and say, hey, we're out here picketing. This does not look good for you. No. And that's the key thing. If you go on strike, you want the public to know you're on strike because the public's like, why are you on strike? What's the problem? I want to know about that. Right. And some groups have gotten a lot better at manipulating the media, using social media to get the message across, like the fight for 15. I haven't heard that. Where they're trying to raise the minimum wage for $15. Yeah. They've been putting a tremendous amount of pressure on McDonald's. They got a study released that found that just a ridiculous percentage of fast food workers, especially at McDonald's, but in other fast food restaurants in the US. Too, are reliant on welfare, on public assistance. And that the way the study framed it. And the way that the news reports framed it was that McDonald's was basically using your taxpayer dollars to supplement the meager income they were paying these people rather than actually pay their employees a living wage. They were just being like, you handle it, taxpayers. We're not going to pay them that much. And it worked big time. Like, it made all the news cycles. It really changed a lot of people's perspectives, and it went hand in hand with a strike. A general strike. Well, not a general strike, but a strike that was carried out, I think, in April of last year across the world. Yeah. And it really put a lot of pressure on McDonald's. Didn't do anything, but it still put a lot of pressure on McDonald's and I think ultimately probably will lead to a change in the minimum wage. Yeah, that's a tricky subject. Have we talked about that? No. We should do one on that, because I'm a champion of the people. I think people should make a living wage, too. But my wife is a small business owner, and it would put her out of business. Yeah. So when you hear McDonald's, you think, huge corporation. They can afford it. But what about when you're a small business that has eight employees and your cost of what do you call it? The cost of business? Not the cost of business, but your wages go up by 40%. Sure. No, I agree. It's a very tough thing to say across the board. Everyone has to do this. So, like with Obamacare, and if anybody knows what some solutions are to that, we'd love to hear it. Yeah, because this fascinates me as well, and it feels very important. But it seems like with Obamacare, there was a concession made where employers with X number of employees or less weren't mandated to provide health care to their employees. Yeah. So maybe it would be like that. Right. Or small revenue is less than a certain threshold or whatever, then, yes. Small business can be a lot of things. There's no reason that Mama and McDonald's should be in the same basket of considerations for just about anything that has to do with wages or taxes or anything like that. Agreed. And it's just so disingenuous to be like, well, what about small business? Well, let the small businesses speak. You can't point to these guys. That doesn't matter to you? International conglomerate. Yeah. Plus, McDonald's, they just raised the price on everything on their menu by one penny, and it probably covers it. I think I've heard a stat like that. I don't think it's just a penny, but it's something very meager like that. Yeah. Boy, that was sidetrack, but good one. But as we'll learn it really is. As we'll learn, though, in this episode, the history of strikes and labor laws and the treatment of employees and the government, like, backing employers has been a history of huge, massive, radical act, and then that changed everything, and then that side won, and then the other side by time, and then, bam, they strike, or they carry out some crazy action, and it changes everything. The history has been kind of seaside like that, and it's pretty fascinating. Maybe that provides balance in some way overall, I guess. Should we talk about sports strikes? Yeah. They often get way more attention than other kinds of strikes because there's so much money, and people in the United States love their sports. Yeah. They value sports over, say, electricians. Yeah, of course they do. In 1987, the NFL, the Football League, went on strike over free agency, which, if you don't know anything about football, that means after your first contract is up, that means you are a free agent and you can say, I want to go sign with any other team in the league. Yeah, I don't understand that. That makes total sense. How would that even be a term? Well, free agency. What were the teams wanting the owners for you to have the right to control that player for as long as you wanted that player. Oh God, all the sports leagues are so different in how they handle things, too. It's really interesting, and I know not many we don't have a ton of sports fans because historically our sports terrible. Done poorly terrible. But we'll go over this real quick. They struck in strike in the middle of a seat, not in the middle. At the beginning, the players walked after two games into the 87 season, and for three games, the NFL said, you know what, we're going to bring in scab replacement players. And it was a disaster. Piano Reeves, that dude with the cigarettes? Yes. I mean, people, some college players, some players in other, like the Canadian League, some dudes that were just like, hey, I used to play football. We're literally out there out of shape. ESPN is a great article on that season. Oh, really? How? Like the quarterbacks run the huddle, being like, we just want to be in the huddle as long as possible. Oh, I've got to check that out. Nobody can catch their breath because this guy was a fat corporate cat. Really? I didn't want to be an offensive lineman scab player because he played in college, so it was a disaster. They paid him about four grand a game, and the quality of play was terrible. As you would expect, some high profile players ended up crossing and being scabs, like Joe Montana. Oh, really? Tony Dorsett, Laurence Taylor. Wow. Steve Argent. Wow. And it was a big deal. And eventually they returned to work and without any resolution, which happens a lot of times, thanks to Joe Montana baseball. And they've gone on strike a lot. In 1984, though, the MLB Players Association said 84 or 94. 94? Yeah. They said, we don't want a salary cap on our team. Which if you don't know what that means, that means the team can only spend so much money on its players. Right. Players hate that because they want as much money as possible. Owners love it because they're like, oh, what am I going to do with all this extra money? Exactly. And in 1994, in August, sort of late in the season, they actually canceled the rest of the season, and the World Series stuck because the Braves were that was in the middle of their big run and they oh, yeah, that's right, we lost an opportunity to lose another World Series. We won that one, though, right? Yeah, one. So apparently this contract dispute was still going on into spring training, and some players went. And reported to spring training despite the strike still going on. And those players were banned for life over the players union. I don't think I need that for life. Which means that even after retirement, they weren't eligible for any royalties that you get from, like, your number being licensed or being on, like, MLB 95 or whatever, retirement edition. Yeah, but, I mean, you can make some checks depending on how great a player you were and how big your legend was for many years after you retire. But if you cross the picket lines and went to spring training, no, you're out. I don't think I knew that. Yeah. National Hockey League historically has only had one official strike, but they have been locked out, which will get to lock out shortly. But they've been locked out a couple of times, and the entire 2004 season was canceled, the whole thing. And hockey and Major League Baseball had a much more difficult time recovering from their canceled season and canceled World Series than the NFL from their scab issue. I've got a scab issue. And in 2012, the NFL referees were locked out. Yeah. Remember that? They had replacement referees that were just terrible. Oh, yeah, that's right. They actually, I think, must have won that concession for the regular referees because that got so much bad press. Everybody was so mad. They were making so many bad calls. I totally forgot about that. They're like high school referees out there, NFL games. Yeah. Should we take a break? I think so. Man. All right. We'll talk about strike busting and more right after this stuff. You should know. So checkers. If you are an employer and your employees go on strike, you don't just go fiddlesticks. I guess I'll give them what they want. There are plenty of other things you can do, some legal, some sublegal, and some in between. Right. And one of the first things that employers did when they were faced with strikes early on was hire armed mercenaries to basically beat up and threaten and harass the striking workers. Yeah. Notably the Pinkerton Detective Agency. They did a lot of detective work, but they were also notable for being strike breakers. And some of the things they do are legit, like guarding scabs as they go to work, so they're not harassed or protecting the building itself, so they're not throwing bricks through the windows, but they're getting beaten up sometimes and intimidated. Not just that. They also may serve as agent provocateurs. Apparently, the Haymarket Riot, like a bunch of cops dead in Chicago. It was set off by a bomb. And they think that a Pinkerton Detective undercover set that bomb off to stir this protest into an angry, violent mobile. They can't do anything for money. Yeah. And apparently I was reading that Pinkerton was hired to investigate the Occupy Wall Street protesters in Ducati Park. Oh, really? Still at it. Wow. Yeah. And so Pinkerton, they deserve their own podcast, for sure. Yeah. But very early on, they were hired as basically armed thugs. Like you said, they did do protective services, but they also did a lot of violent and illegal stuff as well on the behalf of these factory owners. And there was one in particular where the factory owners it was Andrew Carnegie, actually in Homestead, Pennsylvania. There's a steel mill there. And at the steel mill in, I think, 1884, the workers went on strike. So Carnegie brought in some Hungarian and Slavic steel workers to replace them. And in 1892, the Hungarian and Slavic steel workers went on strike themselves and more workers were brought in to replace them. And both times Pinkerton detectives were there to escort the scabs across the picket line, even when those scabs they escorted turned into the striking workers themselves. Right. But it's kind of like one of those things where it's like maybe the couple the second time it might be you right. Now, if the scabs you brought in go on strike too yeah. Maybe you should pay a little more. Right, exactly. Something safer. That's not what happened. There was like, basically what's called the Battle of Homestead. And it was a battle between the Pinkerton detectives and these striking workers. And in this case, actually, the Pinkertons suffered massive losses and casualties. They were beaten by the towns folk in Homestead. Three of them died. And it actually turned public opinion against the strikers in this case. But it also taught Pinkerton that it's probably not good business to send our boys off to die. So they actually stopped providing strike breaking services over time. And it morphed and evolved into more arranging for spies to attend union meetings and things like that. Yeah, there's still strike busting going on. It's just not as overt and physically violent. Right. A little more surreptitious and sneaky. And then remember we said, Wake up, Pollyanna earlier. That's a good example of it. Another good example is the Great Strike of 1877, which started in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and actually spread very quickly to towns like Baltimore and St. Louis. And it made its way to Pittsburgh, which was another Homestead. One was 1892. Just a few years earlier, in 1877, there was another strike and a bunch of towns people were out supporting the strikers. And I think the state National Guard came in and opened fire on the supporters of the strikers and killed 20 people, including a woman and three small children. So strikes have gotten very bloody, especially early on. And the fact that people were dying over these labor disputes really kind of shaped public sentiment toward violence during strikes. And it helped straighten things up a lot more, I think, over time. Yeah, agreed. Well, I know we covered it in the union's podcast, but we should talk a little bit about the Wagner Act and Taft Hartley because they play very heavily into strikes. The Wagner Act, aka. The National Labor Relations Act. It was what officially said, you have a right. Among other things, you have a right to strike. Right. You can form unions. You can go on strike. It specifically says you have a right to strike. Yeah. You are legally allowed to do so. And they didn't specify what kind of votes. That was all up to the union. Right. But it said, you are allowed to settle labor disputes by striking. That's right. Explicitly. That is right. And then the Supreme Court came along and said, let's weaken that a little bit. Yes. 1938, the Supreme Court said, you know what? You can't fire people for joining union are going on strike, but what you can do is permanently replace them with another worker. Right. And if you want to know the difference, there isn't much. Technically, if you are a permanently replaced, you can go back to that job. If the person who replaced you quits or retires or is fired and that position becomes available again, you have the right to go back to that position. Yeah. And get your job. That could be 20 years from now or never. Right. Yeah. Like Kramer with the bagel strike, do you remember? Yeah. So it is legal to permanently replace somebody. And when it comes down to a strike, this weapon in the employer's arsenal is as good as being able to fire striking workers in a lot of cases. Yeah, absolutely. So that was a big one. And a lot of people, especially pro labor people, point to this and say, what the heck? Supreme Court Congress explicitly passed an act that says overtly, you have a right to strike. There's nowhere in American law that says employers have a right to replace their striking workers. And yet the Supreme Court is aired on the side of employers rights. Well, I think what the Supreme Court said was, sure, you can go on strike, but we're not going to say you can go on strike with no repercussions. Right. Taft Hartley amendment came around in 1947 and did a few things. It established a National Labor Review Board, which is a body that tears grievances on strikes and unions supposedly impartial. Is that what they're supposed to be? Sue them? Yeah. After that, all of the all the lawsuits or cases that have to do with strikes are all somebody versus the NLRB. Oh, yeah, good point. And the other thing it did was it did weaken unions somewhat by saying you can't have a secondary boycott, which is when you strike against another related business in that industry that's targeted by the original strike. Right. You can't have a closed shop, which is where you have to join a union as terms of your employment. Immediately. Yeah, like right away. But they did allow for what's known as a union shop, which means you have to join a union within the first within the time period, 30 days of higher although most states now have taken into their own hands, in some cases, not most, but to be a right to work state, which Georgia is, which means the union shop is irrelevant. Right. I wonder how many right to work states there are. Actually, I meant to look that up. I don't know. It's such a cynical way to put it. A right to work. It's a workers right to not join a union. Like, that's not a pro employer law. Yeah. So, Chuck, another tool in the employer's toolbox, I guess. Yeah, that makes sense. Is the lockout. And it's apparently being used more and more these days. The lockout is like the reverse strike. It's where the employer says, you can't come to work yes. Even if you want to, even if you want to stop striking. And there's rules and regulations surrounding lockouts as well. The supreme Court or TEF Hartley, one of the two, said, you can, as an employer, lock your employees out once a contract is expired. So you can't do it during the contract. But if you're an employer and you're saying, I really, really want to shove my terms down your throat, you have to accept them. And the union saying, no, we're not going to accept that. You can sit there and negotiate, negotiate and negotiate, and then once that contract expires during negotiations, you can say you're locked out, you can't come to work. And the supreme court also ruled that you are, as an employer, allowed to temporarily replace those workers that you've locked out. Right. Like the Scabs and the NFL. Very much so. Right. So you're allowed to replace them and continue on with your business as usual. And then if you're a union member, you're faced with three options. One, you can go find work at another company. Two, you can accept the terms. And then three, what's becoming an increasing tactic is you can vote to dissolve the union. Right. That even when you come back and say, okay, we'll accept your terrible contract, the employer can go, you know what? I changed my mind. I actually don't want this union in my company any longer. So I'll tell you what, if you guys vote to dissolve your union, then we will go with this contract and the lockout will be over. Yeah, that happened very famously in Minnesota in August of 2011. The American Crystal sugar company found that their employees found that they were locked out. And it went on. One of the longest labor disruptions, like major labor disruptions we've had went on for 22 months. 1300 employees were locked out by the time it was all over. Only 400 of those original 1300 came back almost two years later. And it took basically Crystal sugar kept saying, this is our only offer. This is our only offer. Every time they went back to negotiate, this is our final offer. So it took five votes over the course of almost two years until they eventually relented and accepted that same offer. Right. Like, they never changed the offer. And supposedly, the CEO, Dave Berg, was caught on audio tape at a shareholder conference saying basically admitting that they were trying to bust the union and comparing the union to a tumor that had to be removed. Yeah. He said, we have to treat the disease, and that's what we're doing here. And then in three months into the lockout, he told shareholders, we mapped this out a long time ago. At some point, that tumors got to come out, and that's what we're doing. And it worked. Yeah, it did. So then we should end with the Reagan air traffic controller strike. Oh, man, I remember this. Do you really? Yeah. So in 1981, the air traffic controllers went on strike because they felt that the FAA didn't value their work enough, that their work week was too long, that their pay was too low, and that their working conditions led to unsafe conditions for travelers. Yeah, all legit stuff. It wasn't all of them. 13,000 of the 17,500. And at the time, they were the professional air traffic controllers organization. So we talked earlier about how a good labor union leadership will say, even though you guys want to go on strike, this is a terrible time to do it. Well, Pepco did not do that. They went on strike at a time when the economy was not doing that well. When Reagan had about 100% approval, he'd just been shot and recovered. So he came back like a total hero, and he was riding high and felt pretty emboldened, actually. And the reason why the union went on strike anyway was because they had supported Reagan. He had gotten their support through negotiations, and they didn't view him as somebody who was an enemy. Yeah, they've mishandled and misjudged this in many ways. Supposedly, there's a 1955 law that says if you're a government agency, your union can't go on strike. The thing was, in practicality and actuality, there had been something like 22 strikes over the last few decades of government unions, and it was just kind of like an unsaid thing. Well, Reagan said, no, this is illegal, and you guys are if you don't return to work in 48 hours, you're all fired. I'm going to arrest your union leaders for carrying out an illegal strike. Yeah. I'm going to arrest some of the controllers themselves. Right. I'm going to freeze the assets of the union, and then I'm going to get the union desertified. And he did all these things. Yeah. I'm going to put the FBI is getting involved. If you're a striker, you're going to be on their list. Yeah. And this all came down to money, really. It was what they were after would have increased. It had a price tag of about $770,000,000. The FAA countered with a $40 million counter offer, a little bit of a pay hike, a shorter work week and PATCO said no. So when they went on strike, 6000 flights were immediately canceled. And I think they just underestimated how hardcore the FAA and Reagan were going to be coming back at them because they had a plan immediately. They said, you know what, we're going to have 50% of these flights back and running very soon because your supervisors are going to go to work. We're going to rush through matriculation and training school and military air traffic control and then bring in these military folks to come in and we don't need you. And I think within a few weeks they had nearly 80% of the scheduled flights going like prioritizing the most like trafficked routes and what they considered high priority routes. Right. Which is a terrible irony because that is almost exactly what the air traffic controllers were looking for, was stretched out work that they felt was safer. And that's what Reagan got it to with the replacements. Well, yeah, and it ended up costing them, I think, twice as much money as it would have cost them if they had just agreed to those terms. A lot of people point to that. The fact that the FAA ended up changing to what the strikers wanted right. And spending twice as much as what they would have just conceding to it is Reagan changing the flow between employer and employees. And he did dramatically. After that it became much more difficult to strike and I think it struck fear into the hearts of workers throughout the country like, oh man, the President himself feels this way about striking. Clearly he's going to back up the employers in any kind of strike and it changed things for sure. Yeah. Not only did he say you're all fired, he said none of you can ever work for the government again. Right. And then Bill Clinton came along and reversed that and said you guys can get a job again if you want. They said, well, half of us are dead. Yeah, well, that was twelve years later when that happened so that's a good point. But eventually the newly hired air traffic controllers formed a new union, natka, national Air Traffic Controllers Association. And I think Robert Pole from PATCO said ultimately I think we sort of won because it ended up costing them more and we got the changes but there were no winners really because they lost because all those people got fired. Capital One. Yeah, and that was a big one. At the time we talked about getting the public sympathy. They did not have it because air traffic controllers made more than the average person. And like you said, it was a bad time for the economy and people's flights were getting canceled and they didn't have what do we call them, the sympathy strikers. Right. I don't think they thought it through. No. And they were very much surprised by Reagan for sure. Like he said, what we're all fired in two days. Yeah. So that strikes. There's a lot more too. There's a crazy history that we haven't even touched on. There's just so much stuff that's happened as far as strikes go. Yeah. You should definitely if this floats your boat at all, you should go look up the Flint, Michigan sit in strike of I think it was pretty amazing what happened. Yeah. And we might should do an entire show on the homestead. Strike in battle. Yes. It was a big deal. Yes, it is. Yeah. I think it's full enough for a show. Okay, well, in the meantime, if you want to know more about strikes, you can type that word in the search bar@housetofworks.com. And I said, search bar. So it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this navy lieutenant reporting for duty. Hey, guys. I'm a lieutenant in the Navy, and I've been listening to your show for a few years. Started listening a lot of station in Japan and have not stopped. You asked about ship name prefixes, specifically USS, which indeed is United States ship. It should be noted that this specifically refers to warships of the US. Navy. And the prefixes for other ships of the US government are legion. For instance, US. CGC. United States Coast Guard, cutter USNS. United States Naval ship nonmorship USAS. United States Army ship US. AB, United States Army vessel, and many more boutique prefixes that are limited. Their limited use are no longer in use. Most navies around the world have their own prefix because, like you said, HMS currently is Her Majesty ship or Her Majesty's submarine. But when the reigning monarch is a man, the king would be his Majesty's ship. Makes sense. Yes. And how about these? Joshmcs? His or her Majesty's Canadian ship or HMAS. Australian ship or HMNZS? This Majesty's New Zealand ship? Civilian ships vessels can have prefixes as well, according to their construction and propulsion, such as SS. I never knew that. Like SS Minnow sailing ship. Wow. Or steamship or screw steamer. Yeah. Okay. Which is the dirtiest of all ships? MV or MV for motor vessel. And then my personal favorite that is Chris speaking NS for nuclear ship. The number of them is staggering, guys. Very respectfully. Chris, lieutenant in the US. Navy. Well, hoy, Chris. Thanks a lot for that. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Chris, and shine some light on some stuff we didn't really know about, we love that. So you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychano. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetoforce.com. As always, join us for our home on the web stuffyshoodnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com." | ||
How Steadicams Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-steadicams-work | There have been many inventions that have advanced filmmaking, but maybe none as important as the steadicam. Invented in the mid-70s, it literally changed the way movie making happened, and made the impossible possible. Learn about the fascinating history | There have been many inventions that have advanced filmmaking, but maybe none as important as the steadicam. Invented in the mid-70s, it literally changed the way movie making happened, and made the impossible possible. Learn about the fascinating history | Thu, 16 Jun 2016 22:40:08 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=22, tm_min=40, tm_sec=8, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=168, tm_isdst=0) | 33043924 | 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. Chuck's wearing a hat, so it's stuff you should know. Yeah. Still pretty sad. Yeah. Are you really sure? All right, you know what I'm getting the josh is referencing my Last Chance Garage hat that I've talked way too much about. I'm getting the patch remade as we speak. Actually found one on ebay that had been sold three months ago, and it's all a big conspiracy. Is that right? Okay. But I found a picture of the patch that I sent to a patchmaker who can digitally reproduce this thing. Nice, man. Then I got to find the right hat coming back home. Well, that's step one. That's a big step one. Yeah. I'm getting a few patches and a few hats this time. I think that's a good idea. Yeah. You can name them one through eight. That's right. Let's see. Chuck, you worked in the film industry previously. Yeah. So did you, technically. Yeah. You did more than I did, by far. You worked in front of and behind the camera. That's right. Did you ever work with a steady cam at all? Yeah. So, like, you've seen these things up close? Yes. I don't recall Scott or anybody using one. We did not have one on our show. Okay. They're expensive. Okay. But, I mean, there are some pretty good equipment on set, it seemed like. But there was no steady camp. Right. No, because I was trying to recall, and I could not for the life of me remember a moment when there was an awesome extendo arm camera with all of the components exploded out into different parts of a pole. That didn't happen, because he would have walked in and said, what's that? And everyone would have laughed, and you would have been like, why does everyone make fun of me? I would have been all this stuff up to him. My dressing. No, we never use one on our TV show for science show, because, like I said, it's pricey to rent, and this is a bit of a giveaway, but a person steadicam operator comes with the package, with all the equipment, a lot of times their own, and it's pricey to pay for that lady or that dude. Right. But the reason it is price is because it has a really good effect. Yeah. And the person who's doing it really knows what they're doing. Yeah. I don't know, but just from researching this, it seemed like they were probably the most skilled trades person on the set at any given time when they were on the set. Is that right? Well, I think it's just a matter of what skill. It's just a different skill. Are they, like, the highest echelon of camera operators? No, it's just different. Okay. Like a top nine there's niche. Yeah. Okay. I got it. But you don't just wade into steadicam and start getting work the next day. It does take a lot of work to master, but like, a good dolly grip is just as skilled at just pushing that thing around. But that takes a very non herky jerky. Well, it's not going to be herky jerky anyway, but just to hit the marks. Right. Oh, I see. Yeah. I mean, all that stuff takes a great amount of skill. Well, let's talk about this, because steady camp, when I came of age, was already invented. It was basically became commercially available the year I was born. So I don't really know a world prior to steady camp. I've never seen a movie that came up before. I'm just used to it. Right. Yeah. But it's interesting to look back and see that there actually is a point in time where this one dude who was actually kind of an outsider of the movie business basically changed it permanently forever. For sure. Yeah. His name was Garrett Brown. Brown? Yeah. He's still around, right? Yeah. And he was working for well, he was working in TV commercials on Sesame Street in Philadelphia. Yeah. And he got a little frustrated as camera people do pre steady cam with not being able to accomplish certain shots. Yeah. Supposedly there were 30 impossible shots that just based on the equipment of the day, you just couldn't do. Right. Yeah. And a lot of it had to do with rough terrain. Sure. Staircases were a big one. Yes. And the reason the shots were impossible, it's not like you couldn't lug a camera around up and down the stairs. But the movement that the camera recorded would be so jarring that it would render the film like that. It would be unusable. Yeah. And this was in the day before. I mean, there were shaky cam shots and like, Casavetis and all these early indie filmmakers did a lot of avantgarde handheld stuff. But it was known as avantgarde. Right. Because it looked different. And people were used to kind of smoother looking things in mainstream movies at the time. Yeah. I had, like, a real phonetic energy to it. Yeah. Which you see all the time now. It's like a bona fide thing. And it wasn't just like picking up the movements of the camera. It was like telegraphing them as far as the human brain is concerned, because we take it for granted. But we have in our own brains a pretty complex system that involves the inner ear coordinating with the movement of the retina so that it offsets the movement and the motion and the jarring impact of just walking. If we didn't have that, we wouldn't be able to focus on anything while we were moving around. Yeah. People wouldn't jog. They would get sick and vomit every time they jog. Exactly right. You certainly wouldn't be able to read US magazine while you were jogging or something like that. The fact that you can. Yeah. It really shows how incredibly complex and well developed the system is, right? Yes. That's what the Steadicam that Garrett Brown created sought to recreate. And he did it. He nailed it on the first time out, basically. Yeah, because we mentioned a dolly. That is, people that know film know this stuff is, like, pretty rudimentary information. But a lot of people don't know what a dolly is, and they see the word dolly grip in a movie. They just think it sounds funny. But the dolly is how you typically would get a smooth shot. It's just a big, super heavy sled with wheels that the camera sits on and the camera operator sits on. And it's either on a very smooth floor, it's on a piece of track, like a little railroad car, and it pushes along, and that's how you get those nice smooth shots. Right. So that's a dolly. The problem with the dolly is you can't really lay that track over a rocky terrain if you're filming on Mars or something like that. No. And like you said, you can't push it up and downstairs. It just had its limitations. Right? It did. So Garrett Brown said. I'm sick of these limitations. I'm so tired of being limited by dolly. Stupid dolly. I'm going to invent something better. And so he tinkered around with what was called the Brown Stabilizer at first, which he later renamed to the Steadicam and to show off at first, he was just using them in commercials, and he was like, this is way bigger than just commercials. Yeah, I'm going to make a sizzle reel. And he made a sizzle reel of the 30 impossible shots that you just couldn't do before. And he did it with a Steadicam, but he didn't show how it was done. Yeah, he was able to save ten of those shots and digitize them. And a couple of years ago, he finally released online ten of those. So you can actually go see this original Real. Yeah, it's pretty cool. His wife and his best friend, like, just doing stuff while just doing stuff. Like, one of them was swimming. You can't run alongside somebody swimming. Apparently. It was an impossible shot. I'm not quite sure why. Well, you just couldn't run alongside someone doing anything. Oh, okay. That's what it was. Even with a dolly. Well, no, you could have laid dolly track down the length of a swimming pool shirt. Right. That's why I didn't understand that one was an impossible shot. But to show off, he goes around a slide just to kind of show maybe that was the impossibility of it. But then his buddy gets out of the pool and he pivots around him. I'm sure when he put this Real together and he sent it out, the directors are like, this is magic. Sorcery well, it was mind blowing. And some people say it was the first viral video because it was shared around hollywood. Literally, in a matter of days, everybody in Hollywood was saying, what in the world? Like you said, what is this? Sorcery this Garrett Brown has bestowed upon us. Yeah, it was a bit of a microphone as far as the real goal. And Stanley Kubrick. Being Stanley Kubrick. Sent a message to Garret Brown that said. If you are really concerned about protecting its design before you fully patent it. I suggest you delete the two occasions on the Rio where the shadow on the ground gives the skilled counterintelligence photo interpreter a fairly clear representation of a man holding a pole with one hand with something or other at the bottom of the poll. Which appears to be slowly moving. All of that is Stanley Kubrickian for hey, there's a shadow in one of your shots, right. Of the steady cam up. Yeah. Which is pretty cool of him to do. Sure. Because I'm sure there were plenty of people in Hollywood who would have been like, okay, I think I kind of get the idea of what this was because there was no suggestion whatsoever of what Garrett Brown had used to get these shots except in those shadows. So he went and immediately cut those, I think, 14 seconds out of his reel and then released the second edition. It looked pretty good. I mean, it's rough compared to today's standard, sure. But for the time, it was unbelievable. Right. It changed everything. One of the shots that he got was his wife, Ellen. He said, Dear, why don't you put on your most 70s bell bottoms you can find and I'm going to run up behind you as you run up the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And maybe when you get to the top, you can raise your hands in triumph and I will spin around you. And if that shot sounds familiar, it actually attracted a guy, a director named John what is it? Average Son. Yeah. John G Avelon. Who said I like this? I'm going to use it in this little film I'm directing called Rocky. Yes. And I didn't get whether or not this was the case, but did they locate Rocky in Philadelphia because of those steps? No, because he said, how did you do that and where are those steps? I don't think so, man. Because I wondered that too. Did he not have a scene written where Rocky just runs up those steps? I mean, Stallone wrote it, right? I think they have to ask him. Okay. Hey, fly, I was wondering if you could do it. It was pretty good. I answered in that little moment. Someone will have to interpret that. Great movie. I rewatched that. Rocky. Yeah. Like this year, from beginning to end. Just phenomenal movie. I'm trying to get Emily to watch it. Has she never seen the original? No, it's its own thing, for sure. Really? It's a love story. For the most part. It's a love story. And, like, the triumph of the little guy story, for sure. Yeah. Featuring boxing, right? That's exactly right. Yeah. But two and three onward, it's like a totally different thing. Yeah, but those are good, too. Yeah. They said, let's take your story, take out the heart and insert cocaine instead. Insert, Mr. T. I don't get the cocaine reference. It's just the 80s in Hollywood got hands on it. Sure. You know what I mean? I got you. Yeah. That's a good question, though. I wonder about that. If he surely didn't remake it for Philadelphia just for that. Well, but the point is, Garrett Brown created on this sizzle reel one of the most iconic spots in filmmaking history. For sure. And he sent that reel out. And within that year, I believe three major motion pictures hired him to operate his steady camp for it. There was Rocky. What was the one about Woody Guthrie? Bound for Glory? Yes. I think that one came out first. So that was the first actual and that one, the steady came off was Garrett Brown, I think, for all these because he was the only guy that knew he got a lot of work early on. Yeah. And I think he operated. I think the patent was still pending until 1977. So I'm sure he'll let the thing out of his everybody close your eyes while I shoot this. But on Bound for Glory, he was on a crane. Even that lowered down, stepped off the crane. So people had seen crane shots, but then for the crane to go down, down, and then all of a sudden started following the sky. Everyone was like, what in the world? Right? There would have been a cut after the crane stopped, and then before they would have cut and they would have gotten a position and then started up again. This is one smooth shot. One smooth shot. Yeah. And then the other one was Marathon Man, right out of the blue. This guy who is a commercial director and made short films for Sesame Street, changed filmmaking, like, single handedly. Yeah. And won an Academy Award 1978 for technical achievement. Got that patent in 77, and well, that's it. That's the history of the steady cam. That's it, everybody. Good night. But we're going to should we take a break and tell everyone how this thing works? Let's do it. Man all right. Chuck so the city camp, do you remember when we did our episode on Breathalyzers? Oh, boy, that was a long time ago. And we found out that the Breathalyzer is one of the most complicated machines on the planet. I kind of hated that one. There were crystals involved somehow. I hated that one, too. Dark crystals. This is a bit like that if you really dive into city camps. Like this article on how stuff works. Does it's? Labyrinthine. Talking about the Dark Crystal. Yeah, we're talking labyrinth instead. Yeah, but we're going to simplify it because you don't need to break this thing apart and look at every component like this article does. I mean, it really gets involved. What you should do is look at a picture of someone operating one, because when you look at it, it all makes a lot more sense. Right. And there's really just three main parts to the whole thing. There's a vest, there's an arm that's attached to the vest, and then the other end of the arm is attached to what's called the sled, which is what the camera and its components are mounted on. Right. Yeah. And that arm I mean, just picture yourself wearing, like, a Baby Bjorn baby carrier, except for instead of the baby at your sternum, a mechanical arm coming out. Like a spring arm lamp. Yeah. Like accordion arm or a spring arm lamp. Right. And it's virtually the same thing. Well, yeah. And guess who made one of these by himself before they started making them for at home people? Who? Ky. Who? My brother, of course. Oh, did he really? Yeah. My brother made one of these in, like, the early 90s. Did he really? Out of door hinges and rubber bands and springs. Does he still have it? Is it in the Smithsonian? I don't know. It's in the Scottsdonian. Nice. Which is where all his earliest engines with all his pinball machines. Yes, but he made one. He basically did the same thing. He looked at it and looked at these swing arm lamps and accordion arm lamps, and it's like, well, it's the same thing. I'll just make a version of that. It is. And it worked pretty good. It's virtually the same thing. Yes. So the whole point of a steady cam is that it basically simulates, or the arm at least simulates a human arm right. To where it can move around very easily, and it redistributes the weight of the camera, which can be up to, like, \u00a370, I imagine. Probably more. Yeah. The whole unit is pretty heavy, and it's not easy to operate, but it'll wear you out. It holds it effortlessly and it holds it in place. This arm does, and it does it by using springs. And you can adjust the tension of the springs by using cable and pulley system so that it offsets the balance of the camera and holds it in space in front of the camera operator, basically, so that they can move it effortlessly up, down to the side. You can put the camera on top of the sled so that you get high shots. You can switch it so it goes on the bottom so you can get low angle shots. Yeah, the traditional it's called high mode and low mode and high mode, it doesn't mean it's high. It just means it's on the top of the unit. And then low mode is when it's on the bottom. So if you wanted to film a mouse running across the floor you would put it in low mode. Right. If you want to film a human, you put it in high mode. Yeah. And the camera itself is broken out into pieces, which is kind of an ingenious trick that I guess Garrett Brown came up with himself. I think he did. And this is the third part, the camera sled, right? Yes. The sled is what holds all the equipment. Right. And it's basically a pole with a little bit at the top called the stage. Yeah. And that's where the camera goes. Or it could be at the bottom. Wherever the camera is, the camera is mounted to the stage. Yes. Then you get the pole itself, and then, I guess the arm is connected to the pole by a gimbal. A gimbal? A gimbal. That's right. And that's like an old technology. It's basically something that uses, basically, a gyroscopic action to take the movement of whatever is seeking to move, whatever you want to hold still and getting rid of it. Like everything around it moves except for the thing that you want to hold still. Yeah, it's pretty neat. It's super neat. And that's just the one arm that's connected to the pole. Yes. So you can see how complicated this thing is. This guy sat back, and I think in a hotel room somewhere, he put it together. Garrett Brown. The first one. Just the ingenuity it took to put this together. It's pretty in depth as far as inventions go. Yeah. And there's a little science to it. There's something called moment of inertia. It's basically how much that camera is resistant to rotation. So if you want the camera to be still, you want to increase that resistance to the rotation. And this is determined by a couple of different things, how much mass there is to the object and how far that mass is from its own axis of rotation. So by spreading the camera out, he basically took the little cameras come with a monitor now, so you can see what's going on right. And a big, heavy battery. Yeah. He took the monitor off of the camera. He took the battery off of the camera and redistributed that up and down the pole. So what he ended up doing was spreading out that mass, which takes away the center of gravity from the camera itself. Yeah. Because, like, with a regular camera, where all the components are in one single unit, that center of gravity is inside the camera, so it's easy to rotate. But since he exploded it out into various components, he made that center of gravity land somewhere on the pole. Right. And the gimbal attaches to the pole just above the center of gravity so that the camera operator holds the pole and manipulates the camera at the center of gravity, which makes it very easy to balance heat balance. Yeah. And they do a good job in this article, if you like, just tick to broomstick and you find that center of gravity with your finger. You can hold it with your finger and lift it up and down. Right. And it's balanced on your finger because you're hitting that center of balance. That's right. It's the same principle. Yeah. And in fact, if you took that same broomstick and cut it off and you just had 3ft of broomstick and just took your SLR camera and screwed that broomstick into the bottom of your camera instead of a tripod that would function, you could walk around with that and it would be steadier than if you just had it in your hand. I could see that because of the change of the center of gravity. Change at the center of gravity. And if you put a little counterweight at the bottom, it would make it even more steady. And that's the whole concept of the steady cam sled. Then attach that to an arm, that accordion arm, and you're cooking with gas. Yeah. Because you were saying, like, if you walk around with just the pole holding or the broomstick cut off broomstick, and you're holding it just with your hand, it's steady. The point of the arm is it's taking your hand out of the equation and replacing it with something that can isolate movement even more, so that your movement of you walking just gets lost within the arm before it ever gets to the camera and could shake it. Yeah. Like if you did it with a broomstick, your arm is the same thing as the steady cam arm. Right. Except it's better. It's a steady cam arm is better than your human arm. Right. Yes, exactly. Pretty neat stuff. It is neat stuff. And I think that's it for the science, man. We made it through it. Yeah. I mean, it's all going to be very precisely balanced. You don't just throw the stuff on the pole. Willynilly no. And they point out that the balance of the camera can actually change during filming just from the film moving from one end of the camera to the other as it records. Right. Well, yes, in the old days when they used film, for sure. Nowadays, it's just that digital card not always quentin Tarantino's camera operators have to deal with this. Yeah. And if you've ever been on a job with a stedicam, there's a lot of brakes where you can adjust them on the fly more now. But I remember there just being a lot of breaks with the Steadicam app would say, hold on, I need five minutes. And they go over and they have a little stand that they put it on because it takes the weight off to a certain degree. But it's still a lot of weight to be carrying on a vest on your chest. Yeah. And running and moving and doing all sorts of stuff. Yeah. It's a tough gig. There's a pretty amazing video did you watch it? Of that Eurovision shot no, there's a guy from, I think, Belarus singing and they show they showed him. I didn't see that. They showed the shot and then they showed what? Somebody filming the shot being done and the guy with the steady cam wearing the vest rides down the aisle on a segway. Is that what he's on? Yeah. Hops off, runs up this ramp and then starts circling around the guy who's singing. And it's a pretty amazing thing. It's a great shot, but then when you see how it's done wow. Like I deserved a standing ovation. It would have been more impressive. Not like the subject matter being more interested in the video quality, but better. Pretty bad. Like, if it was a Scorsese movie, you'd be like, wow, sure. But it was kind of corny. It looked like American Idol or something. It was. But it was American Idol. If you took American Idol at its peak and then spread it out over Eurasia and it was popular over that large of a population. That's what your ovation is. That's right. So you want to talk about some of the shots when we come back after a break, please? Okay. All right. So, Chuck, in addition to that Rocky shot and that Eurovision shot, there are some other very famous shots, classic shots of all time. Yeah. That had to do with steadicam. They couldn't have been done without steadicam. Well, The Shining is the first one that pops into most people's minds because, like we said, Kubrick was a big fan of this invention and immediately started talks with Garrett Brown on how to help him out with this movie, The Shining that he was making. Right. And apparently they kind of battled one another quite a bit on the set of The Shining. And Garrett Brown later admitted he said a lot of that was probably, what do you call it? Like inventors pride or something kind of getting in the way of this brilliant altour. So Kubrick already had his own ideas on how to best use this thing that this other guy invented. Right. And the shining classic example. The tricycle shots, the famous maze chase at the end. Yeah. Very iconic in motion picture history. Yeah. And do you know how they did that shot behind Danny on his little big wheel? They probably just went to low mode and, like, walked behind him or yeah, ran down the hall after him. It's really impressive. Yeah. So the shining is a big one. Sure. Rocky is a big one. Goodfellows. Is another classic example, too. Classic, where Ray Liotta and Lorraine Broccoli are going into the Copacabana, but they go through the back and they're followed throughout the back stairs into the kitchen, and then they finally come out into their table and it's like one uninterrupted five minute shot or something. It's amazing. I think when you see this, you might see it and not be a discerning film viewer and just say, Well, I didn't notice anything, which is probably good. Or you might be a fan of steadicam and just say, man, that was amazing. Then you have to step back and look at lighting and realize that how incredibly hard it is to light a shot like that that takes place over I don't know how many hundreds of feet well, without seeing the lights in the shot. Well, that or just consistent lighting and having it look good. That's just usually you light for, like, a room or something or a hallway. Right? Yeah. But to light all those different rooms and hallways and just incredibly I can't imagine how long it took to set that shot. What do you want to do? Yes. It will be great. Don't worry about it. Stay with me. You know he's making another gangster movie. No, I didn't know that. Yeah. And it may be like some folks are saying, it's like his last big gangster movie, but it's got DeNiro again. Okay. He had worked with them in a long time. Pacino. Nice. And Joe Pesci is coming out of retirement. I didn't even know he was retired. I just thought he wasn't doing stuff anymore. Man, he retired. I didn't know that. Yeah. So he's got the three heavyweights and supposedly Harvey Cocktail. Of course, you got to throw him in there. Sure. But I'm just like Giddy thinking about this. Yeah. I'm glad he is. Because his last one was The Departed, right? No, he's made movies since then. Like Wolf of Wall Street gangster movie. Yeah. Which I thought was great. I know you didn't love it. I thought it was awesome. I thought everything but what Jack Nicholson did was pretty good. Yeah. Like his performance? No, I really didn't. Wow. Sorry, Jack. He'll forgive that. All right. Because you like him as an actor, right? Yeah. Okay. As soon as it gets come on. Return of the Jedi. The famous speeder bike chase scene in Indoor yeah. California's Redwood National Park doubled as Indoor, and that was Garrett Brown walking, and they sped it up. Yeah. But you're just like, wow, who cares? The reason why it's such an iconic steady cam shot is because he walked very slowly. And when you speed film up, the tiny movements involved are telegraph. They just become much more exaggerated. So without a steady cam, when they sped the film up again, it would have been just so blurry and just jarring. It would have been unusable, the fact that you can see the trees and stuff. And even at that high speed, it's all stevicam. Yes. And people I think it's just so easy to take it for granted now in movies when you see these shots. But to pioneer these things and this equipment was remarkable. And nowadays, they're all manner of at home steady cam. You don't have to do like my brother and build one out of spare parts and door hinges. No, you. Can buy one for not too much. You spend $100 on a decent enough little home steadicam. This article says that the Steadicam Curve, which is made for GoPros, is like $100. Yeah, well, those are teeny tiny. And there's one for the iPhone called what's it called? The Smoothie. That one is like it's like, I think, even less than $100. And it's just like a handheld camera stabilizer that works pretty well from what I can gather. Yes. We should have had Casey, our video producer Casey, he's in France right now, though, living the high life. Right. We should have had Casey in here just given thumbs up or thumbs down to each one of these brands that I mentioned. And I would trust that as like, the gospel truth. Right. But Casey is not here, so we're just going to say read online reviews. I also saw that there's a lot of gimbal based drone steady camps that are just not that expensive. They're changing the game again. Sure. Because then you can do a shot where you follow someone by the swimming pool and then fly up into outer space with them if you want. In one continuous motion. Yes. Like the quiz monster. The what? The quiz monster. You remember the alien from Quisp cereal? Do you remember Crisp? Remember the weird alien? Sort of I didn't eat Quisp. Wasn't that a Captain Crunch knock off or was it different? It was different because they were saucer shaped rather than square waffle cut. Got you. Same thing, though. Yeah, same thing. It was good. It didn't cut the tongue like Cap and Crunch did. Yeah, the roof of the mouth. I'll suffer through that still. And then, of course, Steadicam is a name brand, right. Like Seeing Eye Dog. Yeah, it's made who makes it? Tiffany. Tiffanyo, yeah. I think Tiffan does. They have a pretty good site. Like, if you are at all interested in this, they've got a great site. And they have all of their Steadicam models with a real in depth overview of them and pretty I think it's got all their manuals and everything just right there for you to read. Yeah. There's other companies making them. There's one called Glidecam MBA zoom. Yeah. But Steadicam is still probably the giant. It's like Dolly. There's only two dolly makers, or there may be more now, but it's like Chapman and Fisher. And every Dolly grip has a dolly makers. Yeah. Chapman dollies or Fisher dollies? Jameson or Bush? Mills. Budweiser or Coarse? Neither. And then Garrett Brown, as if the steady cam wasn't enough as far as revolutionizing filming goes, he later on invented something called the sky cam. Yeah. Which, like, if you watch any kind of sporting event now, it's especially useful for football and football where there's just cables above the field and there are cameras hanging down that are just like doing overhead shots, following the action like nothing. That's pretty neat. Garrett Brown invented that, too. I got one more little thing for you. There are two positions. Not high mode. Low mode positions are like how you're operating the camera. But if you are pointing forward as an operator and your camera is pointing forward, you're just walking. It's called missionary no? And then if the operator is forward and the camera is backward, they call that Don Juan. So leave it to film set goons to think of sexual names for sex it up. Camera positions. Don Juan. Yeah. I never heard of that one. I hadn't either. Well, if you want to know more about steadicams, including a really fine grain involved, look at the physics of how the steadicam arm works, you should go type steadicam into the search bar. How steadworks.com? Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this encouragement for my Christian lister. Hey, guys. I was listening to the Easter show and was compelled to write in. As a Christian, I've always appreciated how you make a solid effort to not rail on the church too hard. I found it humorous and simultaneously sad when you felt you had to tiptoe around the pagan traditions that have been integrated with the resurrection. I find it disheartening to think that other believers can't find anything better to do than wait to be offended by something, then jump all over you for it. But based on your years of experience and careful treatment of the subject, it must be the case a lot of the time. Personally, I just want to say I can't think of anything you've ever said to offend me. I think you've done a stand up job with sensitive subjects like Satanic panic in particular. It's also nice just to hear you talk about things directly related to my beliefs without sneering, like many others will. That's nice. Dane in Minnesota. Yeah, for real, Dane. If you want to get in touch with us like Dane did and be a super cool person, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can also follow the behind the scenes action of Chucks in My Life at syskpodcast on Instagram. You can join us on Facebook. Comstepyshow for the hurt, and you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com. In the meantime, while you're doing all this, hang out with us at our home on the web stuffyoushenknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon music that's so good it's criminal morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this 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." | ||
a698fc78-5462-11e8-b449-8fc3c8de2f5b | How Marathons Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-marathons-work | You’d have to be crazy to try to run 26.2 miles in a single stretch, right? Right. But people still try it anyway. And a lot of them even survive! Find out all about the pitfalls of marathons and the obsession they can inspire in this episode.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | You’d have to be crazy to try to run 26.2 miles in a single stretch, right? Right. But people still try it anyway. And a lot of them even survive! Find out all about the pitfalls of marathons and the obsession they can inspire in this episode.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 09 Oct 2018 13:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=13, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=282, tm_isdst=0) | 62657167 | 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. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Brian over there. And there's Jerry. And this is stuff you should know. The Hot and Sweaty edition. It is hot in here. Although I know that you were talking about marathon running. Yeah, I was, but it worked both ways. You ever had an urge to run a marathon? No. Same here. Not really even researching this. I get kind of caught up when we do research, and I'm like, I'm going to start growing bonsai. I'm going to grow orchids. I'm going to start clipping those little indentations into currency to help the blind and start cleaning up crime scenes. That was another one. Yeah. So that didn't happen. I felt the beginnings of an inkling of it, and I wanted to go, jog. But I don't want a marathon. No. Well, my joke that I've been saying for about 30 years is I don't even like driving 26 miles. It's a good one. Yeah. It's kind of a little stale. Yeah, I've never had the urge. I think it's great if people want to run marathons. Sure, yeah. But it is not for me. I hate running. See, I like running. I hate it. I don't have any desire to run that far for that long. I like walking. I like spinning. I like all kinds of great aerobic exercise. You mean spinning like cycling? No, like a kid spinning. Like twirling. Yeah, twirling. Twirling and tumbling. I like rolling down hills. No, spinning on a bike. It's all great. But I hate running. I hate it. Okay. Never have liked it. Well, then, yeah, marathon is probably not for you. No, but it is for plenty of people, and it's growing in popularity. I don't know if you know this or not, but marathons are quite popular. Chuck I saw that in the upcoming I believe it's in November, the New York Marathon. They're expecting 50,000 plus people to run it, and that's out of, like, 100,000 plus people who are applying to be chosen to run. Wow. There's a lot of people. And then the half marathon, too. There is. I think in 2014, four full years ago, there was something like 2 million finishers. There's a lot of people running marathons and half marathon, so clearly it's popular, and that's okay with me. Like, do your thing. Yeah, I've I've flirted with the idea of a ten k with our famous Peach Fee Road race. Yes. And we'll talk about this some in the show, but it's a social event, and from what I see, it's a good time to go out and run the Peach Tree Road race. And growing up in Atlanta, seeing everyone with those shirts on the 4 July yeah. I'm always like, man, I want one of those shirts one day. You can just buy one from Ebay. But then I remember the running part of it, and then I quickly just say, no, thank you. And it's on 4 July, right? Yeah. I mean, early in the morning, it doesn't matter. It's the 4 July in Atlanta. It's already, like, 100 deg. I know it's hot. That's crazy town. But I think the idea is you get it done before, like, 09:00 a.m.. Yeah, that's what I understand, too, but still, it's probably pretty hot. All right, should we talk about history here? Yeah. So I think most people realize that the marathon is based on Greek history, but there's a pretty decent story to it if you ask me. Yeah. So let's go back to ancient Greece. Okay. Let's go to Athens. Okay. Where we're hanging out. We're a little drunk. Sure. I'm wine. We're eating delicious olives, maybe. Man, I love olives. Maybe some lamb. What else? I've given up lamb. Yeah, I don't eat lamb either. Let's see. We could be eating rice filled grape leaves. Okay. And would it kill somebody to give us a little tatziki sauce for him? I don't think so. All right, well, I'm happy then. All right, so we're hanging out the azure blue seas, the beautiful white homes on the seashore. But things are not looking good because next door, the Persians want to come in here and kill us and take our city because it's so beautiful. Yeah. And there's a lot of them. There are. There's something like five to one compared to the Athenians, so we're worried. So the Athenian army, like most other Greek armies, and like the Inca, later, would employed runners who were soldiers, but their job as a soldier was to run as a messenger from place to place as fast as they could over very long, rocky, mountainous distances. Yeah. Did they not use horses because of the terrain? I don't know. Maybe horses had made their way down there by then. All right, so for whatever reason, they use human beings that were fleet of foot to literally run messages back and forth. And it was a big job because you're not just handing over a piece of paper. You are taking the place of a FaceTime call or a phone call. And that you need to go back and say. Well. I got to say. When I gave him the message. He initially seemed interested. But then his face turned. And although he said it's okay. His face said. It's not okay at all. So I would really be worried if I were you, that his official reply isn't really on the level. Yeah. And they would go, Fidipides, you are one of the best ever. Thank you. So Fidipides was actually the name of the Athenian army messenger at the time of the Athenians fending off the Persian invasion about 490 BCE. And he ran off to Sparta from Marathon, and he ran off to Sparta to say, hey, Spartans, we need your help. We've got this Persian invasion coming and we need your help. And he was very famously kicked into a bottomless hole yeah. That the Spartan said, we have to oil our ABS and do some crunches. So no dice on the help. Yeah, they said no. And from what I understand, he made it back and said they said no. I have to go to sleep now for a couple of days because he made this trek about 25 miles, about 40 km in a day and a half. Yeah, but from where? From Marathon. Okay. I don't think we pointed that out yet, did we? I did. Okay. I said, he made it from Marathon, and I think we just I was missing the drum roll. Oh, sorry. You ready? He was in Marathon. That's where he started out. Yeah. I really blew it for us, didn't I didn't realize it was see, this is proof positive that we don't coordinate before we record. I just thought it was supposed to be a big reveal and you're like hearing the Marathon. It's true. I'm sorry there's, Chuck. I'm sorry, everybody. So that's the big reveal is the name of the place was Marathon where? Marathon? That's right. So that's just story one. There's another story that may have happened, may not have happened. All this, we should say, is ancient Greek legend, as far as we know, but the Athenians actually did manage to stave off the Persians, and Fidipides was tasked with running from the battle. Maybe that was at Marathon, back to Athens to say, don't burn the town down. The persons have been vanquished. We're all good. But rather than being able to say all this, he has supposedly made it back to Athens with just enough energy left in his body to say, Nike and fall over and die. And Nike was, of course, the goddess of victory. And victory meant the Athenians had held off the Persians. Don't burn down the city. Oh. So they didn't say, Why are you plugging a shoe with your final breath? Right. He goes, Just do it. And the idea, if it sounds weird that they were going to burn down the city, I think the idea was that they thought they were going to lose, so they were going to burn their city down because they just thought it was a bygone conclusion, a foregone conclusion, and that they didn't want the Persians to come in there and raid their city. I think they were like the jealous lover type. Like, if I can't have, you know, got you. Okay. They set it to their city. All right, so flash forward in time to the very first Olympic Games, which we should probably do a show on at some point. Yeah, we will. Like the first Olympiad. Yeah. Well, there was one guy in particular, Michael Briel, or Brill, who proposed including an homage to this and recreate this legendary marathon race that Fidelity ran so many years previous. And the leader, I guess the coordinator of the Games, Pierre de Kobortine, said, that sounds good to me. Speed 25 miles. We're going to call it a marathon and go forth and run. By the way, I took French in high school, so if you'll allow me, I think it's Michelle Brielle and Pierre de Cupertin. Okay. You have to say it real snotty like, but supposedly they don't deserve all the credit. Robert Browning had written a poem about Fidipity's run to Athens and it was pretty popular at the time, so they were probably inspired by that. But they did. They said, we're going to redo the Olympics. We got to have a marathon race. Which was not exactly accurate because the Olympics have been going on for hundreds of years by the time Fadipides was around. Yeah, these are the first modern games, we should say, right. And they went on for a couple of hundred years after Fidipides had come and gone. And at no point during this, I think, maybe 500 or 700 year run of the first ancient Greek Olympics was there anything even remotely close to a marathon as one of the races. I think the longest that they had was somewhere around between a five to ten k run. That was far and away as far as they ran. But these guys decided to, again, inspired by the Robert Browning poem, create a Marathon. And a lot of people said, you're going to kill somebody. Yeah, that was the thing. It wasn't roundly accepted the whole 25 miles thing in 1896. A lot of people did say, it's too long, it's too hot, not a good idea. Right? And they said, the heck with you. We don't care if we kill anybody. This is the Olympics. Don't you understand how big a deal that is? And they said, no, not yet, but we'll watch and see. So they held this Olympics and it was from the very outset, the marathon was taken quite seriously, I think, just because it was such a nut, so thing to try that no one had ever tried before. The Greeks in particular, who hosted this first Olympics, they had 13 of I think the 17 competitors in the marathon were Greeks. And they held trials over the marathon course to see who could do it and what their times were. And they came up with some pretty good guys, two of which eventually came in first and second for those first Olympic marathons. Yeah, this guy spear don Lewis. Or Lewis. I don't know. He's Greek. His name's Lewis. He won. He got a time of 2 hours, 28 minutes and 50 seconds. And legend has it and it may not even be legend, it may just be straight up fact that he stopped halfway through the race to have a glass of wine. Yeah, I was thinking about that. And I'm like, right. I'll bet he was treating that like you would treat a gatorade. He's like, I need to restore myself, so give me some wine maybe. The thing is, that time you just said 2 hours, 28 minutes and 50 seconds is insanely good. Yeah, sure. And I'm sure that caught the attention of people who run marathons. They're like, what? That was the first guy back in 1896. The thing about the first marathon was they were straight up 40 kilometer races, so they were about 25 miles, not 26.2. Hence the reason why his time was so good. But it's still a really good time. But that extra 1.2 miles at the end can really jack your time up, from what I understand. Yes. That didn't come about until 1908 in London when they were the host, king Edward the 7th wife Alexandra, said, and this is just so great. It was 25 miles. And she was like, I would like for the race to start by the palace. And they were like, well, that means an extra 1.2 miles on this already dangerous race. And everyone rolled their eyes, and I'm like, all right. I saw that not only did she wanted to start by the palace, they said, okay, that's fine. It'll be like 26 miles. Then she said, well, okay, after you've officially said that, I want to actually just start in front of the children's nursery so they can see the starting line. So they added another .2 miles because of Alexandria. She's like, will I kill them? And they're like, Maybe. Oh, well, all right. But still do it. Yeah. So for the 19 eight Olympics, it's the first time we have a 26.2 miles marathon. And it was so the children could see from the nursery, which is kind of sweet, actually. It is pretty sweet. And then so there have been marathons before that 19 eight. One again, the first one was those 1896 Olympics. There was one in Boston held in 1897, which became the Boston Marathon, and it's been held every year since then. It's amazing. It is amazing. But from that point on, marathons up until I think they were elite events. You were an elite marathon runner. If you were in any marathon, you were there by invitation. Most of the time, your competitors were from the country that the marathon was being run in, and it was an enormous honor to be invited, and that's who ran marathons. But then in 1970, a guy named Fred Libo or Labau I'm not quite sure how you say his name. He said, you know, what the heck with all this snobbiness, I'm going to start a marathon for everybody. And he started a marathon that ran around Central Park in 1970 with 100 runners. And it was not only just open to everybody, it was open to women, too, which was a huge deal. And he started kind of the first mass for the people style marathon in the New York City marathon, although Boston, I believe it kind of been toying with this a little bit, but Fred Libo really kind of blew the lid off of it. And from that point on, marathon started to pick up more and more in popularity, especially when an American won the gold medal in the 1972 marathon at the Olympics. Frank Shorter and then, of course, for anybody who's seen Forest Gump, the whole fitness craze that started around that time really gave marathon running a boost. Yeah, that was like, you said, 72. And I remember growing up in the remember even knowing as a child that this was a new thing sweeping the nation. Fitness craze, a fitness revolution. I remember being just very aware of, like, running. Everyone's running like they're running magazines and running clothing. That's all over the place now, and everyone is running. And I remember just feeling like, man, everyone's making a big deal about this running thing. And I didn't know at the time, but it was because it was sort of a new deal. It wasn't like you didn't have to weigh \u00a3108 and just be like a tiny stick of a person. Like, that's what you think of when you think of marathons. It really democratized it and said, if you want to lose some weight, if you want to manage your weight, if you want to just have more energy or increase your cardiovascular fitness, get out there and beat the streets and run, because it's sort of the cheapest, easiest form of exercise. Yeah. And it's also the most independent, too. There's no team. You don't have to deal with anybody else. There's no coordinating, necessarily. Although, as we'll see as you get into marathoning, all that stuff really comes into play. Sure. But at its core, it is running as the most basic type of exercise there is. Low fi. It really is. And I think that definitely attracted a lot of people. Plus, I'm not sure what kicked off that whole craze, but that really fit in nicely with it. The idea that all you need is a pair of shoes and some really revealing shorts, and you too, could be a runner. Should we take a break? Sure, because I find myself getting excited all of a sudden. It was the short shorts, but wanting still to not run a marathon. Okay. All right. We'll be right back. Are you looking for an escape or a relaxing getaway or a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of it all. Well, we know just the place. Maybe you want to solve a murder in your building where you're just all about that paper boy. Perhaps you want to watch Hollywood's biggest monitor. Or you crave the thrill of a classic American story about horror. Or is your stomach grumbling for a milk steak flamer's chip? Would you love to quench your thirst with a delicious Tranquillum house smoothie? Did you see blood analysis as an investment opportunity? Would you wear one of Dave's wooden shirts? Do you smash glasses whilst yelling who's? Well, then there's a place that has everything you love, from Atlanta to the Kardashians to only murders in the building and everything in between. Hulu is your entertainment. Getaway hulu. Check into your obsession. Hulu subscription required terms apply. 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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, dude. So we said the 70s are where the marathon boom started, but it really hit in, I think, the 90s, people. That's when marathons started popping up everywhere. By then, major cities all have marathons. I think Berlin started their legendary one in 1980 and then London in 1081. But now you can go to just about any town, and there's a marathon there at least once a year. Did you see this weird stat in here? Did that jump out at you? Totally. I'm just going to read it. Okay. They're trying to prove in this article what a boom in popularity in the it says this from 1991 to 1992 alone, marathon finishers increase from 9000 to 9200. Is that right? Yeah. Is it missing a one? Is it supposed to be 19,000? I don't think so. I think they just are impressed by very small numbers. There's another one that came later. It said that the percentage of renters under 20 years old over the past 15 years has increased from one to 1.8% whoa. Yeah. It's weird, man. All right. Those weird stats aside, there was a boom in the 90s. Running USA said that the number of runners in the largest half marathon and marathon in 2000 increased by about 10,000 I'm sorry, increased to 29,030, 8000, respectively in the half marathon and the marathon. Yeah. Again, that 38,000 number is now 50,000 plus for the New York City Marathon. So it's still growing quite dramatically. Katherine Switzer, or Switzer, came along, the first official female participant for the Boston Marathon. And, dude, you know, she was almost thrown out mid race when they found out that she was a woman running. She entered as a Case Weitzer in 1967. Yeah. She wrote a book about it called Marathon Woman, where she not only talks about the fact that women are great at this, but you can do this. You don't have to be 19 and 20 years old. You can do this into your sixties and you see that you see people in their forty s, fifty s and sixty s and beyond. Yeah. Just still out there pounding the streets. Marathons are interesting people. Like, when you see them on the street, you can tell the difference, usually, of your average. I'm jogging for exercise and I'm running miles and miles and miles. You can see it on their face. You can't one eye is usually kind of like popping out more than the other. The hair is coming out in toughs, their knees are bleeding, that kind of stuff. Here's the interesting step for me, though. It says most long distance runners are college educated from 74% to 93%, which is interesting. And they make a couple of points that you're not just exercising your legs or your body, but your brain, because a lot of brain training goes into this. It's not the kind of thing you can just say, yeah, I'm going to go run a marathon. Let me see how that goes with training and scheduling and just being out there running for 26 miles. It's a big brain exercise in and of itself. Yeah, just the run itself, but also the months and months and months of preparation and dedication and self motivation and discipline that takes a tremendous amount of brain power that you might otherwise be using. Do I want a little Debbie coffee cake or Drake's coffee cake today? Why not both? Should we talk about the training? Sure. Because training is not and I'm glad they said this in this article because I was afraid they were going to be like, here's how you do it. No, they very wisely did the opposite of that. Yeah. There isn't a single way to train for a marathon. There are so many, and I started to look, and it's just overwhelming. It really is. Dude, there's entire magazines and websites dedicated to just training for a marathon. Not even just running, but, like, training for marathons. And it's like there is a lot to it. Yeah. So it's easy to be intimidated by that or to go down the rabbit hole where all of a sudden, six months later, you're still researching training methods and not just diving in, but find something that you think might work for you and then just get out there and give it a shot. Right. And adjust as necessary would be what I gathered from this. That's a great advice, I think. Also it's probably smart, as with just about anything these days, do, like, just some preliminary research to see if there's anything you should look out for or try first, but just get a pair of shoes and go try running and see what happens. Yeah. So you're going to be running not every day, depending on what training regimen you undertake, but almost all of them that I saw features. One time a week you're going to go on a run that's probably at least 15 miles. Right. And you're not expected, like, the day you start training marathon, or even the week you start training for a marathon to do a 15 miles run. Like, that's something you work up to 15 or 20 or 26 is the max that you're going to try to run to, and you work up to that overtime, like, we should say, if you decide that you want to train for a marathon, you should start about eight to nine months. If you're starting from zero, you should start about eight to nine months to begin training for your first marathon because you are meant to slowly work your way up. If you try to do it other than that, you're going to pay dearly in pain. Have you ever heard of couch to five k? Yes, I have. I don't know what it is, though. I can guess. You're right. Go ahead and guess. First, you just jump off your couch and run a five k, and then you go back to your couch. Well, you're wrong. No, it's exactly what you would think. If you really do not run at all. It's a pretty good intro program to get you up to a five k. I tried it for a little while when I was like. Maybe I should run a five k. And it just starts out with. Like. Running and walking and then running a little bit more and walking less until you're running a five k. But that's a pretty decent way to start. But some people right out of the gate are like, no, you know what? I don't want to run a five k or a ten k. I want to run a marathon. Yeah, so you can do that, but you're training your body to run for 26.2 miles. But there are people out there who are like, not only are you not supposed to do that, the human body is not meant to run, we're supposed to walk. That's it. This is totally unnatural. Most other people say that's not true. But 26.2 miles across the board, people say the average person can't just do that. You have to work up to it. Yeah. So you're going to have that one weekly long run. You're going to be cross training on your days in between, which keeps you in good shape. And you're just using I think the whole point here is to use your muscles and your lungs in a different way. Well, yeah. And you're also giving the muscles you use to run a rest. You're working them out, you're keeping working them out, but you're taking a rest from running. Yeah. Although there will be a full rest day in there as well, where we'll talk about the muscles and how they regenerate here in a minute. But then you've also got your speed work or interval training or the greatest words ever, fartlek running. What is that? And then I thought, oh, it's Swedish. Okay, yeah. Swedish for speed play. So innocent. The Swedes. I know it's so good looking, but interval training, that's when you're doing things like you're working out different muscles, like by sprinting and spurts or running really fast and slowing down and it's just working out different parts of the body. Yeah. And again, we'll talk about why you would want to do that, but that is definitely part of marathon training. And again, as Chuck said, this is not meant to be your how to guide to marathon training. No, just listen to this, and if it gets you like jazz, then maybe you should go try to learn how to train for a marathon. But it's not what we're doing right here. No. And the other really helpful thing that it said in here was that what is your goal here? You need to figure that out. Are you trying to be competitive? Are you trying to just finish the race? Or do you have a time goal in mind? Do you want to walk part of it? Just figure out what your goal is here? And early on, it's probably just like, I just want to go out there and finish this thing. Yeah. I think that's what a lot of people, their first goal is probably 99% of first time Earth owners is just to finish. Yeah. Without pooping yourself. Yeah. We'll talk about that later. One of the things about marathoning is everyone who is friends or relative of somebody who marathons knows is it can become something of an obsession. And one way that you can be published, one way you can become obsessed with marathoning is by keeping a training journal, which most training regimens encourage. And there's a number of reasons you would want to keep this. So a trading journal just basically is where you log your data from a run, whether it's like how your aches and pains were, what your heart rate was, if you keep up with that, of your shoes you're wearing, how much sleep you. Got the night before, what the weather was like, what your weight was, all this different stuff. You can log all that down and over time you can start to find patterns in that data and you can see, well, actually, my orange shoes, I do way better in those than my blue shoes, so I'm not going to wear my blue shoes anymore. Or I run really well if I've gotten 5 hours of sleep, but I run terribly at six and a half hours sleep. You can find patterns like that and you can use it to kind of guide your training a little more. Plus, it's also a big motivator too, because especially, like you say, you're logging body weight or your time or whatever, you can actually see physically in tangible form, your improvement over time, which can keep you going for sure. So a trading journal is usually a pretty good idea, but it encapsulates like the idea of really becoming very focused on marathoning. Yeah, it's the same like if you're trying to keep up with your food or calorie intake. They say the best way to do that is to journal about it or use one of the apps that helps you journal about it. Yeah, for sure. All right, should we talk about muscles? Yes. So there are a couple of types of muscles, and I know we've talked about this before and something over the past ten years, but I can't remember what. I don't either, man. But the twitch, the slow twitch and the fast twitch muscles. And there's also I saw intermediate twitch, but we won't mention that the muscle that dare not speak its name. Right. Slow twitch muscles are important for marathoning because they are what I guess you would call your endurance muscles for endurance events, because the muscle fibers contract very slowly, the fast switcher for more like sprinting. But they do think that if you are like a top tier marathon er, you may actually have a physiological edge because you might have a larger proportion of slow twitch muscles to fast switch. Yeah, I saw that slow twitch muscle. So that has way more myoglobin and mitochondria and capillaries, which means you get more oxygen and more oxygen rich blood, and you have more oxygen conversion sites to convert energy into muscle movement right there in the muscle. So it's way better for long distance endurance running. They'll have more slow twitch than fast twitch because over time, when you're working out, you tear your muscles, you pull them, you stretch them, you tear them and you get stronger because your body repairs that muscle and it's stronger than it was before. That's how you gain muscle mass. Right, apparently with runners or with any athlete, but your body repairs it with the muscle that you need more. So if you're doing long distance running and you need more slow twitch muscle, when you tear fast twitch muscle, it may be replaced with slow twitch. It's called muscle fiber recruitment. So, yes, it would make total sense that long distance runners have more slow twitch than fast twitch in their muscle fiber than the average person. Yeah, because they're pretty cool because they trained that way. And their bodies have developed fashioned itself to fit its training. Fit their training. Yeah. So kind of the point of that is even if you don't have a literal physiological advantage, you can still train your body to become something different. Right. You may not win the Boston Marathon, you never know, but you might win your age group. Sure. Or place. Yes. Or finish. That would be my goal, for sure. You're also beyond your muscles. It is obviously an aerobic exercise. The oxygen feeds these muscles. Your heart is supplying this oxygen and your lungs. And it's all just an amazing and amazing aerobic fitness routine that you're going through. But it takes time to get there. Just like your muscles can't take pounding the pavement for 10 miles on day one, your lungs are not going to be ready and your heart is not going to be ready for that either. No. You have to start out slow and know that you're going to work your way up. This is when you should come in with one of the famous Josh like Rhyming lines, like getting where you fit in. Start out slow. Yeah. So you can go, why not? That's all right. With the oxygen thing, though, I want to talk more about the slow twitch muscles because I'm fascinated by them. Okay. The more oxygen you can train yourself to take in Vo Two, I think, is what it is, the volume of oxygen. The more that oxygen gets transported to your slow twitch muscles. And again, there oxygen and glucose is being put together to form ATP, which is the energy molecule that powers muscles that makes them move. So the more glucose, the more oxygen you have at the site of your muscles, the more your muscles are going to be able to contract and the further the longer you're going to be able to keep running. So it's just fascinating that just training your lungs to take in and distribute more oxygen to your muscles will allow you to run farther, and that the muscles that you're tearing are being rebuilt to specialize in accepting that oxygen and using it more efficiently. So I feel like the fact that the body is capable of changing itself like this certainly suggests that it's not like we're not designed to run. If we were designed not to run sorry, if you use the word design, but then your leg would just come right off if you tried to run 26 miles, something like that would happen. Your muscles wouldn't become more efficient at allowing you to run further. Yeah, good point. Very good point. It didn't rhyme. I'm sorry. But if you're wondering about that heart rate, though, and how fast should my heart be beating? There is a formula. A man named Gordon Birch. No, wait. Gordon Block. Yes, that was it. He determined a formula for an ideal training heart rate, which is 220 minus your age. Yeah. And then you multiply that times zero, six and nine. Why? That would be your range of your heart rate, your beats per minute between those two numbers that you end up with for your ideal heart rate for training. I didn't see that anywhere else. I don't understand what that .6 and .9 is. I couldn't find what that is. What do you mean, what that is? What is that? Where does that come from? What explains that? I want to know. Oh, like how he developed the formula? Yeah. I don't know how you develop any formula. He plug in. Trial and error. Yeah. Plug in numbers until you land on what your formula is. He's like, oh, that guy died. So zero is too high. Let's try zero. Well, how about this, then? Forget that. Throw it out the window and use the old fashioned talk test. Ideally, if you're in your ideal training zone, you should be able to talk. If you're going at it too hard and you're doing that thing where you're bent over and someone is asking you a question and you hold up your hand and you're shaking your head, like, Give me a minute. You're working too hard. Well, this is while you're actually running. You should be able to talk. Correct. Okay. Yeah. And if you do the thing that I just described, where you're shaking your head and you're waving your finger and going no. Well, you can't even say that, actually, then that means you're working too hard. You need to be able to talk. Apparently, if you can sing, then you're not working hard enough. Right. So if you see a marathon or that's singing Billy Joel singing Piano Man yeah. Then they're doing it wrong. No one wants to hear that. Who sings that song? Billy Joel. Well, then let him sing it. He doesn't even want to sing it anymore. Yes, I'll bet he doesn't, which is sad, because it's a pretty good song, and it's about him really well and John and Davey and Paul. Well, yeah, but I mean, he's the Piano Man, right? Sure. It's not like a metaphor for, I don't know, like, God or something, right? No. Okay. He's a piano man. John is a real estate novelist. David's still in the Navy. A real estate novelist? Yeah. He writes novels about real estate. No, I think he's a real estate guy who writes novels on the side. Okay. He never had time for a wife boy. Billy Joe. Billy was a poet. But David's in the Navy. He probably will be for life. That's right. And America loves that song because it rhymes like a mofo. Like most great songs. Yeah. Visualization has such a problem with that dumb word that's a big deal, not only for marathoning, but anytime you have something big in your life that you want to accomplish, you're supposed to visualize that and look at yourself and your mind's eye crossing that finish line without poop running down your leg, which we'll talk about in a little while. And there's a guy named Jeff Galloway who calls it positive brainwashing, where you come up with some magic words for yourself that you can just repeat in the rhythm of your run. He recommends relax power glide. That's good. But you can choose anything you want. Yeah, like metallica corn husk. You know what's so funny is right before you said Metallica, I was thinking Exit Light Intermittent. No. Yes. No. That's the worst Metallica song of all, too. Is it? I don't know. I like the old stuff. I do, too. But I'm saying, like, surely there was another song on that album that was way worse, and there's been worse since then. I was just being coy. Like Linda's Eyes. Come on. I don't even know that song. I just made it up. It sounds like it'd be pretty bad, though. Should we talk about the runner's high? Should we take a break before we do? Jeez, I was on a podcast high. Yeah, well, let's leave them hanging, because everybody wants to know. Everyone tuned in just to hear about the runners high. And we're going to make you wait a little longer. Are you looking for an escape or a relaxing getaway? Or a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of it all? Well, we know just the place. Maybe you want to solve a murder in your building where you're just all about that paper boy. Perhaps you want to watch Hollywood's biggest monitor? Or you crave the thrill of a classic American story about horror. Or is your stomach grumbling for a milk steak flamers chip? Would you love to quench your thirst with a delicious Tranquillum house smoothie? Did you see blood analysis as an investment opportunity? Would you wear one of Dave's wooden shirts? Do you smash glasses whilst yelling who's a? Well, then there's a place that has everything you love, from Atlanta to the Kardashians to only murders in the building and everything in between. Hulu is your entertainment. Getaway hulu. Check into your obsessions. Hulu subscription required terms apply. Visit hulu.com for plan details. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office 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, we can't wait any longer. We got to talk about the runners high. I've always heard about this. I was going to say, have you ever gotten it? But you haven't. I know. If you aren't a runner, I've never gotten it either. No. Apparently the runner's high kicks in from what studies show. It does exist, by the way. There's a lot of back and forth about whether it exists or not, but what I saw, you need to run at about a six out of ten level of exertion for 2 hours, basically nonstop, at about the same pace in a rhythmic motion. That's where you're likely to to experience a runner's high. I've never done that in my life and probably never will, so I'll never get to experience a runner's high. Chuck yeah, I thought it was two minutes, and so I just got discouraged every time. Well, that's the funny thing about it, is a lot of people do run because they want to see what a runner's high is like, and it's like, well, maybe you'll find out in five years. Yes. So here's what a runner's high is, and then we'll talk about what it may or may not be. But that's the state where you're running, and you may be laboring and it may be tough, and then you reach a point where it's just like everything clicks in. You got that even stride. Your body feels great, your breathing is steady, the rhythm relax, power glide. Yes, it's all happening. And you get this state of euphoria almost. And they even describe sometimes like, a meditative loss of time can happen. Yeah. I saw also that you feel like you can just keep running forever. It feels so good. And apparently for a long time, everybody was like, well, it's clearly endorphins. Endorphins are great chemicals that we know your body releases when you exercise. But they did a little further study and said endorphins are actually too big to cross the blood brain barrier in a very short time. So it's probably not endorphins because it clearly affects your mood. So there's something that's affecting the brain, and they think that, yes, your body does release endorphins when you exercise, but they go directly to receptor sites in your muscles to kind of dampen the pain. What they think the runner's highest is cannabinoids. Specifically anatomy or anatomy? Yeah, Georgia Tech. Our very own Georgia Tech and Cal Irvine, they did a joint study and they said that if you exercise for long enough, you can produce this. What is it? Anatomy? Anatomide either way. And it is in fact, a cannabinoid. Not unlike THC. Yeah, exactly. Well, THC is the cannabinoid too, right? Yeah. But the feeling that you get right. So since it's the cannabinoid receptor that's being activated, the feeling would be kind of similar to it, but I'm guessing, I don't know, maybe you do just kind of get laughy or whatever. Maybe paranoid. How about this? I want to hear from someone who has experienced a runner's high, for sure. Who also had some experience with marijuana. Great. And I would like to know how they compare. We need a control group, somebody who's had a runner's high that has never touched pot. And we're going to compare your descriptions on the podcast. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. I feel we just need to hear from someone who just smokes pot all the time and has never run. I want to see what their experience is. I feel like we hear from them every week. I do too. Is listener mail. Yeah. Okay, so the runner's high is probably pot is basically the physiological explanation of it. Yeah. But the weird thing is, again, it's not like either we don't know enough about it to say this is exactly what you need to do, or it is elusive for some reason that we've never figured out. But it's not like you're going to get a runner's high every time. And some people never get a runner's high. Some people get them infrequently. It's just kind of like this elusive dream that runners love to work toward but don't necessarily ever attain. Marathoning is impressive, but the people who really amazed me, I don't even know what you call it. There's a word for it. The ultra ultra racing. What's it called? Ultra thon. Really? Yes. Is that the name? Yeah. Ultramarathon ultra Thon. And how long are those? Alright. Do you know some of them are up to like 150 miles or longer. They'll be like overnight. Like you run for 24 straight hours. I got a couple for you. Yeah, I didn't look into this because it scares me. So ultra thorns are ultramarathons. They probably deserve their own maybe like short stuff episode, to tell you the truth. But there's a guy named Dean Carnazas. He ran 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states once. What? Yeah. There's another guy named Scott Jurich. He's a ultramarathoner, but he wanted to show off. He set a record. He ran the Appalachian Trail in 46 days. Ran it? Ran the Appalachian Trail in 46 days. Something that frequently takes people six months if they're trying to go at a city clip. He ran in 46 days. Now, I like that because for some reason, road racing just seems boring to me. But I have had friends. In fact, my old friend James from New Jersey is a trail runner. That always seems kind of cool to me because I'm into the woods in nature, and it's hardcore stuff, but I've always thought kind of like mountain biking. Greater than street biking. Yeah. Or road biking. Well, then there's another ultrasound that you would like. I can't remember the name of it, but it starts in Death Valley. Yeah, I've heard of this one. And then it ends on a mountaintop, and you run it in about 24 hours. I've seen, man, those people are there's something psychological going on there too. Yeah. Well, that's another thing. Everybody's heard that great Iron Maiden song, the Loneliness of a long distance Runner. Sure. That's real. That's a real thing to stave off boredom and your body just being like, dude, let's go get an apple fritter. What are you doing? That's, like, a real hard thing to deal with that you have to stave off for hours on end and keep up a pace to try to finish the marathon. Yeah, I'm on an apple fritter kick big time right now. Oh, eating them? Yeah. And wanting to eat them when I'm not eating them. All right, so you've got your runner's high, which is the positive side of things. You have the other side of that, which is called hitting the wall. And that happens I don't think it happens to everyone all the time, but generally in, like, the 17 to 20, 1 mile point, your brain is says and your body are like, what are you doing? You're not supposed to run this far. And you hit a figurative wall where fatigue sets in such that it depends on who you are. You may not finish, you may collapse in a heap, and you're done. Right. When you hit that wall, and all of a sudden, you're in an ambulance. But for real. Yeah. Seriously. I'm not kidding around, and it's a serious thing, but what's happening there is your body is literally out of fuel. It's done. That's exactly right. That's perfectly put, because to run a marathon or to run any race, but especially a marathon, you have to have a tremendous amount of stored energy in your body. Yeah. Remember when I said that, like, your muscles use or your body uses glucose and oxygen to produce ATP, which is this energy molecule that your muscles use? Well, you get glucose from stores of glycogen, which is basically just a little bit of glucose tucked away here, there. And you can build up, like, the glycogen in your body by eating a lot of carbs, like, the night before a race or something. Hitting a wall is where you've not only used up the glycogen that you have eaten. Right. Your body also deposits little fatty lipid deposits, and it started to use up those emergency reserve stores. And if you can't finish, if you're being carted off in an ambulance, you used up all the glycogen in your body, you don't have any energy stores any longer. That's what happens to some people from Marathoning. Yeah. And part of the problem is those fatty acids, those emergency reserves, they release very, very slowly. So if you're running a race, you just basically can't withdraw from your energy bank fast enough. Right. The ATM sort of shuts down and you're done for the day. And some people will, you can, but it's probably far more responsible. Like a gel pack, an energy pack, little sugar pack, basically, or a banana or an energy bar or something like that. Because then you're keeping up the easily attainable available stores of glycogen. I don't understand how somebody who is well trained in Marathoning could hit the wall like that. It just seems like you would know your energy stores better than that. So I don't know if that's amateurs that hit the wall or somebody that just wasn't paying attention to their energy. I don't know, but it just seems weird to me that somebody who knows what they're doing would have that happen to them. I'd like to hear about that too, because I was just about to surmise but I have no idea. All right, I want to hear about hitting the Wall too. If you smoke pot every day and you hit the wall, what is that like? Or play The Wall by Pink Floyd. No, just keep that all to yourself. I'm sure a lot of times hitting the wall is maybe not enough experience and you have to rejigger your training and like what you eat before and what you eat and drink during. But it probably also happens on any given day. Conditions might be such that maybe your body just doesn't react the way you usually count on it. I can't help though. We have to bring up the episode of The Office where they had the five K and Michael Scott thought that stood for 5000 miles and he carbo loaded right before the race by eating like a giant styrofoam takeout thing of Alfredo man. So great. It really was great. So if you think about a marathon runner, you probably think, all right, if you're out there running 26.2 miles, you are the peak of health fitness and you will live forever. There's still something called genetics. Everybody that are still in play no matter what you do, and that can lead to death. Jim Fix, very famously, very celebrated runner, died at 52. He wrote The Complete Book of Running and he died in 1984 of Arteriosclerosis while he was running, right? I think so, yeah. And you don't even have to be I mean, 52 still pretty young. But in 2007 a 28 year old named Ryan Shay died and he was competing at the Olympic Marathon Trials. He had an irregular heartbeat. What happens when you run a marathon or doing any kind of intensive physical training like this? Is your heart size? Can actually increase because it needs more blood to pump, and that can lead to arrhythmia and heart failure. Right. You also can drink too much water, and since you're sweating out salts and peeing out salts, because you do have to pee, you can actually affect the electrolyte balance in your body. And electrolytes are needed for electrical transmissions for your muscles, which you think, okay, well, you can't run your heart's a muscle, too, so it can't beat, right. If it doesn't have the right electrical or electrolytes. So there's something called hypo natremia, which is basically water toxicity, and it can lead to sudden cardiac arrest because your heart just stops getting the right electrical impulses. Do you pee during a marathon? Yeah. I didn't see what you do when you have to pee during a marathon. I believe there's, like, porta potties, like, everywhere, I'm sure right along the route. But from what I understand, those are more for the diarrhea. Can we talk about diarrhea pilot? I think it's time. And we have all seen very famous images on sports television of people that have lost their control of their bowels during an event like this. And they end up on TV. They end up on TV. They're not exactly sure the single cause or if there is a single cause of runners diarrhea, but they think it could be everything from decreased blood flow to the intestines to changes in your hormones jiggling, to just good old fashioned jiggling of your organs. Yes, but it is a thing. It's called runner's diarrhea. Stress anxiety. Yes. That could contribute for sure. Yeah. It could also be like if you eat something weird that you're not used to eating, that could be a problem. Eating high fiber foods, sugar, alcohols can make you poop, even normally. But if you're running around, that can be a big problem, too. Yeah, they recommend for the day or two before you run a marathon, like, avoid those high fiber things. Don't, like, drink a bunch of caffeine the day of the race, maybe a few three to 6 hours before don't eat at all. Right. But again, you don't want to hit the wall. So you need to juggle all this. You need to juggle your chronic runner's diarrhea with your glycogen stores that you need to keep up with, but don't juggle your organs. But you can't help it when you run it. Man, I remember Peter Segal wrote peter Segal from wait, wait, don't tell me. He's, like, a big time runner. He has a column in Runner's World, and one of them was just about runner's diarrhea and how everybody gets it. It's so weird. So we finish up with dear Rosie Ruiz. One more thing before we finish up with her, we have to give a huge shout out to Lud Kipchoge, who this month at the Berlin Marathon set a new world record of 2 hours, 1 minute, and 39 seconds. Wow. He beat the six year old record by a minute and 18 seconds. The six year old ran it, and that it's being compared to Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game. It's that big. And the way that it really kind of sunk in for me was that it meant that he ran a four minute, 38 second mile for 26 straight miles. Sounding yes. And they're like, this guy is going to break the two hour mark. That's what he's been training for. Nike basically said, hey, man, we want to basically throw everything we have at sports medicine wise at your training to see if we can get you down to 2 hours, because he's like, probably the greatest marathon has ever lived. And he said, all right, let's do it. So they've been working on it, and everyone's expecting him to break 2 hours in his career, for sure. Well, you know who's not the best marathon or in history? I do. Russie Ruiz. She's one of the worst, actually, from what I understand. Yes. She is a woman who, very famously, on April 21, 1980, at the age of 26, got on a subway with a Boston Marathon runner's number, exited the subway, and entered the race with about half a mile ago. I saw a mile. Give her a mile, man. I saw a half mile. So let's just say not far. We'll say three quarters of a mile. And it was briefly crowned the winner, the female winner of the Boston Marathon. And she still maintains this day that she ran that race despite mountains of evidence, although no physical evidence, but mountains of anecdotal evidence from people that were saying, like, she was on the subway with me, and we walked off the subway together, and I saw her jump back in the race, and other people saying, she wasn't at this stop or this stop or this stop. We never saw her, and she cheated. Yeah. And supposedly they looked into her New York City Marathon finish and found that there were people who said that she was on the subway with them for that one, too. Yeah. Which her story both times, I think, was that she said that she was injured and just wanted to go see the finish, and then when she got near the finish line was like, I'm an injured runner, and people helped her back onto the thing. And the article I read from this one guy, I can't remember his name, but he was some sort of official. His feeling is that she didn't mean to win. Oh, really? That was an accident. I see. And that she just wanted to cheat to the race and finish, and then all of a sudden, they were like, you won. And she was like, what? Oh, man. Which is interesting. She's like, Great. Yeah. It's a weird story. It is. Apparently, she was busted stealing 60 grand from a realty company she worked for, I think a couple of years later, Yes. A couple of years later. And then the year after that, she was blessed for selling two keys of cocaine to an undercover detective. It's the last kind of person you want to sell two keys of cocaine to. Yeah, for real. So she had a colorful life, and I guess still does. She's still around. Yeah, I think she's in her 60s. They've made it much harder to cheat. Nowadays, there are checkpoint, computer checkpoints. There are video checkpoints that are hidden and you don't know where they are. And all of this is in an effort to and I think one of those cameras, in fact, is what eventually captured the Boston bombing, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, is that right? I think so. That totally makes sense. Wow. Yeah. So that one I wanted to point out, too. Remember how we said the Boston Marathon has been run every year since, I think, 1897, including the year after the bombing, too. I remember in 2014, when they had it again, the year after the bombing, they were like, this is a big deal. I didn't understand quite why it was a big deal. I thought it was strictly because they were coming back from the bombing. They were also saying, like, we're not about to miss a year because of those terrorist jerks. Bothers and strong we're going to keep. Yeah, for sure. I want to see that movie with Jake Gyllenhall. Which one? It's the one he plays the guy who had that very cheese gruesome, famous picture. He lost his legs in the bombing, and they made a movie about his life. Oh, I thought it was like Mark Wahlberg was in that movie. Is there another one that he was in? I mean it's. Marky. Mark. So he was the guy that saved the day. I think he was one of the I got you. The coops chasing him down or a special investigator or something. I don't know. I think you're probably right. I don't think we need to even see that movie to know that's exactly what it is. I love Marky. Mark, though. Sure, man. How do you not has a hamburger place, does he? Yeah. Wall Burgers. Yeah, that's right. So you got anything more on Wall Burgers? No. All right. Neither do I. Which means if you want to know more about marathons, go find out about how to train for a marathon and get out there and do it if this floats your boat. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Yeah, actually, no listener mail today. What we're going to do is something we almost never do, and that is plug our stuff and ask for your support. People are always writing in saying, what can we do? It's a free show. We love stuff you should know. How can we support you guys? And Stuff you should Know is doing great, everyone. So continue to listen to that. But we have our own solo ventures. And it's hard to get a podcast off the ground these days, even if you're big hot shots like us. So I have a show called Movie Crush where once a week I sit down with someone in the entertainment industry, from a musician to an author to a writer, director, or an actor or comedian or podcaster and talk to them about their all time favorite movie, their life, and how movies have influenced their life and career. And then on Mondays, we release many episodes called Mini Crushes with producer Noel, where we just kind of shoot the s and shoot the breeze about movies and what we're watching, and very interactive with a lot of people on Facebook, and we do polls and listener questions and certain segments, and it's a lot of fun. So subscribing to Movie Crush is a big, big way to help out Chuck. And you have a little something special coming out soon, too. I do. It's coming out. And Movie Crush is wonderful, by the way. I can attest to that. I have something coming out called The End of the World with Josh Clark, and it explores this idea that we have a lot of things coming down the pike, something called existential risks that are big enough and threatening enough and menacing enough that they could actually wipe the human race out of existence. And you might think, like, well, yeah, there's climate change, or yeah, there's nuclear war. Those things don't even register on the map of existential risks. These are brand new things that we're not used to and we're not equipped to deal with at this point. And we suddenly have to figure out how to handle them exactly correctly in the next 10, 20, 51 00 years, or else we're probably going to accidentally wipe ourselves out as a race. It's really fascinating stuff. And sure, it's a little grim and it's dark, but I try to approach it scientifically and interestingly and fascinatingly and hopefully inspirationally because it really is. I saw one of the guys I interviewed said it was the moral question of our time, and he thinks that we will kind of rise to the occasion, and I hope that's the case. And hopefully this series helps with that. Well, I can't wait. I can't wait for it to be out either, man. I've been working on it for a while now. Yeah, man. And from what I've heard so far, it's great. If your name on it, it's going to be great. Thanks. Subscribing to Movie Crush subscribing to The End of the World helps us out more than you know. So that is how you can help and just keep on chugging along with stuff you should know too. We're not going anywhere. No. And we've even added a new thing, short stuff that comes out Wednesdays too. So rejoice and all the stuff you should notice. And thanks for your support, everyone. Yeah, for sure. After all these years. If you want to get in touch with us, you can hang out with us on our website, stuffyouheno.com. You can find all our social links there. You can also send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com summer school's out? The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet at Halo, we get it 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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427cbf78-53a3-11e8-bdec-07711ac90887 | How Historic Districts Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-historic-districts-work | A fascinating thing about Americans is that we can disagree on anything. Such is the case with historic districts – areas of historic importance protected by local laws. Seems innocuous, but are they also to blame for the affordable housing crisis? | A fascinating thing about Americans is that we can disagree on anything. Such is the case with historic districts – areas of historic importance protected by local laws. Seems innocuous, but are they also to blame for the affordable housing crisis? | Thu, 24 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=297, tm_isdst=0) | 43007661 | 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. There's Charles W, Chuck, Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. And that makes this stuff you should know. Save the clock tower. That's good. You like that? Good. Just popped into my head. Oh, for real? Yeah. I wasn't reading this article and doing this research, thinking Back to the Future. Back to the Future. I'm surprised it just popped into my head. I actually hadn't thought about Back to the Future at all, but that's very appropriate, Chuck. But that is not a historic district. That is just a landmark building. I think that could still qualify for a registry on the National Register of Historic Places. It just wouldn't be a historic district, which is what we're talking about today. Maybe this should just be the end of the podcast. The end? Have you ever gone into a neighborhood, just been walking around town, and all of a sudden you realize that you're in the most charming, adorable place you've ever been in your life? Sure. Well, then you've probably been in a historic district. Yeah. This is pretty cool. We haven't done one like this in a while. You like this one? I was fully expecting you to say like this so much. I love historic places. I know, but sometimes yeah. I don't know why I thought that, but I'm glad that it panned out. I actually selected it because I knew you're going to hate it, so eggs on my face. I don't know. Kind of hearken back to some of our episodes. We used to do, like, row houses and shotgun houses. Yeah, that stuff. Sure. They say row houses. Yeah, shotgun houses. We did do a full episode on shotgun houses. Yeah. And their architectural importance. I thought that was a pretty good episode. Agreed. I think we released it as a select recently, too, didn't we? I don't think I did. But that might have been one of your picks. I don't think I did. It was Jerry ghost producer. We need to let Jerry select him some from time to time. Jerry didn't have time for that stuff. That's fine. She needs nothing else on her plate besides miso. That's true. And overseeing the largest podcast program in the world. Yeah. It's pretty impressive. Jerry's. Jerry said thank you. Yes, she does. She said thank you for holding me so super in her mouth. So I think I've already kind of gotten the intro out of the way where I asked if you've been in a charming area and said you've probably been in a historic district. Well, I mean, there's a good chance that you have if you've been in the United States, because there are more than 2300 of them. Yeah, that's a lot. All over the place. And you might say, like, okay, well, that's great. This is an area that has been designated to have some sort of historic significance. Can I please go to sleep now? We'll say, no, please don't go to sleep yet because there's a lot more to it and one of the more surprising twists you're ever going to have in your entire life. It's actually controversial. Historic districts can be oh, yeah. Yeah. Did you not read that one article? Yeah, I was just being coy. OK. My stomach just bottomed out in terror. So should we talk about Charleston, South Carolina? Yes. A place where well, I didn't go there. I went to the beach near there. Oh, the Isle of Palms. Yeah, just a few weeks ago. But we were within spitting distance of Charleston, South Carolina. Why would you spit on Charleston? I wouldn't. I love it. Bill Murray lives there, for God's sake. Yeah, he does. Apparently he's a man about town there, and I think his family lives there too. Yeah, that's why he lives there. Oh, got you. Yeah. So they formed the very first historic district in the United States. In 1931, they established the Board of Architectural Review. And this quote here is pretty great. This is the official quote from that architectural review board. Can you please read it in a mid Atlantic accent? Mid Atlantic? Why that? Because that's the one, the old timing one okay. That you're probably going to use. I was going to do an old Southern thing. Oh, that's okay. Yeah, that's way more. Way better. The preservation and protection of the old historic and architecturally worthy structures in quaint neighborhoods wow. Which impart distinct aspect to the city of Charleston. That is beautiful. They actually have quaint neighborhoods in their charge. Yeah, right. From what I've read, too, charleston actually is legitimately interested in its architecture and preserving its architecture. Yeah. Although, as we'll see later, there are some people that think Charleston didn't do it. Right. Oh, is that right? Yeah, that's in the article. Okay. Or that they're overdoing it. That's how I took it. Yeah, sure. Okay, cool. But Charleston was the first one to basically say, this is historically significant architecture. This is a historically significant area, and we want to make sure that it stays that way. That's right. So we're going to add a layer of protection, legal protection over this area that the rest of the city doesn't have. And within five years, the word had spread to New Orleans, and they said, that's a pretty good idea, chief. We're going to do that for the French Quarter with my New Orleans accent. Oh, is that it? Yeah. What they're basically saying is that it can be either one, and it all depends on your local jurisdictions, which we'll get to. But historically or aesthetically, these buildings in this area, they're linked together. Right. And so the Charleston thing basically provided the Charleston, and then the New Orleans basically provided the groundwork, which was, this area is protected, and we're going to form a board who is charged with making sure that it stays this way as much as possible. We're going to vest some legal authority into them. And these people are who you have to go through if you want to do anything significantly altering to the exterior of your place if you live in this area or have a business there. Right. Or maybe not even significantly, depending on where you are. Yeah, picky. So it kind of like plotted along this idea. It was around for a couple of decades and then this whole process of urban renewal that was kicked off after the highway started being built, in part because of the highways, because people were saying, wait, you're going to blow right through the Lower East Side in Chinatown with this highway in Manhattan? We don't want you to do that. This is worth protecting, so build your highway elsewhere. And then also as the highways were built and traffic started being rerouted away from other towns, these other towns that used to be thriving started to fall into disrepair. Some people are saying, like, hey, let's knock down these old buildings and build new ones and maybe business will come back. It initiated this idea that, no, we've got some historic stuff here and we need to protect it. And it really started to kick off in earnest in the by 1956, the Federalist had gotten involved and through the National Park Service established the National Historic Preservation Act that said, you NPS. You're in charge of designating what's an historic site and what's not. That's right. In 1966, they created the National Register of Historic Places run by the national parks, or not run, but I guess just sort of maintained sorry. Yes, I said, okay, I got everything else, right? Yeah, that's right. So here's the deal. You can be listed on the National Register. It means something. I don't want to say it doesn't mean a whole lot, but if you really want to protect something, you have to go with your local historic district. You have to create and protect it locally. That's a very big deal. But we're going to go over both national and state, which is sort of like national and then local, which is pretty different. It actually is. But it's impressive that the local level is the one that has the real teeth as far as historic districts are concerned, as it should be. But most people want to start out with the national district at the very least, because there's a certain amount of cachet to it, to having your place designated as a national historic either structure or district or area. But there are multiple things that can fall under or be logged onto the Register of Historic Places. Apparently in other countries they have similar registers, but they'll include things like events, people just not necessarily things or objects. But in the United States there's a real emphasis on place and situation and buildings in particular. And so if you're on the National Register of Historic Places, you are two things. You're an object and you're inanimate, and you probably are situated in a specific area. Like where you are or what you are is kind of tied to the area you're around. That's the real focus of the United States National Register of Historic Places. That's right. So there are five overall categories. Buildings, it's pretty obvious. Structures also kind of obvious. But it says in here that could even be an aircraft as a structure. I saw that there's a grain elevator in Fox, Illinois, that's protected because it's an example of the transition between one story and two story grain elevators. Amazing. It is amazing. And I don't want to yuck anybody's young thing about this to me. As you can see, Chuck, I'm bleeding a little bit out of the corner of my eye from being bored at even saying that sentence. But I'm sure there are people out there who really appreciate the different architecture of grain elevators. And that's the point. It means that if it's on the National Register of Historic Places, it is important to some group of people. And so don't yuck their yum even if you find it's boring. Agreed. Because they might find what you find interesting is boring. Number three, it can be an object. Number four, it can be a site. And this is a big one in the United States because, like, Civil War battlefields, stuff like that. Appleshand trail. Yeah. Or MLK historic site. Sure, it's a bunch of well, we'll talk about that later. Or it can be a district, which is basically some kind of combination of those first four. Or just let me group like the street has ten houses, ten beautiful Victorian houses that were all built by the same architect. And so we're going to consider this a district. Right. So maybe in each of those instances, if one of those houses was in a neighborhood, it might qualify for designation as a historic building. But if you put them together, because they're together, they form this district, which is the sum of these parts, form something larger, and that connects them. There's a couple of qualifications that they have to meet to be part or listed on the National Register. Almost without exception, they have to be 50 years old. I think the law is that it has to be exceptionally important to be younger than 50 years old and still be designated on the Historic Places Register. That's right. The other thing it has to be is significant, which sounds kind of broad, and I guess it kind of is, because significance is in the eye of the beholder. But that's why we have boards and things like that, to determine whether or not they think it's significant to behold things for us. And then finally it's got to be evaluated that significance in historic context, which kind of speaks for itself. Did any great history happen there. Right. Was this Bob Dylan's house in Minnesota when he was a child? Sure. Although I don't know if that's on the list. I just threw that out there. It could be, but that's a home run. But say, like, let's say you said, well, this building used to house soda shop, a soda shop that made pretty good chocolate malts, and so it's representative of that time. Well, if you were on the board looking at this application, you would look around and try to put it in context. Like, yes, people liked chocolate malts at soda shops at one period in American history. But was this the place where chocolate malts were invented? Or is this the place where everyone widely agreed made the best chocolate malted? It's like no, it has a history, but not necessarily significant history in context of the larger era that it's a part of. So it would probably get passed over. Yeah. Like the four sort of historic context that it's not shoeing, necessarily, but you have a good chance if something important historically happened there, this is the place where so and so was shot and killed or born, perhaps on a more up note. Okay. Did someone live here that was significant? George Washington slept here. Sure. Or associated with them. Didn't have to live there, necessarily. Yeah. Is it related to a certain architectural period or method of construction? That's a big one for the Park Service. Sure. Like, this is the last house to be used that used plaster and laugh for their walls. Or there's a college in Florida called Florida Southern College that is like, the entire campus was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Sure. So that is clearly going to be accepted on the National Register. Or finally, was there information at this place that is historically important? Yeah. Or might there be? Because they can afford protection to say, like, an archaeological site that's a known archeological site that they haven't really dug yet. Like we'll find it. Right. They're saying there's a pretty good potential that some information or history or historical significance will be yielded from investigation of the site. But we want to protect it now before developers come in. That's right. Here's the thing, though. If you want to be a historic district, if you want to say, like, these three square blocks or historic district, that doesn't mean that every single property in there is what's called a contributing property to that district. Yeah. They're noncontributing properties are allowed. Sure. Like, if you have those 15 Victorian houses on a block, and then there's the one modern McMansion right. That's not contributing, I think we can all agree. But it doesn't disqualify the rest of the area necessarily. No. It depends on from what I've seen, it's very much a subjective measure how much that McMansion detracts from the feel or the authenticity of the rest of the site. What they call integrity. Yeah. That's really kind of interesting, I think, because all this stuff is subjective, but the integrity there is how the physical characteristics of that property reflect on this day, reflect that significance historically. Right. So if you have that row of Victorian homes, but every single one of them was altered in the people inside, made some really weird decisions and so altered the exterior of these homes that, yes, they were all part of this Victorian era, and they were once pretty good examples of it. They aren't any longer. Even though it qualifies for all these other things, it would not be considered a site with integrity, and it might get passed over unless everyone agreed to restore the houses back to that Victorian era. That's the saddest letter to get, I think. I'm sorry, you've been denied because your property has no integrity. Pretty much. And you, sir, do not either. That's how they finish every letter like that. Should we take a break and talk about how you might create a historic district? There is one other thing before we do. Chuck, I think it's a fine idea. I'm not shooting down your idea, but I do want to point out that areas have to be unified, not necessarily physically, visually, geographically, but somehow they have to be linked to be considered a district. That's right. All right, now, you want to take a break? Yes. Okay. If you want to know, just listen. All right. So if you're a person and you live, let's just take us for instance, okay. Like, let's say I wanted to get my house in my neighborhood in Atlanta recognized or my block as a historic national historic district. Okay? And the real reason I want to do this is because of the street near my house are going to expand. And it's a real bummer because they're going to have to tear down a few of the houses that are really what I think are significant, and they might take possession of that little strip of land that you've been exercising squatting on. Yeah. More importantly, they will take my little strip of land. Right. Okay. So what would you do? What are you going to do as step one, check to protect your home? Well, to place it on the national register, I would start at the State Historic Preservation Officer. And this is a person every state has one. You can go to the NPS website to find out who yours is and get in touch. And they're basically going to help you out with I mean, you're going to plead your case, of course, but they're going to help you fill out this form explaining why they may say, Listen, don't even bother. But what they're supposed to do is help assess whether or not it might be eligible and help you fill out all your national forms to send in. Right. They might say, like, how old is your house? And if you're like, oh, it's built in the 90s, it's still pretty nice. They'll be like, don't bother. That's right. But since you have never done this before, you're a dinghy at it and they're there to help you figure this out and how to do it right. They're not the ones who are going to judge this. No, a board will, and typically a state board for a state historic preservation board, their review board is made up of people who know what they're talking about. Architects, historians, archeologists, anthropologists, people who have been trained in this stuff, who can say, yeah, this actually isn't that great. There's a much better example of it a couple of blocks over. As a matter of fact, why don't we go to the other place and make that a historic district? And then you're like, no snobs. But the officer that you are contacting, it's their job to help you get your application in and state your case and then get it in front of the review board, who will then take it from there and say, this is a great idea, this is a terrible idea, or I don't care either way and it's time for lunch. Approved. That's right. And this is again going for that National Register. And one reason you might want to do this is because here's the thing. It's sort of a badge of honor, like we said before, and we'll talk about it again later about the local and that's the one you really want. But if you are on the National Register, it does provide you with some legal protections federally. So if that road is a federal highway project, then it could protect your house. Or even better, even if it's a local or state project, if it's getting any federal funding whatsoever, same thing applies. Sure. Where they have to say what's going to be the impact on any historic district of this project? And if the impact is deemed too great, the project won't go forward. So there are some protections for it, but for the most part, it's kind of symbolic and there's a little bit of cachet. And you can put it on your Zillow page that your house is part of a national historic district. Right. But they can't say, you can live in a national historic home and you can let it fall into disrepair and look like garbage. And they can't come in and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're on the National Register. You can't let your house fall into disrepair like this. Right? Yeah. Clean yourself up. You got to stay in on your shirt, get a shape. What's your problem? Exactly. They don't say that those are individual property rights and it's only up to local governments to infringe on individual property rights, not the state or federal government. So while the state or federal government will have laws restricting its own activities in regards to historic districts like expanding a road or something like that yeah, if you get on the National Register of Historic Places. Your whole neighborhood gets on there. Your neighbor can do whatever they want with their house still. So if that was your whole ploy all along, Chuck, to really keep your neighbor from doing something like, say, I don't know, putting a second story on their house, you're going to find that you have been frustrated. That's right. You can go to the state, but the state is basically like federal as far as protections and stuff like that go. Where the real teeth come in is with the local historic districts, and it is very different. They don't have to meet the same guidelines. A lot of times they're very similar, but they don't have to have the same exact guidelines as the national historic districts do. Right. So the first thing that you're going to need, though, is there's got to be an ordinance, a local preservation ordinance, which is basically just, hey, here are the rules on how we do this around here. Here's how we're going to identify these houses, and here's what it means if you have one. Right. This is like square one stuff. This is what a city has to do before it ever creates its very first historic district. If your city has already done this, then you would just basically go through the same process that you would with the National Register in applying to get historic designation for your neighborhood in your city from your local municipality. But if they've never done it before, they've got to create new legislation for it, new laws protecting historic areas, and then they also have to set up a preservation commission, too. Basically the same thing that Charleston, South Carolina did all the way back in 1931. That's right. So you're going to go in front of the commission. They're going to hold some public hearings where people can come and argue the case for or against. Yeah, because not everybody likes this idea. No, not everyone does, as we'll see. In fact, it's kind of hard. The community has really got to be behind this in order for this to go through. Yes. In most cases, from what I've seen, you need a majority of homeowners and business owners in the area to agree to this. And I think even if the opposition is particularly vocal and mad about it, they still might be able to derail a local ordinance designation. That's right. But it's all going to be considered by the commission, and they're going to make that recommendation to the officials. They're going to say, you're going to reject this. Are you going to say, It's okay, is it all great or not? And here's the deal. If you get named local historic district, this is when they can say, no. You live in a historic home in this district. You can't let it fall out of disrepair. There was this one case where was it? In Maryland, I think, where I guess these front porch columns were being replaced by a family, and they skimped a little because wood is expensive and used fiberglass or something. Right. And they said, no, you can't do that because you live in the historic district, and you have to use these original materials to preserve this house. Yeah, you got to use wood, like you said. I don't know, maybe they were like, we don't want to cut down a tree, or maybe they were just cheaping out. But I think they sued. Yeah, I believe they sued in order to try to keep them. But that's a really typical part of any local historic district ordinance, is if you're going to make any kind of repairs, especially significant repairs, any alterations to the exterior, anything like that, you need to use historically accurate materials. You have to submit it for approval to a local design review board, too. Right. Sorry. I got ahead of us. So the first thing you have to do is say, I want to replace the columns in the front of my house because they're falling apart. I want to replace them. Can I please do that? Please, sir, please let me. And the local review board or commission will analyze this. And they'll say, sure you can, but this is what they have to look like. This is the materials they have to be made out of, and this is the color that they have to be painted. And you have to follow that or else you can be fine. They can place a lien on your property, and the penalty can be pretty stiff, actually. Yeah, and here's the thing. I can at least understand this, and we'll talk later about freedoms to do what you want with property that you own. Sure. But this I can stomach a little bit. And we talked about homeowners associations before. Those are the ones that really get me to where it is not historically significant. It is an excerpt with 700 houses in a subdivision that require you to have the same mailbox. Right. So in that sense, having a homeowner's association covenant and having a historic preservation district on a local level where they both have teeth that they can actually find you or tell you what to do to the exterior of your house or your yard, the point is the same in this sense in that they're trying to keep things a certain way. Right. At least I think what you're saying is at least with the historic district, they're trying to preserve something that has been historically important. Whereas with the suburbs, they want to make sure everybody's lawn is cut or just looks the same, or no one paints their house pink or whatever. Sure. But they have the same aim, which is like, this is what we're all saying is very nice and pleasant. I just watched Pleasantville last night for, like, the 500th time. That's a good movie. I've only seen that once. Oh, man, it's so good. But we've all agreed that this is pleasant and this is what we want our area to look like and then this is how it's going to stay. And you can't change it. And if you do, you have to petition and this review board can tell you, no, you can't do that. Yeah, and of course I know that the answer to my problem with the ex herb is don't move there. Then like, you know the stuff going in. Sure. Then don't buy a house in that neighborhood. And I think most people who do buy out there are pretty aware of that and I think some of them are looking for that because it tends to protect property values. You're never going to have a neighbor who just parks like a boat with a moth eaten cover over it in their front driveway for five years. That's just not going to happen out there. But at the same time, it's also eye bleedingly boring to live out there as well. Can I also just say that I love that you're Halloween October movie watching is pleasantville. Do you watch last night? What? The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? So good. The original? Yes. I had never seen it. Can you believe that? No, I had never seen it. That's really surprising. What did you think? Wow, it was disturbing. Yes. That Hammer scene that he drags out for like 20 minutes of the hour and 20 minutes long movie. Yeah, it was tough. And I realized that I'm prepping for a movie crush slasher movie special. Oh, nice. But I never watched a lot of that stuff growing up. I don't know if it's because I was churchy. Sure, but your answer right there. Maybe so. And I don't think it was like, oh, I thought I would be in trouble. I think just like the people I was around didn't really get into that stuff. So you missed a really crucial window in horror movie watching because I can see coming into it as an adult, you're like you said, this is highly disturbing stuff and this is fun. It has to kind of dovetail with that period of your life where you feel immortal. Right? Sure. So it kind of bounces off of you, the Disturbingness of it. And then as you get to be an adult, you can kind of start to appreciate the truly disturbing aspects of it. But it's still tempered by that teens and 20 something viewing that you remember as well. Yeah, I didn't have that. Just coming into it like this. Late 40s is not a good time to start watching Texas. Jainsaw master man, I feel for you. I liked it. I mean, I thought very much appreciate it. It is well, it's a classic. All right, I feel like we should take a break and we'll come back and finish up about historic districts right after this. If you want to know, just listen. Alright. Chuck, we've kind of hinted a little bit at the idea that not everybody's on board within historic district. And for getting a real designation, like a local designation where there's actual restrictions on you, the person who owns the home can or can't do things without permission from a board of people you might not even have ever met in your life. For it to be really successful, you need the community behind that to get that designation. And everybody going in with their eyes open saying, okay, we're willing to spend the extra money on wood. We're willing to spend the extra money on a handmade window if one breaks because we're not allowed to replace the original single pane windows that make it 20 deg in our house all winter long. Right. We're going in with our eyes wide open like that. But even if most of the community does, there's probably still going to be somebody who says, I'm a libertarian, I don't believe in this kind of stuff and I'm really not happy about this. And that person is basically going to have an historic district shoved down their throat. Yeah. Not you. But if you are that person, you will be the one that's vocal if you know about the meeting and you're there and you want to make hay, but you can be overruled and all of a sudden you are subject to those whims libertarians hate that. Well, there's a bunch of sides to this coin here. There's a bunch of factors. Well, let's talk about the pros. How about that? Yeah, I mean, one of the pros is many times it increases property values because there's a standard that has to be upheld in your house and those around you won't be falling into disrepair. Right. And plus, if your housing prices are stable and rising in relation to the rest of the town, your taxes also tend to rise too. Right. And so these areas very quickly start to become very wealthy areas of town. So it's a wait for people to basically secure their investment in their property. Yeah, and I guess we're talking about disadvantages mixed in here, too, because there are some people that say, hey, in the US. That can be code for keeping the wealth in the pocket of the few because who's going to be owning these houses are people that have a lot of money. Yeah, there's a guy named Kristen Caps who wrote an article on City Lab back in 2016 that basically said the inequality in housing and the housing pricing crisis laid it at the feet of historic preservation districts, which is pretty preposterous in a lot of ways, but he did make a real leader. Sure, but I think his point was like, just do away with historic preservation for districts, for neighborhoods, because most of these things are covered by zoning laws that say you can only have single family homes in here. Well, only certain people can afford really expensive single family homes that's right. With really high taxes. And so it keeps out people who would otherwise love to enjoy this amazing neighborhood with these mature oak trees and beautiful sidewalks and neighbors walking around being friendly and traders on every corner or really good schools. These neighborhoods shouldn't just be for extremely wealthy people, but in saying that, it's only single family housing allowed in this. No one can ever build a high rise with a bunch of apartments that those people who might be able to afford to live in and enjoy the neighborhood. So on the one hand, they're like, well, yeah, we don't want high rises here. It has nothing to do with the historical architecture, and it's a blight. And other people say, well, you're also just keeping poor people out too. Right. It's definitely a double edged sword because that's very much accurate. But it's certainly not the cause or even a major solution to the housing crisis either. Yeah. And there are Republicans in Michigan that are trying to do away with a lot of these. I don't know about districts, but maybe potential future designations because their whole thing is you don't want the federal government coming in here and telling you what you can do and what you can't do with your house. Although it wouldn't be the federal government. No, it would be local. Be local. But these must be state reps and local reps. But they're saying, let's do away with some of this stuff. Like, Michigan has far too many of these, and your freedoms are being squashed. Right, exactly. You want to paint your house pink, then you should be able to. And so some preservation district commissions are a little more laid back than others. Apparently in Georgia, it's up to you to pick what color you want to paint your house. If the repairs you're doing are minor, you don't have to have a certificate of appropriateness. And then in other places, it is staunch is kind of an understatement. Old town Alexandria. Very famous. Like, you can't do anything to the outside of your house in this Old Town district, but as a result, it's an extraordinarily charming place to be. It's great. Tons of people who visit DC. Make the trip over to Old Town just to go shopping or to eat or to do whatever, just walk around. So that's another benefit of having an historic preservation district. It attracts business or attracts customers to your businesses, and very frequently you'll find an influx of tourism dollars coming into this area, too. Yeah. And we've talked about before, the legendary, fabulous Fox Theater here in Atlanta are only remaining like amazing, huge old school Egyptian style theater. Was going to be a bank parking lot in the 1970s. Like, they were literally going to put a parking lot there. And I remember when I was a kid, they had to save the Fox eater campaign, and it took these celebrity benefit concerts to raise money. Benverene, did he come? I could see it. It was the right era. Frank Sinatra came. He was one of the big wigs. Really? Yeah. Frank came to Atlanta and performed and raised money and was like, no, you can't tear down the fucks guys. That's my Frank. It was okay. I should have gone with Sammy. You should have done a Charleston accent for Frank. But that's the other side of the coin, which is like, if people don't I mean, there was a time in this country in the where that can very easily happen, and that did happen in downtown Atlanta. If you look at old pictures of downtown Atlanta, it looked like a smaller version of New York City. And now we've gotten some of that character back. But there was a period where they just tore down everything old in favor of putting up these bland white buildings in the name of the future, and they call the urban renewal. And thankfully, in the last 1020 years, I'm not sure where the idea came from. People said, no, you can have the same effect. You can have businesses, you can have mixed use development by reusing and rehabilitating these same buildings. You don't have to tear it down and build something new. It's usually cheaper to do that, but it's much better if we do it the other way and kind of preserve the history. And that's definitely become the push lately. But, yeah, there was definitely a period in the middle of the last century where a lot of stuff was torn down. And as a result I was on a website, I can't remember the name of it, where they were listing the most boring cities in the world. The world, Chuck. And the first one was Atlanta. What? And the reason one of the criteria they were using was history. Like, how much history is just kind of mixed into the fabric of the city. And part of it is all the tearing down that they did in the. But also part of it was laid at the feet of General Sherman, who burned the town to the ground and burn up a lot of the history as well on the march to the sea. So Atlantis has kind of had a twofold knock around where a lot of historical stuff was not preserved and was actually torn down as a result. It lacks a certain amount of character because compared to other cities that have more history, the old two fold knock around. Yeah, that's a dumb I mean, I'm not saying this just because this is my hometown. Atlanta is not the most boring city in the world. In the world. It was in the top ten the dumbest thing I've seen ever. Well, here's the other thing, too, and this isn't necessarily about preserving history, but I think there's just been a general return to taste and craftsmanship across the board in the last 15 years, and some people may call it hipsterism or whatever, but there are artisan bakers now and handcrafted cocktails instead of fern bars. And when they are building new buildings, they're trying to make them blend in. And I just feel like there was a time where I think everyone in America thought the future was just going to be sterile and white, right? And these sterile white buildings were going up everywhere in the baseball stadiums that were just round white objects. And then starting with Camden Yards in Baltimore, they started building these old style ballparks, and that's all you see now. And I think that's just across the board is I think people are respecting craftsmanship and history a lot more than they did for a long, long time. Like decades. I agree. But it is true that that comes at a price, because if you look at those neighborhoods where they are being rehabilitated and preserved by the people who are moving in there as they're doing it, they're raising the home values, which also raises the taxes. And so people who have traditionally, historically lived in these neighborhoods are being pushed out of the neighborhood. Right. So that is one part, that's one facet that has yet to be cracked. Like, how do you keep a neighborhood mixed as far as income goes or use goes? How do you really preserve that kind of thing? So it's not just like, yes, we're preserving this neighborhood at the expense of the residents who used to live here, because it's richer people who are coming in and rehabbing areas. Gentrifying basically talking. We'll cover that in our Gentrification podcast. Okay, but that's a big thing. So it is a criticism of historic preservation, but it's certainly not a reason to do away with historic preservation. And one of the other challenges I've seen is, okay, so let's say we're going to allow somebody to come in and build a high rise in this amazing historic neighborhood. Do you really think they're going to be building it for low or mixed income people to move into? No, they're going to build it for the wealthiest people who probably have even more money than the people who own the houses in this historic district. And it's not going to help this housing crisis at all. It's just going to exacerbate it. And we'll have ruined a perfectly beautiful historic district in the process. We should totally do one on Gentrification. I agree. I love episodes like this, where it's like, oh, what's the resolution? There is none yet. You got to stay tuned to everybody we know. You're very anti resolution. I've read before that people who read fiction tend to be able to deal with open ended endings more than people who don't, which is weird because I don't read much fiction these days, but I can still hang with no resolution. Yeah. No closure. No closure. You got anything else? Nothing else. You're just waiting for me to stop talking. It looks like maybe. Well, if you want to know more about historic districts, why don't you go try to get your place put on the National Register? Why don't you, as you do that, let us know how it goes, maybe keep us posted. In the meantime, though, first, before I tell you how to get in touch with us to keep us posted, let's say it's time for listing or mail. I'm going to call this government shutdown follow up. Hey, guys, I'm a member of the permanent government in DC. I thought you did a great job. It was great. That you emphasized the cost of a shutdown is the key thing. Most people don't understand. These things aren't just a blip. I want to point that the effects of the last shutdown still aren't over. When we got back to work, we were told that it took the agency six months to recover from the previous shutdown that lasted 16 days. And these things are exponential, not linear. Wow. With a 35 day shutdown, we just don't know how long it's going to take to catch up. We have settled into our normal and just expect to miss deadlines. People we serve regularly understand and are working with us, but I don't think the general public gets it. You can't just push back all deadlines by 35 days because new work is constantly coming in. There's no pause button just because the government has shut down. We're all working to catch up, but it hasn't happened. It's not like we can blame the shutdown either. People don't understand how work submitted after the end of the shutdown can still be affected by it, but we can't just double our workload. There's only so many hours in a day. That is from Nate. Thanks, Nate. That was a nice little follow up. Yeah, thanks for bringing us down here. You're right. We've just kind of gone out on such a mediocre level and now it's down level. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Nate and bring us down, or to keep us posted on how it's going in your quest to get your house or your neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places, you can go on to Steppedone.com and check out our social links there. Or 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 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 Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1228321000150hsw-sysk-guerrilla-gardening.mp3 | How Guerrilla Gardening Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-guerrilla-gardening-works | You've heard of guerrilla fighting tactics, but how much do you know about guerrilla gardening? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about this "revolutionary" gardening trend. | You've heard of guerrilla fighting tactics, but how much do you know about guerrilla gardening? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about this "revolutionary" gardening trend. | Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=339, tm_isdst=0) | 17067102 | 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. Chuck's with me. Say hi, Chuck. Hi. And I know it titillates chuck when I say this, so welcome to stuff you should know. Exactly 60 episodes in, and we're introducing the show as the show. Yeah, well, you got to try new things sometimes. I like it. Yeah. Pretty soon I'll just start making up new names for it. People will be like, Wait, did I download the right one? Yeah. So, Chuck, as I usually want to do, I have an anecdote from my past that will nicely segue into what we should talk about today. I like these because I don't know about this beforehand. I really don't. So they're always interesting. This one's not by comparison. It's not that good, so don't get your hopes up. Okay. But when I was a slightly younger man in my early teens, I had a friend named Jeremy whose dad was a firefighter, and he was this tough guy, but he also was fairly cultivated, cultured, and he and his friends, some of them firefighter buddies, used to go out at night and engage in what they call clumping. Okay. All right. I've never heard of it before or since. I think they made it up, actually. Yeah, but clumping involved going into somebody's yard and stealing plants that you liked and then taking them back to your yard and planting them there. Right. It's a nice thing for a firefighter to do, I think. Exactly. Yeah. Well, if he's saving lives, I think you can kind of get something of a pass. But it always struck me as a little wrong, maybe. Well, stealing it is stealing, quite clearly, but at the same time, it's even more than stealing. It's not like stealing somebody's cell phone. You don't have anything really attached, except maybe your phone book in it. This is somebody's cultivating a garden. Someone is taking the time to plan this and tend to it, and now, all of a sudden, there's huge holes filled with their stealing their time. You're stealing their money that they put into the planting. Sure. Now comes the segway. You want to know what the opposite of that is? I have a good feeling. Gorilla gardening. That's precisely right. And, Chuck, now, I know there has been some discrepancy in the very recent past. We're talking the gorilla, as in, like, guerrilla warfare, right? Right. Not the apes gardening. Although gorillas aren't apes, are they? I can never remember. I don't know. Another primates. Let's go with that. Sure. Okay. So, yeah, we're talking gorilla gardening, and it is pretty much what it sounds like making stealth maneuvers into usually untended areas or neglected or overgrown vacant lots, that kind of thing, and tilling the soil, weeding it, and planning new stuff. Yeah. I think this is really cool. I do, too. Because it's subversive, which, you know, I'm very hip, too, like the smart mobs thing. Right. But it doesn't harm anyone. It doesn't harm anyone. No. As a matter of fact, it makes the world or the city or wherever you live and you're doing this a much better place. Right. Although some people still try and shut it down, which we'll get to later. Yeah. Good, because I got a great line for that. Okay, good. Yeah. So do you want to give a little background, a little history on gorilla gardening? Yeah, sure. Originally, I believe it started in New York City in the early seventy s. The modern version did. Yeah. Right. Do you have info on the ancient version? Apparently it goes back to 1649. Okay. When a guy named Gerard Winston Lee, I believe he's from Surrey, England, he started a group called the Diggers, and they were basically the first gorilla gardeners. They just went into places that they didn't own, plots of land they didn't own, and started planting I wonder if they were planting crops, actually, to feed they were planting vegetables. Yeah, right. Well, the modern version started in the early 70s in New York, and there was a resident there named Liz Christie, and she founded the Green Gorillas, and they started hitting up local lots and planting flowers. And the first one, I believe, was at the corner of a Bowery in Houston Street, which I know well. And did you know Bowery is actually Dutch for farm? Really? Yeah. Maybe that's why they picked it. I found it on the Green Gorillas website. Oh, cool. Yeah. So Christy and the Green Gorillas actually kind of had a hard fought struggle at first. That place at the corner of Bowery in Houston, that little house in that little neglected park that no one cared about. All of a sudden, now that they're tending to it and planning stuff, they had a fight on their hands with the city, I believe. I didn't realize that, actually. Yeah, they had something of a struggle, and finally the city gave in, saw the error of its ways after about a year and legitimized it, and it became this community garden. And now it's a memorial park dedicated to Liz Christie. Very cool. I'm in New York. I have to go by she was the one who originated seed bombs. Yes. These are really cool. And originally she was using condoms filled with tomato seeds or some kind of seeds and like, compost, and then hurling them into a vacant lot or something like that. And the condom will disintegrate. No. So they didn't work. It worked. I think the water would get into it or something like that. Or maybe she slid it. But even after the stuff planted, you still have a prophylactic laying around which really vacant up a lot. Have you been to New York City, though? I have, but not since I was young. Yeah, the condom on the street isn't the strangest thing right now. I've seen quite a few, but there are greener ways to do it. Right. Yeah. I think nowadays the seed bomb has evolved into a clay mixture with, like, some clay and compost and seed and water, and you just form it into a little ball and literally, you can toss these from your car. And it has to be something, obviously, that can grow from not having to dig and plant it into the ground. But yeah, it's a seat bomb. Pretty cool. Yeah. And apparently they're dried out, and then when it rains, the thing kind of reconstitute or dissolves, and then the seeds are spread and there's this compost that feeds it. Right. Ideally, I think the seed bombs are done either in the rain or before it rains. Right. Before it rains. That's very cool. Yeah. And like you said, you can throw them from a moving car, just kind of drive around and you're just gorilla gardening. Gorilla gardening. Spreading beauty. Yeah, exactly. I like that. I saw a cool video on the Guardians website of a guy named Richard Reynolds. Yes. Do you see him making sea bombs? Yes. There's a great how to video. If any of you guys out there in podcast land are interested in making your own seed bombs, there's a great how to step by step video with Richard Reynolds. Right. And you're absolutely right. He's a cool dude. He's a very cool dude. While we're on Richard, he was the founder of the London Gorilla Gardening Movement, from what I understand, and it's a great website, guerrilla Gardening.org. Yeah. It's pretty much like the definitive gorilla gardening website I know. In a Google search, if you type in Gorilla gardening, it's definitely the first one that comes up, which is good. It seems the most legitimate as well. Yeah, he actually I read a cool thing on his website today where he had been taken care of. It may have been his own apartment complex. Yeah. The horse and elephant or the buggy and something. I love the names for the apartment. Pretty cool. It's very cool. So, yeah, he had been taking care of his own garden there and eventually got the residents had been paying money toward maintenance, lawn maintenance. And basically the residents started to say, hey, this is kind of fraudulent. This guy has been doing this for free. We're paying money for nothing. And he actually got refunded. The 90 residents, he got their money refunded for a three year period. It was about \u00a3100, and everything was going swimmingly after that. He had some sort of, at least verbal consensus between the paid groundkeepers, the building's owners, and himself that he would take care of this area, this common area. Right. And he's doing a heck of a job, the guy. He's a great gardener to begin with, but as long as he gave the management a month notice that he was going to stop so they could get that company back in there to do their terrible job of taking care of it. Right. So he's got this agreement, and then all of a sudden things just go sideways and he's got problems again. And the one problem it's mind boggling to me, if you have a vacant lot, if you have a common area, if there's a place where it's just being neglected and then somebody very benevolently just starts taking care of it, plants it, what's the problem? I know, but the problem is there is gorilla gardening also kind of inadvertently serves as a slap in the face to people who are very interested in rules and procedure and know, like, their county coinforcements phone number by heart. Right. And that's all you have to do, call code enforcement. And all of a sudden, this great act is now criminal. Right. Which it was in the first place, but everybody looks the other way. Right. Did you see the video on his site where they got shut down? No, I didn't see that one. Yeah, it's on YouTube as well, and it's on his website. And they were actually tending to an area underneath the street sign, I believe, in London, on the corner. And at night, usually it's gardening at night. Thanks to REM, we can give them a little shout out, and they do this undercover the night quite often, and the cops came by and they shut him down. It's all on tape. And he gets into a little minor argument with them that they're beautifying the area and the cops. And of course, these are cops in London, so it's all very polite. In the United States, it would go down much differently. Sure. And eventually they actually left because they threatened to arrest them, but they snuck back a couple of hours later and finished the job. Good for them. Yeah. And yes, I noticed there's, like, clips and photo documentaries of him all over the world doing, like, gorilla gardening. Yes, and it is all over the world. I saw that there were sites in German and Australia, and here in the United States, there are a lot of groups, and like you were pointing out, or I pointed out, we don't have one here in Atlanta. But you mentioned that you don't necessarily have to have a group, an organized group that does this in a website. You can do it on your own. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't get much more low tech than seed bombs. Sure. And you can, like you said, just drive around, throw them out the window, see what happens. But yeah, you could go so far as to organize a group. Right. Well, which is kind of the cool thing. I think it goes a little bit beyond just the gardening and beautification. A lot of times it's bringing the community together in a cool way, just like when there's groups that go around and pick up trash, that kind of thing. Yeah. Now, I know on Reynolds site there's something called troop digs. I think it's like the forum. You can go and find out who's digging in your area, where they're going to be, that kind of thing, or who you need to contact. And some people, from what I've read about rental t is completely into beautification. This is only motive. Right. But there's also a very political aspect to it, to guerrilla gardening. It can be a form of protest sure. Of capitalism, of urban blight, that kind of thing. The city won't take care of itself, so we will. Right, exactly. And also, like, food costs, it can be a protest of that. Right. And actually, there's this guy in, I believe, Boulder at Colorado this past summer. His name was Scott Hoffenberg, and he got swept with a $2,000 a day fine for gorilla gardening. Really? And the reason he was doing it, he said, was because food prices have gotten out of hand. So he and a neighbor took up this little right away, you know, the little strips in between the sidewalk and the street. They just planted a bunch of cucumbers and tomatoes and squash and all this kind of thing. And one of those people with rules and procedures called code enforcement. So luckily, the county said they're going to try to work with the guy, and I didn't hear what happened. But I have a feeling that if you're a gorilla gardener and you're gardening actually right out front of your house right. And they're threatening a $2,000 fine, that would probably go a long way to get you to comply with those rules and procedures. Yeah. I'd like to pick someone's brain who's really against this. Yeah. I want to meet the person who sees what's going on and goes home and is just fuming. How dare they plant those flowers right there. I'm just curious what's happening there. Yeah. And I don't think I could explain it, but I know for a fact I've met people like that before. Yeah, it's always a little unsettling. These are probably the same people that are the neighborhood associations that just flip out when someone's mailbox looks different than the rest. Yeah, those people are a lot of fun. I used to have a friend who lived in my subdivision. His family routinely got letters from the neighborhood association to move the water skis out from in front of the garage and that kind of thing. Crazy. It was weird. Yeah. Okay. So, Chuck, both of us have expressed an interest in gorilla gardening. Let's say somebody who's listening to us wants to get started. Not everybody's against this. Right. And actually, from what I understand, local nurseries have a tendency to really kind of support this kind of thing. Yeah. Donating the half dead plants that nobody's going to buy anyway, that may or may not come back to life. Why not? So what should people look for when they're doing this, but I just want to point out this very nice impersonation of a half dead plant. You'd like to help me? Yeah, I wish people could have seen that. Well, first thing you want to do is find out identify your location of where you want to do this. So look for, like you said, sometimes there's little strips of land between the street and the sidewalk that are full of trash or grown over with weeds. Those are good spots, corners that have those. And then you want to find out what kind of plants you want. Indigenous species are good, non invasive, non invasive. You don't want to plant the new kudzu or anything. Right. Which, for you non Southern nurse, is a very fast growing weed that just takes over absolutely everything. Right. It can kill an 80 foot oak tree in a year or two. Right. Thank you, Japan, for that. Exactly. So, yeah, you want to pick out the right plants. And also, it's not like you just plant this and then you just leave forever. If you really want to do it. Right, you want to upkeep it. So if you don't have a ton of time, you want to pick some plants that require as little upkeep as possible. Yeah, like drought resistant plants. Because of the Law of Commons, everybody wants to take as much out of this common pool and put as little back as possible. Right. Well, as far as economists would say. Exactly. So, yes, if you have drought resistant plants, you can leave it up to the universe to take care of it. Right. I hate that ad. I know. Yes. You've got your plants you need to get your plans. You can ask for donations, or you can buy them yourself if you've got extra cash, gather up a little team. Or if you just want to do it yourself. If it's doable by yourself. And then you go out. A lot of people do it at night here in Atlanta. I think in my neighborhood, I could go out in the middle of the day and no one would. Oh, totally. No, same here. I think, as well. There's plenty of lots around my house that I could go. Yeah, me too. Let's do that. Well, maybe we should. All right. And if any of you out there interested in getting into gorilla gardening, we would suggest checking out Gorillagardening.org Richard Rentalsight. He also has a book based on the advice of Chairman Mao and Shea Gavara, but about gorilla gardening. And of course, you would also be interested in visiting our humble website. You can type in gorilla gardening in the search bar on howstep works.com. And Chuck, what do you have for us? Do we have any listener mail? Yes, we have some listener mail. Listener mail time. So this letter, Josh, comes to us from a lady named Leah Johnson. Great. And Leah says, I liked how eco anxiety works. Article. And I also liked how you mentioned the vulture vomit at the end. Oh, yes, this is a good letter, right? I have, in fact, been puked on by a turkey vulture, and it was disgusting. I was part of a raptor rehabilitation program and we had outdoor housing for them, which we cleaned out once a week. Every time I went to get the turkey vulture out so we could clean it out or just to give him some time outside, he'd panic and puke all over the place, including on me. Fortunately, I always had on gloves when handling the birds, so the acidity wasn't so much a problem. It's a terrible smell from the bird of prey diet we were feeding them. Anyway, thanks for making my days better by giving me something interesting to listen to. And we love you. That's great. Well, Leah, because you send in your listener email, and because of your selfless care of birds of prey, we're going to send you our set of How Stuff Works steak knives for you and yours. We hope you enjoy them. And if anyone else out there wants to send us an email, you can send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Send it. 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?" | |
4163bfb0-53a3-11e8-bdec-2b51afc8e98d | The Great Stink: The Stench So Bad They Gave It A Name | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-great-stink-the-stench-so-bad-they-gave-it-a-n | In the summer of 1858, a heatwave dried up the Thames River to a trickle in London. As centuries’ worth of human waste, animal carcasses and other nasty things cooked in the sun, a stench arose that was so horrific it got its own name: The Great Stink. | In the summer of 1858, a heatwave dried up the Thames River to a trickle in London. As centuries’ worth of human waste, animal carcasses and other nasty things cooked in the sun, a stench arose that was so horrific it got its own name: The Great Stink. | Thu, 14 Mar 2019 15:54:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=15, tm_min=54, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=73, tm_isdst=0) | 33710603 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And today we have guest producer Josh sitting in. Not me, another Josh. Another Josh. Josh. Yeah. Do you know what his nickname is? Little Josh, the great stink. That is a terrible nickname, Chuck. We're just kidding, of course. Sorry, Josh. I'm sorry for Chuck. Everyone knows I'm the great Stink. I don't know about that either. I've never once smelled you in the more than decade that we've worked together. I've never known you to smell fouly. Wow. All right. That means I'm keeping my distance. But we've been close, buddy. You still don't stink. Sure. Certainly not a great stink, but that's neither here nor there. We're not talking about a great stink yet, are we? No. I don't even know what you're talking about. Right, exactly. You don't even know what it is that you brought up. No, we are talking, to start, Chuck, about a little city called London Town. Yes. Cross the pond in Great Britain, the United Kingdom, England, that whole area over there. And London has been around a very long time. It's been around since at least the Romans kind of came and set up shop, right? Yeah. By the way, since you brought that up, I hate to get sidetracked already, but my good friend Rob from college, Rob Elsie, my roommate and one of the smartest guys I know, texted me the other day and said, by the way, Alexander the Great was neither Greek nor Roman. He was Macedonian. I saw somebody else emailed that in. I was like, Greek? Still closer. Yeah. So anyway, shout out to Rob. Way to go, Rob. Realtime corrections. Yes, it's way to go, Rob. All right, so London's been around for a couple of years is what you were saying. It is. And it kind of slowly grew, and more and more people were like, hey, I like this town. There's a lot going on here. Fish and chips are great. Eventually it will produce some pretty neat people. I'm going to settle down here. I couldn't think of a single one as an example, but Mary Pop is going to show up eventually. Thanks, Chuck. So people started settling and accumulating, and it became like a pretty substantial city by 1600, right? Yeah, big time. But then the 19th century came, and all of a sudden, this is at the peak of the British Empire. The early 19th century came along, and London just exploded in population and industry right before and then during and then right after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, london really just grew as a result of that. And all of a sudden, there was something like 3 million people living in London by the 1850s, which made it the most densely populated city on the planet, from what I understand. At least it had the largest population, from what I understand. Yeah. And you know what? That means? Yes, I do. That means if there's how many millions? You said 3,000,003 and 1850, that's 3 million butt holes. Yes. MLS human buttholes. Humans expelling things? No, just 3 million humans. And then you've got horse buttholes and all sorts of other animal buttholes, pig butt holes, and they're just all they're all pooping all the time. Right. Pooping every once in a while, they catch a foodborne illness and they start throwing up too. Sure. There's a lot of tinkle coming out of other holes. There's a lot of excrement that was being generated in London all of a sudden, and there had been for a very long time, but all of a sudden, it reached, like a critical mass. And up to this point, London enjoyed what were called Roman sewers, which are basically just a ditch in the ground that were meant to collect rainwater. Right. And if you had to poop or pee or vomit or something like that, and you were human in your house, you probably had a cesspool, which was basically a pit in the basement. Sometimes if you were fancy, you might have, like, a cistern or a canister or something like that, and you would go poop or vomit or pee into this hole. And then the hope was that the hole was big enough and your family was small enough in number that the pooper, pee, or vomit would decay and get absorbed into the surrounding ground faster than you could fill it up. That was how they dealt with surface water and sewage. Then you had a hole that you pooped and puked and peed in, and then you had ditches. Conveying rainwater to the Thames is where the rainwater was supposed to end up. But it wasn't just rain water, was it, that ended up in the Thames? No. I don't think we can just breeze past these cesspools. They were purposely designed to overflow into the streets eventually. Yes. They figured out that we're getting to the point where we have enough people, that our cesspools are not decaying fast enough, that they're starting to overflow. Yeah. And if you were poor and lived in the basement or the ground floor of an apartment building or something, you might very well see the stuff seeping into your household. Sometimes, if that's if someone's gone or if it's an empty building, that stuff would build up and methane would become trapped in there, and there would be literal explosions from the trap. Methane of people's poo. A poop explosion? Yeah, it was really bad. And then when you talk about the Tim's River, the Tim's a tideway, so that means that the tides affect the water flow. And so it's not like sewage. They thought, like, let's just send it out to the sea and it's all good. But what would happen is stuff would just kind of slosh back and forth because of the tides. And the end result was the Tim's River was and when I say disgusting, I mean capital D. Disgusting. Yes. Dangerously disgusting. Capital D. Dangerously too. Yeah. So, Chuck, I don't know how they didn't realize that where London was on the Thames was what's called the tideway. So it is affected by the tide. And not only is it affected by the tide, meaning when the tide rises, the estuary and the sea basically comes up into London, but there's also still water coming from the headwaters of the Thames. So at high tide, sometimes the Thames would overflow its banks. That would get so high. Right. So not only did you have the Thames itself just basically turning into, like, a washing machine on the agitation cycle, stewing and mixing up garbage and remains because there are a lot of dead human and animal bodies in the much more than poop and pee. Yeah. All that sewage, everything that people didn't want anymore, they just put into the Thames. But unfortunately, it wasn't carried out to the sea. It was just kind of mixed together, and it would be mixed together and kind of turned into a solution that was suspended in the water and then eventually some of it would settle to the bottom. But you have hundreds and hundreds of years of waste just cycling right outside of London. And like you said, eventually, by the 19th century, apparently, it really turned. Starting in about 1830, they found records that as late as 1800, people were still catching and eating salmon out of the Thames. Well, it was okay back then. It was fine. I don't know about that. By 1830, something had changed. It had just again reached that critical mass. Kind of like do you ever see that south park where they go to the water park? No. There's, like, some scientists who realize that the p to water ratio is about to hit a tipping point, and once it tips past that point, everything's going to turn into p, and it happens and it's disgusting. That's kind of what happened to the 1830s to the Thames. It reached a critical point and tipped into just like, that dangerously disgusting VAT of water that was just hanging around in London at the time. Yeah. So there's a very famous scientist named Michael Faraday who made his name in other realms of science, but he actually worked for the Royal Institution in 1855, when he basically started doing an investigation. He went down to that river, like, got in it in a boat, I would imagine. Yeah. And did various tests and recorded a bunch of stuff. And then one of his tests was like, he would drop white paper in there and he said, after this paper gets in, like, an inch below the surface, you can't even see it. And poop is basically, like, bubbling up to the surface. Like, you can see human excrement on the surface down here. Yeah. Like where the Thames is flowing past, like, the structure of a bridge that is jutting out of the water and it's being cut up by that bridge. The flow is it's roiling up. This muck and disgusting stuff is just rolling up in clouds that he said, we're visible even in this opaque of a water. And he wrote all this stuff up into an article letter, I guess, that he sent to the Times newspaper that he called Observations on the Fifth of the Thames. And this was in 1855, I think it was published. And he basically says, if we just keep going this way, we should not be surprised if something really bad happens. Like a hot spell comes along and reminds us that we really missed a chance to do something about this and it's now too late. So that's 1855 and that's faraday. At the same time, there's another thing going on, kind of off to the side, where a scientist named John Snow, who actually knew a lot, it turns out he was jokes. That was a Game of Thrones joke. Was? Yeah. Didn't somebody say like, you know, nothing John Snow? Oh, I don't know. I quit on the show a while ago. But I think that might have been first season. But anyway but it did make an impact. I think somebody said, you know nothing. Jon Snow I don't know. I just saw it on Twitter years back. They said, Winter is coming, right? They said Red Wedding. I don't know. Those are the only things I remember. There you go. Just say Red Wedding. That's it. So this John Snow guy, I think he had an H in his name, which was his parents put in to differentiate them from the Game of Thrones cat. That's right. He was basically one of the world's first epidemiologists. And he's working feverishly at the time because there was something called the Victorian plague, which is cholera. And cholera was a waterborne illness that you did not want. You could literally vomit and poop yourself to death in a matter of hours. You would lose so much, you would dehydrate that quickly. And so Jon Snow was like, there's a cholera outbreak and I suspect it's in the water. But he went against the grain at the time because during the 1850s, Chuck, everyone thought that you caught diseases from the smell of things. It was called the miasma theory. That's right. People thought that and they thought that possibly that's where even cholera was coming from. Cholera was nothing new. There was an epidemic in the 1830s that killed more than 6000 people. There was a second outbreak kind of shortly before this in the late forties, that killed 14,000. So that's 20. And then between 53 and 54, another ten. So that's 30,000 Londoners killed by cholera. And there are miasmiths that think, yeah, it's from smelling this stuff in the air. Right. So people are trying to treat the air. They poured something called calcium or chloride of lime, which amounts to basically pool chlorine today into the Thames, like $150,000 worth of this stuff to try to cover up the stench that didn't work. And actually it's made the Thames more toxic. But Jon Snow is running around, he's like, no, there's some other method of transmission. It has nothing to do with the smell. Smell is just a byproduct. And he actually did an outbreak map of cholera and traced it back to a particular well, a public well that had been dug unbeknownst to the well diggers within about three or 4ft of an abandoned cesspool that had been built over and forgotten. And the cesspool that contained cholera laden fecal bacteria into the public well was making people sick. And John Snow figured it out and he's considered one of the earliest epidemiologists as a result. All right, let's take a break and I need to go wash my hands and then we'll come back and talk about what happened in the summer of 1858, right after this. All right? So the tim's is in bad shape. A few very smart people realize this. They're trying to raise a little hay about it. Nothing much is happening. People are getting cholera, poor people are dying. But because I was about to say, because it's Britain, but a lot of countries back then may have handled this the same way. It really until it hit kind of the politicians and the rich and the famous, is when things really are going to change. And in the summer of 1858, a heat wave is what really changed things, because the heat combined with what was going on in that river really made what was called the great stink, capital G, capital S in London. And it was happening all up and down the Thames, but it was happening very close to where what was it, Westminster, where the politicians huddled and made their little rules. Yeah. They basically couldn't go to work. They were like, you know what? This is starting to affect our government. We're using scented handkerchiefs. None of this is working. So it took that to be able to it'd be like in America if there was something going on. And no one reacted until poop was flowing up the steps of the White House, basically. Right? Basically. And the irony of the whole thing is that had it not been for the persistence of the miasma theory of disease, parliament might have not actually ended up acting, because you have to put yourself in this. So the stink is so bad that we're talking about it 150 or 60 years later. Right. That's how bad it was. It was a legendarily bad, offensive stench. And not only was it a terrible, wretching smell, supposedly people miles away would catch scent of it and throw up, like, just throw up where they were standing. It was that bad, because, again, we're talking hundreds of years of human waste and animal waste and decaying bodies and just all sorts of nastiness intestines, like, you know, what they did when they were preparing animals for slaughter. It went to the same place. Exactly. And again, this is hundreds of years of this stuff and the Thames has slowed to a trickle because it's a dry spell. And now, because of this heat wave, it's cooking. The Thames is cooking, all this nasty stuff is cooking and the stench is coming off. So on top of it being that bad of a smell, you also have to put yourself in the position of the people who are living at the time who believe that smells cause disease. Right. That cholera and typhus and malaria. If you smell it, you may have just caught it. So they are terrified of this. But had Jon Snow, had people listen to him and realize that no, you get it from actually drinking the water, which is what they're doing. Right. But Parliament may not have acted because Parliament and some of the wealthier people in London, they got their water from north of the city, piped in through aqueduct, so they had clean drinking water. It was the lower classes. They were drinking the water drawn straight from the Thames. So they were drinking the same water that they were throwing their waste into because they didn't realize that there was such a thing as the fecal oral transmission of waterborne illnesses. Everybody thought it was just the stench. Yeah. So Parliament is notoriously very slow to get anything done, like a lot of governments. And then it took about 18 days, which was super fast. I think it was a record. Yeah, I think so, too. And they created a bill, passed this bill and signed it into law that basically said, we need to basically redo the river here. I don't know what it's going to take. I don't even think they knew how much it was going to cost at the time, but they knew that the great stink had to stop. Right. So, again, this was after it kind of like you said, the poop just piled up at the doorstep. Right? Yeah. But they unfortunately, just like a couple of years before, I think maybe 1855, they created a new department up to this time, like the water works, and I think the sewage works were privately held. But Parliament had just recently created a new department called the Metropolitan Board of Works, and they had designated a chief engineer by the name of Joseph Bazalgette. Is that how you would say it? Sure. We're going with Basil Get, then, Chuck, if you're on board with that. Yes. So Joseph Bezel Get would turn out to be one of the most celebrated engineers in Western history. And he just so happened to have kind of gotten on the Michael Faraday trolley and be like, yes, we need to do something about the Thames. And the solution is a sewer. It's a modernized sewer. So he had spent years already, drawing up plans and trying to get them implemented to no avail. And now, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, within 18 days of the great stink developing, the Parliament says, hey, bezel get, go get your plans, we're going to put them into use, go raise some money, say about $3 million, which is like, I think, $430,000,000 today, \u00a33 million, and get to work as fast as you can. Yeah. Before this, before the Metropolitan Board of Works, they didn't even have a group that was even funded to tackle anything like this. And then once they even had the Metropolitan Board, it wasn't really funded yet, so that's why they had to go out and raise money. So the hiring of Baselgat was basilgate. Is he Italian? No, I think his family originated in revolutionary France. So let's say basil gett. Yeah. So the hiring of him was fortuitous because he knew what he was doing. He was definitely the guy to come in and take care of this and his plan. It was so revolutionary that it's still in its simplicity, though, that it's still sort of the basis for how things work today, all these years later. Yeah. I mean, not only was the revolutionary, was that well built as well, that sewer built in from, I think, the 1870s forms the backbone of London's metropolitan sewer system, still to this day. It was that well made. Yeah. So he's like, here's what we'll do. He says, we're going to catch this water and the waste, like rainwater and stuff, surface water, before it gets to the river. And everyone said, Good start, and he said, and then we're going to just reroute it, basically, we're going to run it parallel to the river and combine these sewers together and divert this stuff downstream. And again, the plan, sadly, is still to divert it out to the sea, but just not to the sea, such that it would wash right back in with the tides. Exactly. And most importantly, where it dumped out into the Thames was way below the populated area. So it was out of sight, out of mind, but it was still I mean, that is definitely a mark against it, but considering what he had to work with, it was quite revolutionary, the idea of catching all this stuff and moving it away from the city to keep the Thames clean. Right, all right, so let's take another break and we'll come back and talk more about Basil Gets plan that actually worked right after this. So, Chuck, you said the main part of Basil Gets plan was to basically build a subterranean sewer that ran parallel to the Thames. That was big. 82 miles worth. I saw somewhere else, 1010 miles. I don't know where they got that. Let's go with 82 miles, because it sounds much more realistic, but in parts were big enough to run a train through. And in fact, some of these underground sewer tunnels. They're like, well, it's also built an underground subway system at the same time. So it was a massive project. And those use gravity. They had like a two foot drop per mile, which is a pretty good drop. So they would conduct the sewage and rainwater down toward the Thames, but not at the Thames, using gravity. And then smaller ones were egg shaped, so that they were narrower at the bottom. So that would kind of get the flow going even faster, too. So that's the main part. That's the bulk of this project. But it's certainly not the whole thing by a long shot. No, not at all. So they realize that even if you build a house that runs on gravity, there might be low lying areas of your sewage pipe that eventually cause you problems. I've been through this myself. It's no fun. No one wants to deal with poop, whether it's Victorian London or modern day Atlanta. And so, like today, you have to pump that stuff out. So they built these giant pumping stations, a few different ones. Crossness, Abbey, Mills, Chelsea and Stepford. And they made these things really nice looking, which was probably a pretty good move, especially Abbey Mills and Crossness. Really lovely buildings. They kind of look like cathedrals, which is ironic because they were pumping out poop the whole time. And this is really key there because, like I said, this low lying you've got to take care of all of the problem or else it's just going to magnify. So it wasn't good enough just to be like, let's get 80% of it out, not worry about the low levels or the low lying areas. So they really had to pump it all out. Yeah. So they built these beautiful pumping stations. One of the other things that they did was they reclaimed a tremendous amount of land from the Thames. At the time, the Thames just had natural banks, right? Sure. Like the river just kind of came up to the city and that was where you stopped, or that's where the building started. What they did was they built massive embankments that started with sea walls and then were filled in that contained the sewers, contain the subway tunnels. That was just basically extending the city out into the Thames. And it did one thing, it gave you a lot more space. It also covered up the tunnels, but it also very wisely brought the banks of the Thames closer together in those stretches through the city. So the Thames went from wider to narrower, which had the effect of increasing its flow through London. It used to flow much more slowly than it does now. But one of the ways that they kind of make sure that all that stuff washes through London and gets out to the sea is by bringing the banks closer together to narrow it, to push the same amount of volume of water through a narrower spot which speeds the whole thing up. Yeah. So if you go to the Victoria Embankment today, basilgatt actually was knighted in 1875 because of these achievements that he made as an engineer. And that's where you're going to find the monument to him. And he was very funny. Like, if you ever read any interviews with them, he just kind of talks about what a drag it was to do that job and how hard it was, just sort of in a very understated English way. But that's where the monument is. And by 1866, it was evident that this plan was working because there was another cholera outbreak. And the only part of London that was really hit hard was the Eastern, which was the only section of London that wasn't connected to the sewer system. So they realized, this is obviously working, it's going to stop this disease. It's clearly not just airborne. So that proved that correct too. Yeah, definitely support I think Louis Pasteur by that time had formed his germ theory that Joseph Lister was really starting to demonstrate it in the 1870s. So, yeah, it was pretty evident that and I think the microscope really kind of showed, like, yeah, there are such things as germs that whole myasma theories out the window. Yeah. But basilgate was really smart because he had foresight. He wasn't like, let me just solve this problem. Like, London has this many people and said, let me build this thing to handle this many people. He built it without on the future and said, let's build it to accommodate a population growth of 50%. And that happened. Within 30 years, London's population doubled again. But because of the foreside of Basilgatt, that thing still remained pretty strong at the time. It did. I mean, think about that, right? So he was like, okay, we'll make it so that four and a half million people can use this thing and it'll do just fine. He must have thought it would take forever to get to that number. And they reached 6 million in 30 years. That's crazy. That's a crazy amount of population growth. And yet still Basil gets designed, worked, and one of the reasons it worked was because he had a fail safe. And I guess you would call it a fail safe, but if there were a lot of water that suddenly hit in the form of rain or something like that, like a flash flood, remember, the sewers connected sewage and rainwater. So you didn't want the sewers overflowing into the streets because that would mean sewage was overflowing in the streets. Right. What he designed were basically outfalls or overflows, so that if there were a sudden large amount of rainwater entered the sewers, it would be directed to spew into the Thames, which is not the greatest thing you wanted to happen, but it would happen infrequently enough because the sewers were so big that it was an acceptable fail safe. Right. And it worked. And that's why we added more and more and more Londoners using the same sewer system, because it had those outflows. Well, unfortunately, now I've reached the point, thanks to things like climate change and the fact that it's creeping up on 10 million Londoners, that the sewer system is now fairly routinely discharging raw sewage and storm water any time a heavy rain comes along. And don't get anybody started on the fatbergs either, because those are just making the problem even worse. So now there has to be another update. And they're working on that right now, too. Yeah, but London still I mean, the Tims is known as the cleanest river that runs through a major city despite this. Really? Yeah, much because of the work of Basil Get. But this is a problem. There's these 50 overflows happening every year no one's happy about. So they're underway, I think, started a couple of years ago in 2016, that the tideway tunnel scheme, also known as the super sewer, should be completed in 2023. And what their goal basically is are these overflows that are, like I said, around 50 times a year to get those down to no more than four every year. I got you. Which is good. Quarterly dump. Quarterly overflow. Not bad. That beats almost once a week. Yes. You can just make it like a national holiday and everybody can leave town if you could schedule it. Yeah. So they've been working on this for a while, and it's one of the biggest civil engineering projects in the world, probably. Yeah. Or in world history, maybe. What's funny about it is that Basil Got created the sewer to catch the sewage before it reached the Thames. They're creating the super sewer. The tideway tunnel to catch the overflow from Basel Gets sewers before it reaches the Thames. Yes. So his system is still the foundation. Yes. I mean, they've definitely added to it and improved on it, I guess, sometime in the 20th century. Stopped just pumping raw sewage into the Thames and started treating it instead. And then they still discharged the treated water into the Thames, but it's now going through a treatment process that wasn't there before. But yeah, that thing designed by Basel Get, this made of bricks, like 300 something million bricks, is still the foundation of the sewer system in London. Pretty amazing. I think so, too, man. All because of the great stink of 1058, because of a heat wave that came through and cooked several hundred years of poop and pea and vomit and dead bodies. This makes me want to do maybe a short stuff on when the Kioga River in Ohio burned river is on fire. That's not a good sign. No, it's not. Poor Cleveland. Everybody just kind of hung their head and like yeah, totally. Yeah. Okay, good short stuff, I think. I agree. Chuck, in the meantime, while we're whipping up that short stuff for you, if you. Want to know more about the great stink, head on over to the Internet and read up on it, because there's plenty of great articles, including some of the ones we use today. And since I said that, everybody, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. Started listening to stuff you should know sometime. Last summer. Have been hooked ever since. I've been working my way back through the catalog and probably listen to a couple of hundred, listen to some of the other shows you guys talk about, but they feel too scripted. Your show is really well done, educational and entertaining. Thank you. Love, Andrew. No kidding. There's more. In a few different episodes, you guys use the word Yankee a lot. New England. Vampires for one. Monument removal come to mind. And by the way, if we use Yankee, we're either quoting or our tongue is in our cheeks. We're not like really saying Yankee. No. Like loving. Yeah, no one really says that. I mean, there are people that still say that. Anger. Yeah, but they're rednecks. I'm from New England and have lived all over New England, and I'm still in New England. I wanted to share with you all my favorite definition of Yankee. If you're from the south. And by the way, I should preface this by saying I don't get it. If you're from the south, a Yankee is someone from the north. If you're from the north, a Yankee is someone from New England. If you're from New England, a Yankee is someone from Vermont who eats pie for breakfast with a knife. Do you get that right? No. I think what Andrew doesn't realize is that the person who told him that is insane and that the only person who gets it is the person who told them that. Well, he said this comes from an old timey farmer in Vermont that I used to work for. Yes. Great pie with the knife and left to himself a lot. Glad you got out of there alive, Andrew. Yeah, that's all. Thanks, Andrew. If anyone out there can shed some light on Andrew's farmers friends joke, we'd love to know. You can get in touch with us, go to stuffyshow.com and check out our social links there. And you can also just send us a good old fashioned email to stuffpodcast@howstofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.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 Kilgarref and Georgia Hardstarkk, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you. It listen to new episodes of My Favorite Murder one week early 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/2016-09-08-sysk-animal-personhood-final.mp3 | Do Animals Have Natural Rights? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/do-animals-have-natural-rights | Animals have had legal protection from unnecessary harm since the 19th century. Yet what harm is necessary is open to interpretation and animals continue to suffer and die for science and commerce. Should they have the right to freedom from humans? | Animals have had legal protection from unnecessary harm since the 19th century. Yet what harm is necessary is open to interpretation and animals continue to suffer and die for science and commerce. Should they have the right to freedom from humans? | Thu, 08 Sep 2016 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=252, tm_isdst=0) | 58738812 | 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. I'm Jerry, and this is stuff you should know. Part two about animals. A rare suite. Yeah. Good one. And you wrote this for your buddies at Primer? Yeah. Let's give a little shout out to Primer Stories. So, Primer Stories are basically doing for the interactive medium the same thing that podcast did for Radio and Ted Talks did for speaking engagements. Wow. And I wrote an essay for them for season four. And you can check it out at primerstories. Comsysk. Go check it out. It's pretty neat, but it ties into animal rights and humans. But you did put this together, correct? Right, I put together this episode and then I wrote a separate essay yes. Based on my research that it's different. Nice. I'm Josh Clark, and I did my book report on Moby Dick. Yes. Luckily, the Primer dudes, Joe and Tim, kept it from devolving into that. Well, this was fantastic. I just wanted to say that. Well done. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. So I guess we don't need to set anything up if you haven't listened to the one on animal testing. Yes. Stop right here. Yeah, just go do that and then welcome to part two. Yeah. How awkward was that? I thought it was pretty succinct. Okay, not awkward. So tell me a little bit about your buddy Aristotle. So, Aristotle, we mentioned him in the last episode. We're going to say that a lot. Yeah, but Aristotle was one of the first dudes to experiment on animals. I think I called him a big dummy. You did? As a joke. Yeah, he's fine. He was a smart dude. He was. But one of the things that he did not only experimenting on animals, he also came up with a hierarchy of animals based on the souls he anticipated each possessed. He said kitty cat pretty good. Dog, much better. What is that? Is it Czechoslovakia? I have no idea. Now? I guess it would just be check now. Yeah. I don't know what that was, honestly. From like the was not Greco Roman. Okay. Maybe Albanian. Sure. Okay, so Aristotle the Albanian, comes up with this hierarchy. And at the top of the hierarchy, guess who? Humans. Yeah, of course. Humans have all three kinds of souls. The vegetative soul, the sensitive soul, and the rational soul. Yes. We possess all three of those souls. Therefore, we're at the top of the hierarchy of all the organisms on planet Earth. Below us are animals. And they've got the first two. They've got the vegetative soul and the sensitive soul. Which means that they like to lay around and read romance novels. That's right. And then you've got plants. And plants obviously, have the vegetative soul. So what he's describing are the different, I guess, life forces that he expected organisms to have. And because of that, there was a hierarchy that was established. And because of that hierarchy that Aristotle came up with we still view animals in a certain way today. We still basically follow that same hierarchy that he made 2500 years ago or so. Yeah. And the whole kind of point of this episode is kind of based on that. Whether or not animals have a soul and where they rank or maybe should rank. I started going down the rabbit hole myself of what a soul is and a human even. Well, you're not the first to do that, of course. Yeah. What did you come up with? What did you come up with? Everyone wants to hear, including me and Jerry. No. I don't know. I'm still struggling with what I believe even at my advanced age. And I think I will till the day I die, probably and become worm dirt. Right. So that's one indication of what I believe your last words are. Oh, no. But that idea whether or not animals do have a soul is nothing new. You point out, very astutely that JudeoChristian wise, they do not think that animals have souls. No. And even humans have long held kind of a brutal attitude toward animals. Like, forget animals, just kick them in the face. I don't care. That's a little harsh. But the idea that humans have dominion over animals very much a part of the Judeo Christian ethic. Yeah. And should have dominion. And the animals don't have souls. And that's one reason why humans have dominion. That's right. It turns out the Mormons actually are one of the few groups in the west, religiously speaking, that do believe that animals survive into the afterlife. Really? Mormons and then Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus. Big time Hindus. Sure. And Jains. They believe that the best way to save your soul is to protect other souls. So, like, you'll see a janus with a little they have little brooms and they'll wipe down or they'll brush off a seat before they sit on it because they don't want to accidentally sit on any bug and take its life. Well, that's nice. That's protection of other souls, for sure. Not like the cockroach. Right? They'll still kill a kukarachi. Oh, man. I had a funny cockroach incident last night. Like, I laughed, belly laughed for 10 minutes. Did the cockroach laugh? Well, there was a cockroach in the room at some point that got away. And later on that night, Emily and I were in bed and I was on my computer and she was reading or something and she looked up and on the ceiling, it was right above her. And she said, oh, there's that cockroach. Which I was shocked that she was that lazy fair about it. Right. I went, Why are you not freaking out? I was like, that thing is about to fall on you. And right when I said you, he moved and fell right on her. And it's so funny that she shrieked like a small child and jumped off the bed quicker than I've ever seen her move. Scared my dogs. I jumped and ran, but I didn't shriek, which I thought was very interesting dichotomy. And I killed it. And it was just very funny that she was just like, oh, there's that cockroach. Like, who are you? You're not the Emily I know. Right, exactly. Why aren't you running? Was she super tired or something? She was, but yeah, it's very strange. I think she learned a lesson that a cockroach on the ceiling is not on the ceiling for long. Means you roll out of bed. Yes. Immediately. So anyway, that's my cockroach story. That's a good one. Judaism, they believe that. Well, it's a lot of debate in the Jewish community. Some scholars say that they do have souls. Yes. Lately they've been saying that, but only here while they're alive and they don't carry into the afterlife. Big work around. Yeah, it is. Sure. Pope John Paul II said, yeah, you probably are going to see your little dog in the afterlife. Maybe. It's possible. I'm Pope John Paul. Everybody loves me. Would you like my autograph? Right. Me gorbache and Ronald Reagan ruled the world. During the Enlightenment, things changed a little bit from the religious aspects to more of a science based or philosophical. And our old buddy Descartes said animals have no internal experience. Which is a very cold way of putting it. Yeah. He called them automatons. Yeah. Kind of famously, actually. And he said that they are capable of responding to pain, but because they don't have any internal experience, they can't actually experience the pain. Therefore, when you are cutting open a live dog and you're seeing it squirm in rythe and agony, strictly responding to a stimulus right. It's not actually going on. Like when Luke is testing out his new hand and he's poking the different nerves or the artificial nerves or whatever, making the fingers move. Yeah. He's getting poked on the finger, but he doesn't feel that it's just a response to a stimuli. Yeah. I guess very much like that. It's the same thing as like with robots, too. Yeah. I mean, that's how essentially Descartes decreed the animals were. And this is something that stuck out to me, like throughout researching this whole thing, humans have long just decreed that things are a certain way right. And that those decrees tend to fit whatever the human wants to do to an animal at that time. Of course. Right. Yeah. That idea is sort of the basis was, and still kind of is for scientists who experiment on animals. They're trained to detach themselves emotionally and just say, no, this is just a stimuli reaction. This is not an animal that's actually feeling pain. Right. Dogs don't have internal experience or internal life, so it's can't really feel pain or suffering. Yes. Which is not true. Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher in England, correct? Yeah. Big one. And actually he's still around. They bring his mummified body out for dinners of the guys who run the college, what, every once a year. And he sits at the head of the table and his head has actually been separated from his body. And they bring that out, too. It's in a case, it's pretty cool. Holy cow. Yeah. As far as philosophers go, it's pretty neat. So he had a pretty neat idea, which was, you know what, it's not just about whether you can reason with an animal, but can they suffer? He's the one that kind of brought about this idea of animals suffering in the same way that a human might, which is a huge change. Sure, it was a big sea change in the way that we saw animals because up to that point, the idea was that animals couldn't suffer. And even if they could suffer, nobody was taking that into account. But they couldn't suffer because they couldn't talk or they couldn't rationalize. Right. And he said, no, I think they can suffer. And he used his philosophic calculus, which takes into account all of the suffering and all of the happiness or pleasure produced by an event, and you weigh it against one another and it's really involved, actually. But if you carry out Bentham's calculations, you can take any event, any action, and determine whether it's ethically, like morally correct or morally repugnant. And he came to the conclusion that experimenting on animals was morally repugnant because animal suffering was not taken into account. And he took it into account, and it wasn't just a one off where he wrote an essay about it. Like, this is a well, he went back to a lot and was kind of an agitator for animal welfare early on. Well, there's a lot of money in it. Right. So, moving on, I think you make a very good point here that protectionism for animals really starts around the time where we made the transition in farming and how we raised and ate animals. Yeah, cause you too, like, you be like, I feel like some beef for dinner, I'm going to go kill old Bessie or cow. Yes, and you love Bessie and your little boy or little girl might cry about Bessie, but then the parents would explain that we raised Bessy and we loved and cared for bestie, treated Bessy very nicely. And the reason Bessie is here is so bessy can eventually feed us and we should honor that in every way possible by using as much of this animal as we can and honor the life that she led. Or if you had a bad parent, they just kind of wield that cleaver in your direction and you shut up just as fast. This could be you. Right. But that was a huge change when things started to change and industrialization took off and people were no longer connected to the animal on their farm that they ate. It was a sea change in how people directly coincided with how people felt about animals. When you could buy something in the store that looked nothing like that animal. Yeah. It's not even called pig. It's called pork or bacon or ham. Yeah. And then not only that, chuck something I left out of here that came across later. This is the same time when people move from the farm to the factory, from rural interactions with animals to urban settings without animals, this is when people started to keep pets. Yeah. You know, I never realized what you just said there about pork and beef. That never really dawned on me. It's never called pig that if it said ground cow right. Instead of ground beef, people would be like, reveal. Yeah. Some baby cow. Ground baby cow. Yeah. That makes total sense. And such a dummy. That never occurred to me. It's okay, man. Is that where that came from, calling them different names? I don't know. I'm going to fill it in. I would guess veal is probably like Latin for baby calf or something. I don't think it was a purposeful obfuscation. I don't know. Could be, though. Would not surprise me. This is before the advent of PR. So I think chicken, fellow chicken, was more innocent and naive back then. Chicken is, sure, but who cares about chicken? I was saying that this is also the time when people began keeping pets around the house. So we're removed from food production. Yes. And we're starting to see animals not as commodities, but as sweet little things that we want to care for and protect and give food to and let sleep in the bed with us. And it developed this dichotomy of how we view animals today, which is animals are to be protected by humans, but we can also eat them. It's totally cool. Yeah. And if you step back and look at it, it's so easy to take for granted, because that's how almost everybody except for vegans view animals. Right. It's really easy to take it for granted. But if you step back and look at it, it's a very bizarre, contradictory paradigm. Yeah. It's sort of a deal people have made with themselves, unfortunately, I think, and society has made with itself, too. All right, well, we're going to take a break and we're going to come back and talk a little bit about the fact that as of yet, there were still no laws on the books about protecting animals. All right. Before we left, I teased about the laws of the land, and while things were changing, maybe attitudinally in England, you point out in the mid 19th century, it was still legal to beat your horse to death if he was tired or to kill your cow if it didn't produce milk. There were no laws in place if your dog did something you didn't like, you could kick it to death, like some people did that. Yeah. I think some people are still like that today, but are restrained by laws that developed out of this era, out of the 19th century, where before there weren't any laws. So if you're in impulsive pots, you could kick a dog to death. I can't even go there with those stories that happened today. But that happened even more then. Oh, yeah, of course. That's a very important point, though, is like, society as a whole wasn't just beating horses and dogs to death now, for the most part. Right. I think it was sociopath back then, and I think it still is now, for the most part. People did not do that, and people didn't even like they didn't necessarily even turn a blind eye to it. I think they did more because there wasn't a lot you could do. But it's probably along the lines of where if you don't agree with spanking your kid right. And you see somebody in the store, like grab their kid and spank them, you might want to say something. But at the same time, you probably won't because you don't know if that's a crazy person or whatever. You don't get involved for the most part. Most people don't. I think that was probably very much the same lines, like, where you might see something like that happening, but you weren't going to say anything. Yeah. I think that was the social status quo at the time. I think you're right. But that said, if the circumstances were right and the act was particularly egregious, someone might say something. There was a guy in 1834 who in the middle of Washington, DC. Beat his cow to death, and he was arrested and charged with not beating the cow to death because, again, there was no law protecting that cow, but with creating a public nuisance because he subjected all the passers by to the site of his cow being beaten to death, and people objected to it. So even at the time when there wasn't any legal protection for animals, there was a line that was drawn. Yeah. People weren't cool with it. Interesting. So legislatively speaking, it was about the turn of the 19th century in England when lords Oscar and Martin got together, and they a bunch of times to try and actually amend the code, the legal code. And one of the first things they tried to outlaw was something called bull baiting, and I imagine bear baiting, which was also a thing, and we'll get to this in a second, but it's like Roman gladiator stuff. Yeah. It's when they put a bull or a bear and they chain them to a stake in a pit yeah. And put dogs in there to fight and kill. And bulldogs used to be way more vicious and aggressive than they are today. They actually have that stuff bread out of them. And they look a lot different, too. Sure. But that's where they got their name from bulldogs. Bear baiting is still going on in Pakistan. Oh, yeah. It's disgusting. There's a big push to stop it now. There's a group called World Animal Protection International, and that's one of their big causes, is to stop bear baiting in Pakistan. But I would encourage you not to look that up and look at pictures and stuff, unless you want your heart broken. But it's amazing that in 2016 that's still going on in the world at all. But it is. And then Martin Anderskin, the great comedy duo, what is it? It's it's because of Roan and Martin. Is that where I think so. In 1822, they actually were enabled to get the first law pass in the west that made it a criminal act to abuse animals, called Martin's Act, after Martin. And the technical name was an act to prevent the cruel and improper treatment of cattle. And it was specifically for livestock. And it was a ten shilling fine, three months in the pokey if you didn't pay the fine. But what it did was it set a precedent for the future. It was very important. Yeah, it did. Finally, there was a law, right? There was a law on the books protecting animals. And again, like you said, it was pretty specific. And technically, there had been a law in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritans had a law in their body of liberties, but apparently it wasn't ever enforced. Right. But this is the first real law and the fact that Parliament was responding to this kind of aroused the public. We talked about in the animal testing episode, the last one, how I think in 1876, there was a law that passed, that was passed, like protecting animals during experimentation, thanks to Charles Darwin, that came 50 years after the first animal protection laws in the UK. So there have been niche people, groups who had been agitating for this got actually the Parliament involved and then the public became involved, which is usually the opposite. Usually it's like these groups get the public involved and then the public get government to do something. This actually kind of went out of order a little bit, but the people who were agitating, these niche people, were usually very interesting people like Henry Berg is a really good example. Boy, I love this guy. Yeah, talk about an agitator. He created the ASPCA and he was a little rich kid and he basically said, you know what, I'm going to kind of dedicate my life to walking the streets, because one of the things in 1866, when the ASPCA was founded, was in New York, they said, you know what? You have the power to go out and police these things. We're not really enforcing it. Right, but you can do so. And he went, Great, I'll do it. Yes, he was a true believer, for sure. I think the first instance, as the legend goes, he was a Russian diplomat or a diplomat to Russian, an American diplomat in Russia during the reign of the Tsars. Still, he saw a Russian peasant beating his horse, and he threatened to beat the man. Nice. And the guy responded very in a way that Henry Berg was like, oh, I'm going to do this all the time now. He said, yes. He was like, I'm so sorry. Apparently the guy started crying. He was being talked down to by someone of a higher station. Then when Henry Burke got back to America and tried it, he found that people of the middle or lower classes beneath him socially did not respond the way the Russian peasantry did. They said, this is New York, so he had to kind of yeah. So he would sometimes actually follow through on his threats and, like, beat people he saw beating their horses. I have no problem with that. Yeah, I think most people didn't, but he would also he'd go and break up, like, underground bull fight or underground bull baiting. Underground bullfight. And he is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. If you want to go by and lay some flowers at his grave and pay your respects, I think I might do that next time in New York. Yes. Even if you're not into animal rights. He was also a huge children's crusader, and he very wisely never allowed the children's organizations that he funded and supported to merge with the animal organizations because he knew full well that the little children would take the wheel and they would very quickly overwhelm the sentiments and the efforts on behalf of the animals. Yeah, it was pretty smart to keep it separate. You got to keep them separated. You point out in this article, very astutely, that abusing an animal could be an indicator of violence toward humans. And I know that a lot of serial killers started out like killing animals first is their first try, from what I can tell. Most likely a pop psychology urban legend that they did that Jeffrey Dahmer did, for sure. Okay. Yes. But the idea that it's a predictor of future serial killing oh, yeah. The triad of evil, which is bed, wedding, harming animals, and setting fires. If you have your kid doing those three things, allegedly under this triad of evil, you can bet that there's a pretty good chance they're going to grow up to harm humans. I went to bed. I didn't set harmful fires, but I did play with fire a little bit. I think this is more like you're intentionally setting fires, like harmful or burned down the woods. No, I didn't do that. And then my dog died, and I sat in his doghouse for two days and cried. That's not harming animal. Clearly not. I was on the other side of the coin from early on, right when Huggy Bear died. But whether or not that's true, that's been used. Huggy Bear? Yeah, that was my German shepherd. Great name for a dog. Yeah, that was like, the first dog that I really bonded with. That was the dude from the street wise star Ski. Guy from Star ski hunch. Right. Yeah, Huggy Bear. That's great. Yeah, he was awesome. I get a little sad thing about him today. Which one? Huggy Bear? Not the TV show. Okay. I just remember my mom literally came home from work and I was in the doghouse crying. Like, laying down and crying. That is sweet. Such a little was. How long was Huggy Bear around? You know, I don't remember. Like, your whole life. Was he alive when you were born? Not when I was born. His mom Daisy was, and then Daisy died when I was really young, so it didn't have a super big impact. But then Huggy Bear was one of the puppies we kept. How old were you when he died? I want to say I was like, eight or nine, maybe. Oh, yeah, that's right there. Tough. Sure. Yeah. First big loss. Rip Huggy Bear. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. I'll drink one in your honor tonight, HP. But anyway, yeah, you're right. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny all the time, but if you're torturing and killing animals, it's not a good sign. No. The people who have agitated for animal rights have long used this. Whether it's true or not, people think it's true. So the whole premise for a lot of people has been if a human harms an animal, there's a good chance they're going to harm a human. So if you protect animals and prevent people from harming animals, you're preventing somebody from possibly harming a human down there. I'm fine with that line of thought. Or you're also, by drawing a line before animals, you're rooting out people who might harm humans down the road by having them expose themselves as harmers of animals. That one's a little morally trickier. If harming animals doesn't lead to harming humans, right. If you assume that it doesn't treat the person like that, you're a serial killer because you just set a fire, feed your pants and bit the head off a chipmunk. Actually, you'd probably be right. Maybe. Especially if you did all three at once. At the very least, I wouldn't leave them alone with your child. So a lot of progress is being made, and by all. The states in the United States had some kind of anti cruelty law going on, and it started to become just sort of the mindset that was kind of the tradition. Like, the states oversaw protection of animals until the mid 60s when the federal government got involved and created the Animal Welfare Act and the Animal Welfare Act again, this kind of follows that thing where some people agitate for changes to the law, changes to our way of thinking, and get the public aroused, and then the public say, Congress or government do something. The same thing happened here. Sports illustrated and Life magazine both came out with articles about how people's family, pets are being stolen and used as what are called random sourced animals that are sold to labs. Yes. And that really would get the public going. Right. Because the idea that Huggy Bear could be stolen from your yard sold to Johns Hopkins University's Head Trauma Center. Unbelievable. And then have his head beaten open with a bat, see what happens. I'm sorry I used Tuggy Berry. Now that I'm making this far through 40 years later, that still cuts. Snoopy stolen from your yard and experimented on the idea that this could happen just scared and outraged America. Sure. And it created very quickly the Animal Welfare Act. Yeah. And that originally just protected lab use. But then over the following decades, it really expanded, and today it protects all warm blooded animals in lab experience except three, sadly. The Radus genus rats and the Mus genus mice. Right. And not coincidentally, those three make up 95% of research animals in the US. Along with the other cold blooded animals that are used, like fish and reptiles. Sure. So 95% of the animals used in lab experiments are not covered by the Animal Welfare Act. But that's not to say that other animals can't be used in animal experiments. It just means that if you do experiment on a guinea pig or a macaque monkey or something like that, you have to follow these guidelines. Right. But even then, the guidelines are pretty slouchy, actually. They're huge loopholes, and basically they amount to you, especially originally in, like, 1966, you just have to reduce unnecessary suffering. Right. Who's to say what's necessary or unnecessary? Certainly the law didn't, and they left it up to the researchers to decide what was necessary or unnecessary. Right. What's crazy is, Chuck, is it has been expanded and amended. It's also been narrowed. There was an amendment made, I think, in the extended the protections, which, again, are loose and almost toothless to all animals, warm and cold blooded. And then in 2002, they dialed it back to what it is now and what it was originally, which are just warm blooded animals, except rats and mice and the cold blooded animals and the birds. The birds and the bees and the sycamore trees. All right, well, let's take a break here, and we're going to come back and talk about kind of the two categories for animal protection, animal welfare and animal rights. So I call them all right. For this. Okay, we're back, chuck, and you teased the different types of approaches to protecting animals, right? That's right. There is like a whole contingent of people, and I think most people on the street, if you stopped them, said, do animals deserve protection from harm or suffering? I would guess most people would say yes. And I'm sure there are surveys out there. I didn't find one. Sure. But if you drill a little deeper into it, To adopt a little corporate buzz speak low hanging fruit. Yes. You would find that there's really kind of two threads to this, and they're based on just how far you feel that protection should go. Right. So the first is animal welfare. So that's the current accepted paradigm of how we approach treating animals. Protecting animals. Yeah. And they generally think and these are generalizations, but if you're going to fit people into two groups, you got to do that. They generally think that what we're doing now works pretty well, but we need to enforce it more. We agree with John Locke and Immanuel Kant that you should protect animals from cruelty, but not because they have a moral standing, necessarily, but because that is a sign of a bad person that makes us look bad. Right. Which is valid. But they balance that out with, we treat animals humanely, but we can still use them for food and labor. Right. So animals deserve protection from humans harming them. Yes. But they're also our property. We can do what we want with them so long as there isn't any unjustified suffering. Right. And not suffer needlessly, which you pointed out earlier, but more so here, that's needlessly. What does that mean? Right. It's very open to interpretation. Yeah. Because if you look at what happens to animals in animal experiments, it runs the gamut, like everything from withholding food and water to burning skin with blow torches. Yeah. Or to making a monkey obese on purpose. Right. And making sure they don't exercise. So you can study what lap band surgery does. Right. I mean, damaging their brains, naming them, blinding them, just doing invasive surgical procedures for practice. Like, the idea of what is justified is extremely subjective. But as a society, we've all generally agreed that, hey, as long as science is being advanced, as long as humanity is being in some way advanced or developed or protected, then it's justified with food. Right. Those animals don't die of old age. Is it a needless death to eat a cow and kill the cow before it's time? Yeah. And so most people, I think, who believe in the hierarchy of humans at the top of all organisms here on Earth would say, well, yeah, that's a useful use of an animal feeding a human. Right. So that's the idea of animal welfare. Protect them from harm, but yeah, we can eat them. A good example is making sure a cow has a good life while it's alive. It's not suffering while alive, it's not scared when it dies, and then you can eat it totally fine. That's the animal welfare view, and that's the generally accepted view in the west. Right. Animal rights or rightists. They think generally that the system we have is flawed and that animals have these rights or they should have rights kind of along the same lines that humans do. They should have legal protections, just like we do under the law. And we are a long way from where we need to be when it comes to protecting animals from humans. Right. The idea of the animal rights is that animals have an inherent moral value, right. And the idea behind that is if they have an inherent moral value like humans do, then they deserve legal protections that humans enjoy, which is a radically different approach to protecting animals. Yeah, for sure. And the idea is that, well, it all kind of came from this guy named Peter Singer, and he wrote a book in 1975 called Animal Liberation. And he basically started off the modern animal rights movement, especially the radical version of it. Yeah. He said in it that if you use Bentham's philosophic calculus but include animals right to happiness, not just their suffering yeah, he added a little cherry on top. Right. You just blow the concept of using animals for human means out of the water. It's just not justifiable is an animal a moral agent? And a moral agent is a being that is capable of making decisions based on right or wrong. And moral behavior comes in all sorts of forms. We think of it as like helping a little lady across the street or not stealing, even though you totally could and get away with it. Right. But it's even broader than that. And some people say animals do demonstrate moral behavior, like loyalty or showing concern for someone or a person that's injured or something like that. And so therefore, an animal can be a moral agent. Other people say, no, an animal can't rationalize, it can't think about the future, it can't want to keep living, therefore it couldn't possibly be a moral agent. And Peter Singer really made a lot of waves when he said he said, well, then, if you're going to experiment on animals because they're not moral agents, you might as well go ahead and experiment on people in vegetative states and infants because they're not moral agents under that definition either. Yeah. He says, you know what else can't rationalize? Your baby. Yeah. So go ahead and do some horrible experiments on your baby. Yeah. And I'm sure the other side of the argument was probably like, thank God, and he dropped that mic and everything and rub it in our faces. 1983, another guy came along named Tom Reagan, and he wrote a book called The Case for Animal Rights. He argued favorably that animals do have moral rights. And he had a little thing that he liked to call subjects of a life. He said humans and animals are both subjects of a life, which means animals have that inner experience that is called having a life like we do. Right. Some of them want to have higher moral, higher faculties. Oh, did he divide it up? Yeah, it's not all animals in his view. It was like ones that are capable of reasoning because some people say humans are the only rational beings on the planet. Right. And therefore everything else is open season. These guys, like Tom Reagan said, no, there are certain animals out there that can reason and therefore can be moral agents. Yeah. I mean, when you see behavior of some of these animals, like elephants, well, then people would be like, that's anthropomorphizing, anthropomorphizing. Burn them. You try and burn me. Can't be proven. So therefore descartes ghost exists. Right. And then Tom Reagan also made waves, Chuck, by saying, if an animal is the subject of a life, meaning it can think about its own life and want to live, therefore I sound like Miss South Carolina. Therefore, that animal deserves at least one basic freedom, which is the freedom from being property, which in and of itself would radically alter our relationship, humans relationship with animals. Yeah. So these guys are, like, kind of putting these ideas out there, and as we'll see, they got some response. But it was typically among hardcore animal rights people rather than the general public up to this point. And then the final dude in the Trifecta, the triad of evil, of evil, of good, I don't just need that. Okay. Gary Francion, he was the guy that came along and said, you know what? We need to abolish our domination over animals, period, outright. It is slavery and we should treat it as such. Right. Get rid of it. Yeah. He said we didn't get rid of slavery by making slavery more humane. We got rid of slavery by getting rid of slavery. Right. That's what you do. And he's saying it's the same thing here. Yeah. Pretty radical ideas at the time. Yeah. And radical is a pretty good word because these ideas really caught the attention of some people who did become, I guess, radicalized by them. Like, the animal rights movement has long had a militant arm to it, for sure. Yes. It started, actually, before even Peter Singer's book animal liberation. From 1975 as far back as 1962, there was a group in the UK called the Hunt Saboteurs Association. This is the most polite saboteurs organization name you can come up with, probably. So they sort of laid the groundwork for the Animal Liberation Front, who got a lot of press, and then another group called the Band of Mercy. The Band of Mercy. And they were the actual first people to liberate animals when they broke into a laboratory that used or a farm that sold guinea pigs to labs and freed six guinea pigs. Yeah, they made up of six. But, I mean, there were six guinea pigs lives that otherwise would have been subject to experimentation. So it was a big success. Sure. And they ended up eating the guinea pigs to celebrate. No, they didn't, actually. The lady who ran the farm, though, she was really shaken up, and she actually shut down her guinea pig selling business. Yeah. Because of that. Because some people had broken into her house at night, and she thought twice. Yes. She was like, I don't want this to happen again. Depending on your viewpoint, this is deeply uncool of. These people, they used intimidation. They would make death threats. They would make bomb threats. They would threaten people's family. Yeah. They would set fires. People who were running legitimate labs were threatened. People who were legitimately supplying the labs were threatened. Yeah. They would set fires. And then there are other ones where you're just like, yeah, I can kind of get behind that. The point to a lot of these wasn't just to get people to cease their activities or to actually liberate animals. They were done also to generate publicity. Right. This is a huge aspect of it. These guys were PR masters. They realized that the bigger and the bolder, the more likely it was to get headlines. So guys like the groups like the Animal Liberation Front or the Band of Mercy would agitate go out and do these acts. And then Peter, like, more moderate groups that weren't actually doing this would publicize it and write up press releases and send it out to the press and maybe set up interviews and stuff like that and try to get the word out as much as possible about this. One thing Peter did was they would basically turn people well, sometimes they would send people in undercover to get jobs at these labs so they could make videotapes. And sometimes they would just get in touch with someone there who worked there, turn them basically as a double agent, and say, you will be our person on the inside, and you can do these videos for us. And they kill the queen. They got 60 hours worth of audio and video from a lab, cut it down to about a half an hour documentary called Unnecessary Fuss in 1984 and released it. And it was a big deal. Yeah. Like, basically experimentation and humane treatment on tape for the masses to be on. Like, it was about as ugly as you could get. It was at the UPenn head trauma center research lab. That's probably all you need to say. Pretty much. Baboons were involved, and they were researching head trauma. Yeah. So when this came out, it really got the public going. And just like in the 60s, with those two articles about people's pets being stolen and used in lab experiments, this led to an amendment to the Animal Welfare act directly led to it. And the amendment said that there needed to be committees that oversaw each lab that was carrying out animal experiments. There needed to be the use of pain relievers and anesthesia experiments, and there needed to be postoperative care in lab experiments. Right. Yeah. And that you couldn't take a single animal and just keep operating on that animal. Okay. Again, all of these things hit a very important caveat. Right. And the caveat is, unless necessary, there was a huge loophole there. If you're testing, like, pain threshold on a macaque monkey, well, you can't give it pain relievers, you can't give it anesthesia. Right. You need to inflict pain and well, it's part of the experiment, so it's medically necessary, or we have to see how one macaque monkey responds to multiple surgeries because we're trying to induce PTSD in that monkey so we can study PTSD drugs. Well, that's medically necessary. And this whole loophole, that huge loophole with the idea that advancing science and human understanding and human welfare as long as it's necessary, then you can justify anything you do to an animal that's still around. And it's been around for a very long time. Yeah. So this is all culminated in more recent years with a guy, an attorney named Steven Wise. Depending on who you are, you might say this guy is crazy, or you might say he's amazing, a hero and a hero. So he's an animal rights attorney, essentially. He wrote a book in 2000 called Rattling the Cage colon toward Legal Rights for Animals. And he basically put forth a very radical idea, which is that some animals, like the elephant or the great ape or the African gray parrot, they actually deserve personhood. They deserve legal protection under the law, just as a human being does. Right. And let me well, he founded in 2007 a group called the Non Human Rights Project. Big N, little H, big R, big P. And it's a legal defense group that basically said, let's find a sympathetic judge somewhere where we can bring up a case and maybe get some precedent set, get something on the books. Yeah. All they have to do is get one case heard, get it denied, and that sets the motion, the appeals process, where you can work through the higher courts right. That's right. And hopefully get some sort of legal ruling. Right. Yeah. This guy is sharp. And part of the problem that he's facing right now is as far as law in the United States goes, animals are property. They're strictly property. They are special property. Right. Like, for example, if you're beating up your microwave and the neighbors aren't going to call the cops, and the cops aren't going to come. But if you're beating up your dog, the neighbors are probably going to call the cops, and the cops are probably going to come. Right. Yeah. The thing is, the animals still property as far as the law goes. Property cannot possibly have standing in a court. And if it doesn't have standing, then that means that the animal can't sue on its own behalf. You being the neighbor, you can't sue on the dog's behalf because you're just the neighbor. You have no standing in this dog's welfare either. So these animals, any animal, is in legal limbo as far as American courts are concerned. And why is trying to figure out a way around that. Yeah, he attempted some lawsuits and his organization did in New York on behalf of four chimpanzees. And he said, you know what? I'm going to sue on these chimps behalf. I'm going to try and gain their freedom. He lost all the cases, got a lot of press, but he did have one heard, and in one of the cases, he even got a judge, or not got a judge, but the judge actually issued a writ of habeas corpus, first time ever for an animal, even though the judge reversed that order that same day. It costs nothing. Yeah. What did I just do? It was a very big deal in the media. I mean, I remember hearing about this guy on the news, and when you wrote this article, it's like, oh, I totally know that guy. Yeah, there's a really great Boston Globe profile on him and what he's doing from a year, couple of years ago. That's worth checking out. Yeah. There's a documentary to release this year called Unlocking the Cage by the legendary DA Pennebaker and his wife and partner Chris. I'm not sure you'd pronounce her name. Hegeidus perhaps he's the one that did Dylan's Don't Look Back in 1965. Okay. He's very legendary. The War Room. I don't know if you ever saw that. The political one. What else? Because I know the name. He's legendary documentary and legend. Documentary, legend, whatever. But he's made this movie about Steven Wise in his group called Unlocking the Cage. I haven't seen it yet, but it's on the list. Yeah, he's a pretty interesting guy. Something that struck me that I found in my research was he and Peter don't really see eye to eye. They're not working in conjunction. And a few years back, PETA brought a case against SeaWorld on behalf of the Orcas and said that it was a violation of the 13th Amendment against slavery. Steven wives is like, what are you doing? He saw that they had very clearly opened the door for the judge to be like, the Constitution doesn't apply to animals because animals aren't people. And once that precedent is set like that yeah. Because it's not actually written in law, there hasn't been that precedent that really opened the door for it. Luckily, the judge is just like, no, but didn't rule any further. Right. So what Wise is trying to do is to get somebody to set a different precedent, which is, yeah, that actually makes kind of sense. So let's go ahead and run this trial through. Yeah. And it's something that could be possible one day. Like, there have been courts that have ruled where this animal was an heir to an estate, and the court made the animal a temporary ward of the court and endowed this animal with the inheritance. Given a nice lunch. Yeah. They had to kind of work through that. So he's got a little bit of a leg to stand on and kind of pointing some of these things out right. And plus, corporations are artificial people under the law. Yes, we did a whole show on that. Right, right. So, I mean, it's not like this is just totally wacky as far as the law goes. I think the problem is this the big challenge he's facing is, okay, let's say you're successful and all of a sudden animals have the same rights under the law that humans do. What's that going to do to the world? And that's a huge question that's raised. I mean, you can come up with a lot of stuff that would happen automatically. Obviously, medical testing is gone. Yeah. No more zoos, no more circuses. Or at least circuses with animals. Right? Yeah. It's just flea circus. Maybe just clowns. The creepiest circus of all. Obviously, there would be no hunting. Veganism would probably just be that's just what we eat now. Ted Nugent would just drown himself. Yeah, he really would. Ted Nugent would not like a world where animals have the same rights. And I think about it, he would not. And like pets, would there be pets any longer? Yeah, there have actually been changes, I think somewhere in Colorado and definitely somewhere in Rhode Island. If not Rhode Island, the state, they amended the law to include guardian instead of owner or in addition to owner. Oh, interesting. Yeah, that's a different thing. It totally is. Like, when you're the legal guardian of your younger brother, you're not their owner. No. I mean, you might treat them that way, but sure. And then lastly so we talked about animals being moral agents, right? Yeah. So if you're a moral agent, you also have moral responsibilities in addition to moral protection. That's another can of worms. Yeah. Right. So, like, if an animal kills another animal, are you going to try it and execute it? Well, that kind of happens today. Animals are often put down when they attack other animals. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, there'd be more of the same. What's weird is, apparently back in the Renaissance, in the medieval era, they used to have trials for animals that did something. Kangaroo court, we do it today. Like, remember Travis, the chimp whose ripped the woman's face off? Yes. He was summarily executed by police. And I think had even been captured, they would have put him down. There wouldn't have been a trial. But they used to actually have the trial, and it wasn't because they wanted to give the animal a fair trial. It was for healing the community, to make the humans feel better. They could draw this out and make this an actual issue that was resolved in the execution of the animal. Interesting. Yeah, it's pretty weird. Boy good one, dude. Yeah. Nice job. Yeah, thanks. You too, buddy. If you want to know more about animal rights, you can type that into the search bar of your favorite search engine. And since I said search engine, that means it's time for a listing or mail. Yes, this is the famous part two from earlier this week with Yvonne. And I promised a list of band names and a list of puns from Josh because Josh says that he hates puns despite his somewhat regular use of them. Yeah, again, I take issue with this. If you accidentally make a pun, you're not a punning person. All right, well, let's just go on this list. Poison Ivy episode. Josh, let's stop beating around the bush. Accident. Blood types. Josh. I'm sure I take a blood. I'm positive of it. Accident. Hula hoops. Discussing pushing a hool with a stick. Hang in there and stick with it. Accident. Police dogs. Discussing the current popularity of arson dogs. They're so hot right now. I think that was on purpose. It's possible. Chili peppers, Josh. It's ripe for it. Total accident. I don't even think you can include that one, can you? Sweat colors. There's this boiling point, I guess. Talking about how hot it's been in Atlanta. That's a reach. Yeah, I agree. Strike that one from the record. Spam. Talking about the trouble the maker of Spam had when trying to sell Spam. He was hamstrung by the name Hormel spiced Meat. Again, accident. Handwriting analysis. The writing is on the wall. I don't even remember that one. I'm not puny, though. I'm not copying to any of these purposes. I got a few more casinos. It paid off. An aces. No. Accident. White collar crime. This is something that is woven into history of white collar crime. Total accident. Disgusting. A wool transporter. Keeping wool for his own use. Again, accident. I'm just going to do one more. Pick the best of them. Chuck. This is like a letterman. Top Ten. Taste in how it works after saying it. Makes you wonder how things we can taste. Taste. You said chew on that one. Accident. All right, and now the band names. I'm just going to read through these very quickly, and looking at this list, these are great. So if you're out there looking for a band name, listen up. Listen up. Toe Thumb. That's good. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Maybe like a Prague band. Maggot Therapy. That's a metal band. The Static Crush. That's total Shoe Gaze. Yeah. Or Email disruptive Technology. I don't even know myotonic Goats. That's a good one. Yeah. The Tennessee Stiff Legs. Love it. That's a bluegrass band. A fifth full of neurons. Metal. Okay. Force Multiplier. Total Metal. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Nazis on Meth. It's metal. Oh, yeah. Punk. That can be good, too. Masters of Plastic. Nerd core colloidal quantum dots. Definite nerd core. Supercritical fluid. That's probably nerdcore, too, actually. I guess so. Or a boy band. The Brownie Wise Massacre. That's indie. Looks good. Brownie Wise Overdrive Boy. There were two. Yeah. Snake Detection Theory. I love that one. He's really cracking me up. Extraordinary Rendition. That's like a guy just like these two guys in Maine. That thing in a coffee shop. They do all the classics. Yeah. Standard we're. Extraordinary rendition. Controlled burn. Not bad. That's a new metal. Poor Fred Newman. That's a band that's destined to break up poop fusion. Same cooperative eye hypothesis. I don't know if that's a good name after all. I might retract that one. Flesh on the Chunks. That's a good one. Or that could be the first album from poop fusion. Like a zappesque band. The horny skin folds. I could see that being, like, party rock kind of thing. All right. Is that freedom rock? Yeah, man, turn it up. Professional mermaid culture. That's not bad. That's very indy, though. Yeah, like they go to Columbia University or something. You're right. And then finally, two more supercritical CO2. Not bad. Okay. That's two super critical. And then finally frozen poop knife. Who did you tell to change their name to Frozen Poop Knife? Oh, I don't know. Oh, Diarrhea Planet. Yes. And they tweeted back and said, thanks for the idea. Never. Did they really? Yeah. No way. Yes. I didn't tell you? No. That's great. Those guys are good. Yeah. All right, that's it. That's it. Thank you, Yvonne, for keeping track of that, man. That's a great list. Yeah. And thank you to the dudes at Primer Stories for posting the essay I wrote. Go check it out at primerstories. Comsysk. And if you want to hang out with us, you can hang out with us on Twitter at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffystemo. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyshoodnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com." | |
How are college football rankings determined? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-are-college-football-rankings-determined | Established in 1998 as a way to determine college football rankings, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is a complex statistical system. In this episode, Josh and Chuck tackle the complex variables -- and math! -- behind the BCS rankings. | Established in 1998 as a way to determine college football rankings, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is a complex statistical system. In this episode, Josh and Chuck tackle the complex variables -- and math! -- behind the BCS rankings. | Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:46:19 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=14, tm_min=46, tm_sec=19, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=245, tm_isdst=0) | 32658325 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W. Dr. Bryant. That makes the stuff. You should know. The college football edition. Yes. Our first sports cast ever. We've never done it, dude. Really? Yeah. Because I've always kind of wanted to, but then I thought we'd be excluding anyone who's not a sports fan. But we get a lot of sports fans who say you should do this. We'll throw them a bone here. Seems like we need some sort of heraldry. Like I could keep going. I still wanted to sing. Final count. I was literally like stopping myself. Well, now we have to pay a royalty since you named that tune, buddy. Before we get started, let's plug fest our college tour. Yeah, we're going to do it's not exactly a college tour, but it is just a trivia tour. It's a national tour. But there are colleges in these places. Where we're going? Yeah, we're going to do anywhere between five and seven cities winding up in Austin, as far as I know. And we're kicking it off October 13, which is a Wednesday in Atlanta, Ga. Which is just down the street. We're actually in it right now. Some would argue we kicked off in New York. Yeah, you could definitely make that case. New York brought the goods. Yes. I wonder if Atlanta will bring goods similar to New York. I hope so. And I'm talking to you too. Birmingham and Chattanooga. Well, definitely. And what else is close? Charlotte is not too far off. Asheville is 3 hours. Yeah, Asheville's got no excuse. And we're not coming to Asheville, so this is your chance. But that's the beauty about the Southeast. You go to Atlanta and everybody drives. You just know you have to drive if you're in the Southeast. Nobody from Florida is welcome, though. No. You'll be turned away at the door. Right. So, yeah, that's going to be October 13, which is a Wednesday. I'm almost positive. It's going to be a five seasons. Brewery Brewing Company on the west side. Cool seeing there up on the roof. Yeah. Awesome. We'll be throwing more details up on Twitter and our Facebook fan page, as you should know. Yes. And our Twitter feed is SYSK podcast in case you want to follow us. And Chuck, I guess it's time we should get to football rankings, right? Yeah. This one, we should just go ahead and say that the article for this one on our website is a little out of date and college football and the BCS is ever changing. So I kind of expected that it wouldn't be really up to date. It's changed a lot over the past six years. It's changed a lot over the past six minutes, actually. We're going to do our best here. Not only that, if you thought the quantum suicide podcast was hard to follow, I know. But get a pen and piece of paper out right now because there's going to be some detailed equations and afterwards there will be a quiz. Yes, Chuck? I tend normally to lean more toward AP. The Associated Press over USA Today for accuracy and reporting. Right? Yeah. But I looked at the NCAA football rankings today preseason, and I saw that USA Today has Georgia rank 21, whereas AP has Georgia rank 23. So I'm leaning towards USA Today's reporting today. Yeah, they both have. Tech rang higher, too. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Let Tech get in the number one spot and then come Thanksgiving we'll knock them out of it. It's one of the great joys in my life when we have a terrible season, but we may have a good season. It remains to be seen. I can't say anything. I don't even know who our starting quarterback is going to be. Is it Aaron Murray? Yes, Aaron Murray. Ann Murray. Franklin. Try to catch me now. I wonder where she'd been. I think she's been in the same place for several years. Athens? No, no. Is she dead? I think so. We should probably look that up there, too. Anne Murray, if you're not dead, we apologize. We've greatly exaggerated your life. Miss. So Chuck before the BCS, right? Yeah. There was a straight line in a John Travolta movie, and I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth. Where, but why are you so weird? Is that it? That's my impression. No, that movie was Michael, I think it was. We played like a kind of down to earth angel who like drugs and boozing and women. I saw that. You saw it? Okay, so it's like kind of a cute movie. But there was one thing that he said that I've always thought was very clever was that he told somebody in that movie that he invented lines and before then people were just standing around, like bumping into each other and didn't know what to do. It's funny, so I kind of have the same impression of college football seasons and their end prebcs everybody's kind of bumping into everybody else. There was a distinct possibility that you had a number of teams claiming the number one spot and no way to resolve that. We humans are very much into saying you are clearly number one. And the BCS, while it had a rocky start at first, has kind of fulfilled that spot. Right. It's got a pretty good record the last six or ten years, right? Well, according to the BCS and ESPN, yeah. Well, we might as well go ahead and say the BCS claims that in the twelve years since it's been around, they are twelve for twelve according to their formulas, and they are nine for twelve according to coaches polls as far as matching up the two best teams to play for the national title. Right. And previous to that. Like you said, for decades, teams played each other in bowl games, and then sports writers voted on a national champion, which is made up. It's beyond ridiculous. If you think the BCS are ridiculous, that's even more ridiculous. Yeah. Well, let's talk about how the BCS is calculated. Right. Well, what are the BCS? There's five games before there were 25 bowl games. Is that correct? Their 29 games aside from the BCS games before or now? Now there's 29, excluding the BCS games. Okay. But before, I understand that there were, like, 25 ball games, and they were all important because there was no BCS. Well, important to varying degrees. Right. But it's almost like playing musical chairs with eight kids, but with nine chairs. Yeah. So the BCS comes in and says, hey, we're going to make sure that a clear winner is established, and we're going to do so by establishing that. We're going to say these bowl games are actually the important ones. Right. And they are what? They are the Sugar Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl. And they all have different sponsors. That kind of change year and a year, and we're not paid by any of them, so we're not going to mention huh. Well, three of the four of these in this article are wrong. That's how much they've changed. Wow. Yeah. I think Torstito's is the only one that's still actively sponsoring the Fiesta both right. And there's big money involved in these things. Right. There's payouts that go directly to the schools involved and then also to their conferences. Right. Yeah. Should we break that down? Let's do it how that works. Yeah. Last year, the payout for the national title game was $17 million per team. So 30. What is that for? $34 million. But the team doesn't get all of that. It is split. You get a participation fee, and then after the participation fee has taken out, the rest of the money is split among all the teams in the conference. Right. So the SEC is loaded with talent. They send, let's say, eight teams to bowls. So that's a lot of money coming to schools like Vanderbilt and Kentucky that may not go to evolve. So they love it. I think I probably already know the answer to this. Right. But are you one of those people who, when George is not in a game, you still route for the SEC? I route for all SEC teams except for Florida. Thank you. And, boy, Tennessee is tough for me to get behind. I have trouble rooting for Tennessee as well. But if it was like Tennessee versus USC, I would certainly root for Tennessee, but I could never route for Florida, no matter what happens. No, I can't either, Chuck, and I'm glad to hear you say that. I also have trouble rooting for Tech. Some people are like, well, it's a Georgia team, so if Georgia is not playing, then I root for Tech. And I'm like, you're a communist. I don't root for Tech. They're sort of neutral. I root for their basketball team because I like them back in the day, but not for football. Got you. And my brother works there, so I got to keep it on the up and up. That's very nice of you. Keep it in the family. Yeah. So, Chuck, what should we talk about next? Well, the BCS is not a body. It's an event which consists of these football games, and it's managed by the BBC, Bold, the BCS Subdivision conferences. And these are the big boys. Right. But don't you get the and I was surprised to hear this. There's an ESPN article that you sent me giving it background, background of the BCS. And it said, 2009 poll showed 73% of NCAA coaches favor keeping the BCS in place over a playoff. Right. That kind of flies in the face of information that I've had, like anecdotally I've never asked Mark Rick on the spot, but I get the impression that there's a lot more people that want playoffs than don't. Well, fans, for sure. Definitely. And that the BCS is something of an entity. And it's not just this panel that's created by this democracy, that it's more like an iron fist. And if you don't like it, you'll be crushed. Is that not the case? Well, they say they're not entity, but I bet they have an office. I bet people work there, and I'll bet there's iron desk for their iron fist. I should know, though, I did say that the BCS conferences were who make up this body. We also have to include Notre Dame in there because they actually get to vote. Although you don't include Notre Dame as much as you used to. No, I mean, they're still in there, though. They get their participation included as an independent, as does army and Navy, which is interesting, too. Yeah. Notre Dame get three votes in. Army and Navy get one each. Right. Well, that's votes for those are nominations for the Harris Interactive Football Poll. Okay, this is going to be all over the place. It is. But it's okay. We're making sense so far. I mean, the BCS came around in 98. It established that there's five bowls. We sent the bowls, right? Well, yes. Four plus the national title game. Right. And it's not just like, okay, here's the rankings, and then the season is over. So one versus two, you go play two versus three, you go play three versus four versus five. It doesn't happen like that. But that's kind of counterintuitive until you realize that the BCS algorithm is the most complex algorithm ever created by man, and it's actually composed of a number of different algorithms spitting out numbers, and then those numbers are factored in. So I think, Chuck, we put it off long enough, and we can't any longer. Let's talk mathematics and statistics. Okay. Yes. You're going to have to explain some of this, but because math is not my strongest talk about the subjective polls. How about that? I was told there would be no math. I'll try to handle the math as best as possible, but it's going to be like that one kind of breathalyzer that I thought I understood. Well, things have changed, Josh, since 1998. It was originally the BCS was set up a certain way, and then in 2002 and 2004, a lot of changes took place. It used to be four factors that weighed into the BCS ranking, and now there are only three factors. The AP. I'm sorry. The USA Today coaches poll Right. The AP pole was replaced before the 2004 season, I think, by the Harris Interactive Poll. Right. And then the last third is a very complex computer ranking system. An average of six computer rankings are averaged, and that is the last 33%. Right. And these computer rankings are basically independent groups of people who say, we're following football and we have a pretty good algorithm, and here's our contribution. There used to be, I think, eight, and now there's six. So you've got guys like Richard Billingsley, who's just a businessman I love it. And apparently likes to come up with college rankings in his spare time. They're statisticians and mathematicians. Right. And businessmen. And businessmen, yeah. So weird. It is weird. Maybe his business is accounting. They'll take into account, for example, the Billingsley report uses the strength of the opponent final score and the win lose records of the teams before and after the game. Right? Yeah. Combine all these together and you create a numerical value. Right. Some other people or some other computer rankings systems. Like, who else is there? Seattle Times, which is run by a guy named Jeff Anderson, who is a political science graduate student, or was, I guess he's just a political scientist. And Chris Hester, who is a sports writer. And these two get together and they take quality of opponent and strength of schedule. Right. The problem is, Chuck, is you can't just go, yes, Boise State is doing pretty good, so we're going to give them a five for strength of schedule or strength of opponent or quality of opponent, that kind of thing. What they have to take into account are wide factors like, let's say you win. It's not just good enough that you're going to win, right? Who exactly did you beat and how do you quantify who you beat? Well, you say, and where did you play? Right. So we have to look at not only your opponent's schedule, right. But your opponent's opponent schedule. And then you put numerical values onto those, the win loss. And then you calculate that and you come up with another numerical value. That's called strength of schedule. Right. And to get down to the nitty gritty, the strength of schedule is calculated like this. You've got your opponent's schedule. Chuck, you play Boise State? Boise State has been doing pretty good. I'm not playing there, dude, so you won't catch me on a blue football field. Well, they came and visited you. Okay. But you beat them, as I would between the hedges. So you've got two times so and so is your opponent schedule. Boise State schedule? Yeah, you've got two times that plus Boise State's opponent schedules. All of them calculated to wins and losses. So it's two times your opponent schedule plus Boise State's opponent schedules equals strength of schedule. Okay. That's just one component in some computer rankings. Yeah. And strength of schedule, I think, used to be a standalone component, but now it's just factored in with the rest. And they also threw out the margin of victory. That used to be a factor as well. But they remember that was a big deal when coaches were running up the score. Florida would try and put like 60 points on a team against Louisiana Lafayette, and they were like, you know what? That's not really too cool. That really shouldn't factor in. So that was thrown out. Right. The Scripps Howard poll, which I don't think is used any longer, used to have a penalty, actually, for running up the score before it was thrown out. Yeah. Part of their computer ranking was if you ran up the score, you were penalized. Which is good because guys like Steve Spurger used to need to be held in check. Now he's holding himself in check. Look at you. That's good. So is that all for the computer ranking third or you still got something on that? No, I think I'm good. Okay, then you have like I said, one third is the USA Today coaches poll. And that is literally coaches voting. Not all of them always vote. I think there's 114 potential votes, but there may be 106 people vote one week. I remember Steve Spurrier got some criticism at one point because he failed to vote in some really important week a couple of years back or something like that. And he explained that he did and his assistant lost the vote or something like that. I can't remember what it was. But that is factored in as well. They still don't divide by the same number. They'll factor it down by the number of votes, not the number of possible votes. Yes. Okay. To make it more accurate, I've also heard accusations that in coaches polls, specifically, they have their kids vote sometimes. Like, they just can't be bothered to vote. So they'll just be like, Fill this out for me, will you? Because they know their kids watch some games or whatever. And that's why human polls are so fallible that a lot of coaches don't vote. And the coaches that appear to vote haven't necessarily voted themselves. And even if they have, they're not completely informed because TCU Horned Frogs. I like frogs. I think that's how it ends up. Yes. Well, that's how TCU ended up in the top 25 ever. I guess so. Because of Ralph Wiggum. And then you have the Harris Interactive Poll, and that, like I said, replace the AP poll, and they rank them each week from late September to the end of the season. And I'm sorry, that has 114 participants. That was the 114 I was thinking of. Yeah, sorry, I didn't correct you. Right. And they're not just coaches. They're former coaches, student athletes, administrators, some media. And that is where Notre Dame gets to say, because you get to nominate who was on this committee to vote for the interactive poll. And each conference see, this is where Notre Dame gets away with something, in my opinion. Each conference gets ten nominations and Notre Dame gets three. Army gets one, and Navy gets one. Yeah. So, like, the big twelve teams get ten nominations, notre Dame gets three all by themselves. Right. Notre Dame has always gotten some sort of weird free ride for some reason why we're going to hear about it. Yeah, but still, I mean, it's true. There's a lot of favoritism toward that team, and I dare anybody to prove otherwise. Well, they haven't been great recently, but they are still favored one of the most legendary teams. I guess just because Ronald Reagan played for you doesn't mean you're a great team in 2010, you know? Hey, you're preaching the choir, my friend. So, Chuck, when you take these things together, the Harris Interactive Poll, the Coach's Poll, and the computer rankings numbers that you crunched together and created one number that's a third to third and third. Yeah. Right. The most you can get is one, correct? Yeah. 1.0 the lowest score. You're looking for a low score here, right? Low score means high ranking. This is where it gets a little hanky. Sorry to steal your word, but in the article explicitly says that you want the lowest score, right? Yes, but in this other material that we've gotten from the BCS site, it looks like the higher the score, the closer to a 1.0, the higher your ranked. Here's why I say that, Chuck. In the Coach's Poll, coaches vote from one to 25, right? And assign each team ranking in reverse order. So if you're number one, you get 25 points. If you're in 25th place, you get one point, right. So you would want more points, correct? Yeah, but here's where I think it gets worked out. If I'm correct in understanding this. What happens is let's take the Harris Poll for instance, okay? You take the total score of all your votes, and you divide that by 2850, which is the maximum number that anyone can receive. If all 114 voting members rank that same team number one. So let's say everybody ranks Alabama number one, all 114, they get 2850 total points. They divide that by 2850. And so they end up getting a one. Okay, so if you divided, I guess what one? If you had a one and you divided that by 2850, I see. It'd be much lower. Right. And the coaches told us the same thing. They just divide it by 1475 because that's the maximum number. Okay, so at least I'm right in saying that the best you could possibly get from the BCS formula is a 1.0, I believe. So that's how it works. And it kind of follows that same thing. Like you have a one, and anything less would be like a .92,873. Right? Yes. Okay. Yeah, that's exactly right. A plus B plus C divided by three would be .973. Right. Okay. All right. See, this is really confusing. It's like giving birth to a watermelon, except with your head a square Japanese watermelon, which would be even worse. Yes. Especially if the edges were sharp. So, ladies, when you're like, if you're not into this I'm not saying that not all ladies are into it, but whoever's not into college football and you poopoo it, think about how complex the system is that they've worked out. It's not just a bunch of guys sitting around drinking beer, smashing each other's heads in. It's very complex. Right, but to the guys who are sitting around smashing each other's heads in with beer being drunk around them, it's still like I'm ranked 23rd. True. Okay, so, Chuck, sounds like we made it through the math part. Yeah. What else is left? Well, that's sort of it. At the end of the year, the math determines your ranking. And we should point out that the BCS ranking, which determines who plays in these BCS Bulls in national title game, that doesn't start getting ranked, they don't do, like, preseason rankings or even early season that starts in mid October. Right. The preseason rankings are AP and USC today. Yeah, right. And all sorts of other rankings. There's all kinds of people that ran the BCS can't conceivably start because the computer rankings have to take in strength of schedule, and you can't determine that until somebody has a win or loss against them. Right. Unless you're ranking by last year. Right. Yeah, exactly. So mid October is when the BCS rankings start to come out, and that's about halfway through the football season. So they have enough data at that point. I think that's why they wait. Got you. So check it. Used to be the NCAA Football League, the conference, the whole thing was called Division One A, and now it's called the Football Bowl Subdivision programs, whether you like it or not. Yes, exactly. Do you feel like we should have a playoff oh, boy. I think that they should work a playoff system into the existing system somehow. And a lot of people think that. I agree. I don't think that there should be, like, wild cards or anything like that, although I think you need them mathematically. But I think that you have to still place an emphasis on the regular season, and it's possible to do that with a playoff system as well. Yeah, that's one of the arguments against the playoff is that some people say that it'll render the regular season BCS supporters say it'll render the regular season not as important. And I don't understand that logic because you still have to play those games to get ranked high to get in the tournament. It's not like the basketball. They're not going to include 64 football teams. I've heard different proposals from 16 teams to the final eight teams battle it out. Final eight teams would be fine with me. Anything? Yeah, anything where you determine it on the football field would be fine with me because it's the only sport that it's not determined by a bracket of some sort or one of the reasons why we may never see a playoff is that the revenue associated with bold games has increased by, like, 2000% since BCS was instituted. Well, I think you can still work within that system. You can still call them bowl games and everything. You could just put it in the form of a bracket. It would add games, which would add more money. Another reason against it, they argue, is like, risk of injury. And their student athletes, they don't want to drag it on into their academic year. But come on, it's all about the dough. Yeah, it's just college athletics, but everyone knows it's about the money. I read a few arguments today, like, for and against, and one writer, I think he was from Slate, he calculated from his calculations, he thinks only 17% of NCAA Division One A teams even have a shot to compete for the national title by his calculation each year. How? Well, if you're not a BCS school, then you're kind of out the door to begin with. Okay. Like, Boise State may have a chance that they run the table this year, but that's a rarity. So that takes you down to 43%. And then he says if you don't start the season ranked number 20 or higher, then you're almost mathematically eliminated. So that takes you down to 17%. Can even compete for the national title. Got you. But I also say there's both sides to the coin there. I also say if you're I'm not going to pick on Boise State because they are a good football team. But let's say you're like Colorado Appalachian State, who beat Michigan two years ago. Remember that CNN opener? Yeah. That was awesome in Michigan. Paid them like a million dollars to come to Michigan. Michigan pound on them and had a safety shift. But teams like that, I mean, I kind of don't want to hear their argument that they should be competing because they're not big boys. They're not playing in the SEC. They're not playing in the Big Ten or the Big Twelve. Yeah, but if you're not, then you'll never attract talent, you can never get there. It's a self defeating system. Yeah. I mean, it's very exclusive and elitist, really. The schools with the most money are the ones that get to be in it and can perpetuate that good program, the winning program, through more and more money. Yeah, you're right. I did see another guy that said that he thought they should do, like, I think it was a 16 team pool, and the top twelve BCS schools, like, you get your automatic if you win the SEC, you're in. If you win the Big Ten, you win, if you win the Big Twelve, you're in. So after all your automatic bids, make the rest, like the last four or whatever at large bids. So you can still have the Cinderella teams in there with the possibility and answer it on the football field if you can beat them, great. Because Boise State beat Oklahoma a few years ago. Remember, in that ball game? Sure, of course. I remember the Statue of Liberty play. It was crazy. They pulled out of play from the 1940s. It was beautiful. And one that was, I think, was that two or three years ago, it was like the greatest football season of all time. It was just all over the place. Remember Missouri was like number one for a little while. There was like 20 different teams that were number one. Yeah, it's exciting. It's like three years ago, right? It's not very exciting. Like when you start the season number one, you run the table unless you go to that school. Yeah. We should mention, too, though, there was one change about just about a month ago, the BCS announced that teams that are ineligible for postseason play are removed from the computer rankings in all six of the formulas. So basically, this is like the USC rule. Oh, yeah. Because USC is on probation now. They can't play in a bowl game for the next two years or something. And so they said, well, we can't factor them in if they're the number eight ranked team, if they can't even play in the post season. Right. But not only that, if you're not eligible, I got the impression like, once you've reached once, it's statistically impossible for you to be eligible for your losses. Right. They start taking you out of the rankings and everybody below you goes up one rank. No, I think that means if you're ineligible from, like, crime yeah. From being banned from postseason play. Got you. I'm pretty sure. And as far as the human polls go, they said earlier this summer that the polls will not include teams that are prohibited from the NCAA. So they went the same route. Bye bye, USC. And there is BCS. We could rerecord this in probably 2030 minutes and it would be entirely different. Yes. If you want to know more about the BCS, you should probably go to Bcs.com. There's a handy search bar there. I'm sure, and just give us a little while to get this article up to snuff, okay? Yeah, we probably got something wrong here and there, too. I hope we talked fast enough that we're no one noticed. I have in my head my friend Scott Galvin with his arms crossed, just like, shaking his head. He's in the sound booth right behind me, actually. I could feel it, actually. All right, well, thanks for listening to me and Chuck talk about college football. For whatever reason you want to, you should go to Houstonffworks.com. There's a handy search bar there. Make something up and type it in and it will take you to a beautiful new place. Just spell it correctly or else it won't take you anywhere. Right. Yeah. That brings us then, I guess, to listen to mail. Yes. Josh, this is going to be a two parter because it's long. We heard from a prisoner about our prison email and he gave us lots of good stuff and I told him I was going to read it. It's anonymous because he is a straight shooter now. He's on the level, doing very good in his profession. He's square, a square. And nobody in his profession knows that. He was arrested for dealing math and so he wants to keep it that way. Does he work here? Yes, he does. It's Jonathan Strickland, guys. I was arrested in the mid nineties for selling an ounce of meth to an undercover narc in Nevada. I was set up by a friend who had gotten arrested on a similar charge, decided that he would snitch roll over and some people so they would get probation. Unfortunately, under Nevada zero tolerance policy, I had no prior. I was 22, and I was looking at 25 to life for my first defense. Did he include in there or was that you? That was me. Okay, to make a long story short, I jumped bail rand, Oregon, and lived on the Lamb for three years. This dude is the real deal. It sounds like Hippie Rob. It is not hippy. Rob. He got tired of living life on the Lamb, obviously hired a lawyer, turned himself in like a good guy, and managed to get the charges dropped to level two trafficking, entered a plea deal, and a long story short, he was in for, I think, three years. And I just have a couple of prison tidbits on this end and then we'll do the next part in the next podcast. Okay? He was not in a new prison that had the cards to keep track of commissary accounts. They were given paper slips, sort of like at a sushi restaurant, and we would turn them in once or twice a week. We would pick up our order in the next day or so. Items available were personal hygiene items, toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo. If you could not buy your own, you could get the state issued stuff, but that stuff was absolute garbage. And I should mention, too, we got another email from someone that said that Bob Barker's company, just looking at it, makes prison soap. Yeah, is that true? I'm looking it up as hopefully at the end of this, you'll know, because that would be really weird. Get your pet spayed and neutered, and I will make your prison soap for you. Cigarettes were available, both packs of cigarettes like camel and Marlboro, as well as loose tobacco and rolling papers. Packs of cigarettes were called tailors, short for tailor made. They're expensive and out of reach for most inmates. Financially, having tailors was a status symbol, and their rarity made them great bargaining chips. Interestingly, most gray market trading he reserves, the term black market for contraband were items purchased out of the commissary. Things you could get with purchased commissary items for trade were limited only by the creativity of the inmates. For example, a pack of cigarettes a week you could pay somebody to iron your clothing for you. She would always look as nice as possible for visits. If you wanted to write somebody a letter, you could pay one of several talented artists to custom decorate your envelope with roses or balloons or whatever else you could imagine. Basically, it was like on demand customary stationery, and it was actually a high service demand in prison. So that is the end of part one. Josh. We're going to leave him hanging for part two. Okay. So, Chuck, do you want the answer about Bob Barker? Gravely, there is a guy named Bob Barker who makes prison toiletries, but he's not Bob Barker. Price is right, according to snowflake. Okay, so thank you very much, Chuck, for part one. I myself am very excited about part two, and I'm glad I don't have to wait until next Thursday to hear it. I get to hear it in about 30, 40 minutes exactly. If you want to send us an email about Bob Barker, your favorite college football team, or your mom's home cooking, we want to hear about it. Send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more? Howstofworks? Check out our blogs on the houseofworks.com homepage, 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 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 podcast. 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Josh and Chuck's Christmas Extravaganza | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/josh-and-chucks-christmas-extravaganza | Have you ever wondered why the poinsettia is the official plant of Christmas or why we hang stockings by the chimney with care? Join Chuck and Josh for this very special Christmas episode. Who knows, maybe even St. Nick will make an appearance (he doesn't | Have you ever wondered why the poinsettia is the official plant of Christmas or why we hang stockings by the chimney with care? Join Chuck and Josh for this very special Christmas episode. Who knows, maybe even St. Nick will make an appearance (he doesn't | Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:39:37 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=13, tm_min=39, tm_sec=37, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=356, tm_isdst=0) | 39947793 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetop works. Calm. Hey, welcome to the podcast. What? You're the Bells. The Christmas podcast. Yeah. This is a Christmas podcast holiday special. Lots of glad tidings here. Yeah. Your buds are going to be bursting with them. We have real muppets. I wish you just look so disappointed. I wish. No, there's no muppets. Thanks for the let down already. It's like 30 seconds into this thing. No, instead, Chuck, this is the Higher Holiday Special, where we put together some little Christmas podcasts that we're going to do some shorties, some longies, we're going to dispel some myths, we're going to enforce some myths. That's right. And we're going to explain the origins of some things. And if you're all very good boys and girls, we may even read a story at the end. How do you like that? That's exciting. Yeah. So it's a little different. It's packed with at least 120% more holiday cheer than our typical episode. Yes. Like shrunken heads. Right. Maybe that one is up to, like, 180% more. And this one will come out, I believe, on what, like, the 22nd? Yeah, it's Christmas Eve. Eve eve, that's right. But you should be off work as far as I'm concerned already, and like, roasting chestnuts. But even if you're not, it's that time of year where you're going to work and you feel absolutely great about things. You know what I'm talking about? Have you ever worked retail in the holiday season? Yeah. Even in retail, right before Christmas, you can feel terrific. I worked at the Gap. I worked at American Eagle. Really? Yes. What was on your heavy rotation there? Santa's got a brand new bag. James Brown. Over and over. Ours was that Chrissy Hind one about that's a good one. It is a good one, except when you hear it 800 times. Yeah, it was a good mix, but yeah, and it was the same mix over and over again. What's my favorite Christmas song of all time? Yeah. Gosh, that's tough. So I would have to say, Chuck, my favorite Christmas performers are Johnny Mathis and Ferrante and Tysher. Okay. Excellent Christmas album. Sure. Bing Crosby's Christmas album is possibly the greatest Christmas album ever released. Carpenters, maybe. That's a good one. Definitely. Bing Crosby is at least tied with the Charlie Brown Christmas Special soundtrack. Sure. The Vince Geraldi Trio soundtrack, classic jazz Fence, and, of course, Williams Last Christmas. That's a good one. I'm not kidding. No, it's good. It's probably the best contemporary Christmas song of all time, if you ask me. I haven't gotten it yet, but my Morning Jacket has a Christmas EP they just put out, which I'm going to get. And then I think it's the waitresses. Merry Christmas. Yeah. That's Emily's favorite and has since become one of my favorites. Yeah, it's a good one, too. Very upbeat. Wasn't at the end of The Gong Show or something. No, it's the horn. Break in. Merry Christmas by the waitresses. Yeah. It's a good song. So, is that enough collaboration for the beginning? I think so. Let's get to it. We're doing this a little differently. There's going to be a little bit of Christmas cheer between some of the segments, and we hope that this finds you with a nice cup of cocoa, you're a warm fire. Or Scotch. That, too, if you're a night watchman. Sure. You're surrounded by people you care about and who care about you. Yeah. Or at the very least, you're having a good time with us. Regardless of how you choose to celebrate this time of the year, we're going with Christmas because that's what we do. That's a great point, Chuck. Yeah. But we respect all religions and stuff like that, right? We wish glad tidings to all. So let's get it started, shall we? Yes, let's. So, Josh, to kick this extravaganza off, this cheerfest, as you call it yeah. Let's talk a little bit about Christmas. Carolyn, do you ever do that? I have as a child, definitely going door to door singing, like, Christmas songs, narcobalads, whatever. As long as you're doing a door to door and it's winter, you're in the clear of the carol. I don't know about that. Well, you know, originally they started out as very secular. They weren't religious necessarily. Well, that's true. And in fact, the word carol itself lies not in song, as Sam Abramson, our old little buddy, has to say, but in dance. An old French carol with an E at the end means kind of dance. In Latin, carola means a dance to a flute, and in Greek, caroles means a flute player who accompanies the coral dance. So it was all about dance early on, and some were religious early on, but generally there were secular dance tunes. Right. American Bandstand the Eleven Lords leaping. You could consider them caroling, especially if there was a flute that they were leaping to. Good point. So, like a lot of Christmas traditions, which if you go back and listen to last year, is how Christmas work. I think it was in past tense for some reason. Really? Episode. Yeah. Because we killed Christmas. Yes. Silent night. Deadly night happened. That was it. You'll find that there is a lot of, I guess, stealing going on through Christmas traditions from pagan holidays. Yes. Specifically northern European pagan holidays. Specifically the Winter Solstice Festival of Yule, which is where we get Eulet, Yule, log, all that stuff. All the Eules. But they think that Caroline originally has its roots in the EU Festival, where a lot of northern Europeans got together and said, let's sing, let's dance. Maybe there's a flute, maybe there's not. But there's probably Wassel. Yes. Wassel is a thick, hot, spicy beverage that they would give travelers to keep them warm and to wish them well. And it became a holiday staple, obviously, because of the weather. Have you ever had it? No, have you? No. But I want to. Typically, it's like cider, brandy, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, oranges, apples, honey, sugar, yum and hot orange. Just take a Crock Pot, an ancient pagan Crock Pot, if you can. That's customarily. How it's heated? Well, and from that word jolly, bands of churchgoers would go door to door, and it's an old Norse term. They would call it Wastling or wassailing. Yeah. Is it worth sailing? I think so. And they would spread the joy through Christmas hymns. Right. Although, see, I thought that would have been the origin of caroling. But Sam says here we don't really know. Yeah, Sam kind of bounces all over the place in this mini article, but it's Sam. I wonder if he listens. If you're listening, Sam, we miss you, buddy. Glad tidings to you. Sam used to work here, by the way, if you haven't picked up on that. So, Chuck, it's possible. Well, there are different aspects to it. So you have the carols, right? Yes, a lot of carols like, oh, come all ye faithful guy rescue married gentlemen, I saw three ships of Sailing, that kind of stuff. Silent night, silent night they're very religious, very Christian. They are talking about the nativity, right? The birth of Christ. Exactly. Like I said, carols were originally secular, although I'm not exactly sure what they were singing about, necessarily. Right. Maybe like, it's cold, it's really cold. Can we have some waffles? That was a carol. Sure, but in about the fourth or fifth century Ad, carols were written in Latin. They were very solemn, serious, not necessarily associated with Christmas. It wasn't until the 13th century when St Francis of Assisi said, you know what? I need to jazz up my congregation. I'm going to make some up tempo carols. They're going to be about the nativity, but they're going to be happy, and I'm going to make everybody sing them on Christmas. And that was the birth of the Christmas carol as we know it. Exactly. And they were very energetic, as you said, and that spread through across Europe. And of course, anything that spread across Europe was eventually going to root down here in the New World. That's right. The United States. And eventually little Chuck is going to find himself as a 15 year old going door to door in Stone Mountain with his youth group. That is nice, Chuck. It was nice. I thought you were such a supportive, fellow youth group member. You really nailed that carol. I've been paying attention to you at practice and you really nailed it. Oh, I didn't overdo it, though. That's the key. Oh, that's not overdoing. You mean it? These days, a lot of groups do this for charity. Like I said, churches and I didn't get for charity, though. They hit people up for money or something. I think that people sometimes give them tips in lieu of waffle, because it's kind of hard to come by sometimes in the average house in Michigan. Sure. They don't necessarily have wasssel there, so sometimes people give people money. There's like an exchange of something. It's almost like Halloween, but you're actually giving somebody something in the form of, like, well wishes or glad tidings. Exactly. But you're earning your keep, as Sam pointed out. This could have come from the feudal tradition of singing for your supper. Another idea of possibly where caroling began, or going door to door, especially singing for your supper. Right, sure. Because it's not just the caroling. There's a thing of going door to door. Why are people going door to door? Why don't they just stand in a central location, make everybody come to them? Yeah, you can, but you're not really doing the whole thing. There's another legend Sam says probably isn't true, there's no basis for it, but there was a young girl named Carol Pohls, and she was a little English girl who went missing, very sadly in London during the holiday season in the 19th century. They went door to door looking for her singing to declare their good intentions, like, hey, don't shoot us in the face. We're really just looking for little carol. But Sam goes on to say that there's really no basis in fact for this. It might just be legend. So you want to talk about a few carols? Yeah. Twelve Days of Christmas. I mentioned eleven Lords of leaping. A lot of people say that this is an ancient means of secretly teaching children Catholic symbols, values and beliefs from a time when you couldn't practice it. That's bunk. Well, we're teaching them memory, at least, and how to recall things. Well, that's true, that's true. But the Catholic parts false. Right, right. And Twelve Days of Christmas came about around 18th century in England, so it makes it something of an old one, but definitely not the oldest. What about Otaninbaum? That's one of my favorites. That's a classic. A-K-A-O christmas tree. That's right. That is a German in origin, and we're going to pick up on that in a later story, by the way. The exact routes are not known, but the melody might be familiar to you if you live in Iowa, Maryland, Michigan or New Jersey, because your state anthem is sung to the tune of a Christmas tree. Who knew? Chuck, let's get to the bottom of probably one of the greatest mysteries I know what you're going to talk about Christmas. What is figgy pudding? If you're in England, you're going to say, of course we know what piggy pudding is. Right. It's British in origin. If you're in America and you're familiar with carol, we wish you a Merry Christmas, and the line, So we get some. We won't go until we get some. Now bring it right here. I think that refugee pudding comes after bringing some figgy pudding. I believe it's the more on the nose line, which precedes it. Right, sure. I said re figgy pudding. Okay. Yeah. Sorry about that. It is British. It's a dessert. It is sort of like carrot cake meets custard, but it's got chopped figs in it and spices and things. I don't know. Does it sound good to you? Yes. Oh, really? Yes. I love carrot cake, but I love it. I'm not a big custard guy. I would definitely try it. All right. They said it's unique in texture and taste, and I'm not going to doubt that. So while you're sitting there by the fire, maybe now that we've kind of given you roughly the recipes for wassle and figgy pudding, you can make this. We'll be right here. Someone should send us figgy pudding. They should. All the way from England. Chuck. Josh, I'm sure you, being a sentient person, have noticed that there's a plant, a Christmas plant, as it were, like, probably the official Flora mask out of Christmas. The cactus? No, the point. Yes. The very brilliantly colored red leaf plant that you see everywhere this time of year. Did you say red leaf? Yes. Well, that's good that you said that, Josh, because a lot of people, because the leaves are so gorgeous and red and shaped like stars, think that that is the flower. And the flowers, in fact, the little yellow thing in the center. Yeah. And the flowers, like, I wish somebody would pay attention to me. I know, but I'm small and yellow. So you agree, then. Probably the official plant of Christmas, besides mistletoe and really, that's just the cutting. The official plant with a root ball of Christmas to the tune of about $200 million in sales every holiday. But the crazy thing is, as much as it's associated with Christmas and snow and sleigh rides and things like that sure. The Point city is native to Mexico. I had no idea. Now it grows to heights of about 12ft. Yeah, it's a shrub. A tropical shrub. Yes. In southern Mexico. And actually, it turns out that it's Christmas associated with Christmas, thanks to America's first diplomat to Mexico, a guy named Doctor Joel Roberts. Pointsette. Yeah. In the 19th century, he went down to Mexico, 1828, discovered the pointcetia, and thought, hey, this is really pretty. This would look great on my mantle in my hearth in December in South Carolina. Is that where it was? Yeah, South Carolina. And so he brought it back, and it wasn't initially it didn't catch on like wildfire initially, but over the years, throughout the 20th century, it became the mainstay of Christmas. It also suffered some indignity in what it was called before it finally landed on point setia, like, oh, really? The lobster flower or the Mexican flame leaf? Lobster flower. Actually, down in Mexico, they consider it a holy plan as well. It's called the flores de noce Buena in Mexico. It's Spanish for flowers of the holy night. And that's based on a Christmas story that's told down Mexico way about a little girl who is very poor and who was there at the birth of Jesus, and all she had was weeds to bring him. As she showed up, the weeds bloomed into the beautiful poncetia plant. Hey, that sounds like a good story. It's a great story. I don't buy it. It's better than the lobster flower story because in that version, it turns into an angry lobster. So that is generally where people think that they got the Christmas tie. Right? Well, and the fact that they blew in December. Right. And another interpretation is that it's a symbol of the star Bethlehem, because the leaf looks like a star in a way. And then the real interpretation is that they bloom in December. So is that it? Well, no, there's a lot of scoring heaped on point that is that they are, in fact, poisonous. It turns out that they will give you diarrhea if you eat the leaves, which are called brax, the upper portion of the why would you do that? Because you're a little kid and it's red. Okay. You will get a little case of diarrhea. Your tummy will hurt, but it's not fatal. Apparently, scientists somehow figured out that a little kid would have to eat about 500 points out of your brackets for it to become a toxic dose. So you want to keep him away from the point that he is anyway, just so they don't have diarrhea this Christmas, but you don't have to worry about them dying, at least. And as my wife pointed out, but they are toxic to cats. I looked that up. They are somewhat toxic to cats, but I don't know if they're deadly. And the website I found said cats aren't going to really like the taste that much anyway, so you really don't need to sweat it. But if your leaves drop off on the floor and you got cats, you might as well pick it up and put it in trash because you don't want to make kitty sick. It's true. Ever. Lauren and the wizard are pointsetia free, although my house is riddled with them. With Lauren and the wizard. No, with Pincettia. Well, Chuck, we missed it this year, but next year, we'll now know. Also, December 12 is National Point City. A day in the United States. Aka. Go out and buy some point CDIA. Yeah. So that's point CIA. It is. And I want to take this opportunity to wish Merry Christmas to the wizard and Lauren. Thank you. They have their stockings. What I'm hoping is that because of this podcast, there will be tens of thousands of people all over the country saying, hey, did you know the poinsetti is actually from Mexico? I hope that happens around dinner tables all over the world. Chuck, it's time for probably my favorite Christmas story. My favorite. You like this one? My new favorite. You weren't familiar with this until recently? Well, I sort of was. Here's the deal. I saw the movie at midnight clear. Have you ever seen that? Yes, I have, but not for years. I forgot about that. Really good movie and not so much based on, but inspired by this story. And it was always one of my favorite movies. But there was actually another movie that hits this one on the head from five years ago, cannonball Run. What? It's a foreign film called Joyx Noel, which means Merry Christmas. Joyo Noel? Yes. And it tells the story straight up. Does it? Yes. So the story that you're talking about, I want to explain to you, is called The Christmas Truce. This is so great. And it is a true story, as you're saying, and it took place in World War I. World War One. Chuck, humans have gotten pretty good at war. By the time World War I came around World War I, the more I hear about it, it sounds like perhaps the most brutal of the world wars. It gave us our first understanding of PTSD, which we used to call shell shock. Yeah. It gave us mustard gas, phosgene gas, chlorine gas. Chemical warfare is another way to put it. Flat flames. Yes. Tanks, machine guns that could spit out 600 bullets a minute. Airplanes in combat, mass bombing, dropping bombs on civilians. And most pertinent to this story, trenches. Trench warfare. Yeah. This is nutty. Trenches made their debut along the Western Front in Europe, apparently to great success. Too great of a success. For example, the Battle of Verdon lasted nine months. There were 300,000 deaths and almost no changes in the positions between the two trenches. I mean, war was so enthrallingly basic back then. It was literally just like gaining ground foot by foot. Right? Yeah. But this was the first step toward modern warfare. It was that, but it was the first step toward modern warfare where you could kill a bunch of people at once. And a lot of people did die from World War I. Eight, 5 million people died from the war, including civilians as well. Well, you make a really startling point in here. And this is your article, right? Yeah. With the trenches, sometimes these things were as little as 30 yards apart from each other. And out of all the hundreds of miles of these trenches, there was an average of four soldiers or no, a soldier every four inches. That's the average. That's what I read. Wow. Isn't that astounding? Boy, that is some close quarters. It is. Well, and it's not just close quarters. Boy, that's inconvenient close quarters to be scared out of your mind or wounded and dying. Yeah. See somebody next to you. It was horrific. And one of the things that naturally comes about when you dig two trenches and are fighting one another is a space in between with a lot of dead guys. And yes, that's called no man's land. The space between two trenches is called no man plan. Is that where that term originated? Really? Yes. Cool. World War I was already in full swing by the time Pope Benedict the 15th was elected Pope. And one of the first things he did was say, hey, let's have a truce this Christmas Day. Yeah, good idea. Apparently the Germans said, okay, all right, we'll think about it. And the allies said, no way. We're not going to give up any fortification or even a single ants. We just got to keep going. I get the idea that word got around, though, at least. Yeah, he had called for it. Sure. Right. Even though it was turned down, for the most part, for almost everywhere in the world, there wasn't a truce on Christmas Day, except for one little part of the trenches in Flanders, Belgium. Tuck, this is such a great story. If you've seen the movie, you know that what the Germans did. Well, first of all, they all got gifts brought to the front line. Soldiers did tobacco puddings, maybe figgy pudding, at times chocolates, just little tokens of appreciation. The Germans got their little tannin bombs with these little small Christmas trees. And in the middle of the night, these Germans put up their little trees on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve. Lit their little candles, and the dudes I don't know if it was 30 yards, but the dudes across in the other trench, the Allies were like, well, hey, that looks kind of nice. And then all of a sudden, they saw these signs from the Germans said, you know, fight. We know fight. Isn't that funny? That's adorable. And the British held up signs that say Merry Christmas. They said, what the heck are you talking about? I think what originally got them was the Germans with their little Christmas trees on the tops of their trenches. Everyone could see started singing carols. And carols are kind of universal. They're pretty old. Sure. And I imagine they were probably singing oh, ten and bomb, which sounds to the English like, O, Christmas tree. And the British soldiers started singing back to them football fight songs. Yeah. The Germans then sang stila knocked. Yes. And they're like, you're not picking up on what we're trying to do here, guys. Put the whiskey down. Right. But what ended up happening was little by little they started poking their heads up, saying, you're not going to shoot me, are you? They're like, no, I'm not going to shoot you if you don't shoot me. And then they met up in no man's Land and partied down they had Christmas celebration and no man's land in the trenches like Christmas 19 14th. They shared tobacco. Yeah, I imagine they shared their puddings. Yeah, they exchanged them as gifts, pretty much. The soccer match broke out and the Germans one, three to two, I bet as cheery as it was anytime England and Germany get together to play football, it's not a very pleasant scene. So I bet you there was some elbows being thrown. Maybe a little bit. Although I'll bet it was kind of like, hey, sorry. Right. But they still wanted to win. Yeah. There was a juggler at one point along the front, and he put on a nice little show. German guy. Right? Yeah. And in a lot of circumstances, there were places where fighting did continue. And in some circumstances, commanding officers, like, established a former impromptu truce with the opposing commanding officer. Right. In some places, commanding officers said, you need to keep fighting. And soldiers from both sides just defied their orders and stopped. I love that. And then in some, commanding officers just kind of looked the other way or didn't do anything about it. Right. But soldiers were there in the middle of no man's land who they've just been shooting at just hours before. It's crazy. We're now playing soccer with and making jokes and smoking with and hanging out. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, because I don't know, it's crazy for our generation to think about these world wars in Europe because if you ever traveled around Europe just to imagine what would be equivalent of our states just going at it, when in fact, Europe is its own smallish place, they're right there across the border and they're like, hey, dude, we're not so far apart. Could be like Tennessee fighting. Kansas. Yeah, that's correct. Or Georgia. No, I'm just saying, like, Tennessee and Kansas can fight, too. Well, sure. I was trying to keep the side of Switzerland. I just thought you were given a Kansas shout out. No. Okay. No. But I should. Yes, sure. Merry Christmas, Kansas. So the sad part about this is that, of course there was a war to be fought at the end of this truce in 1914. They had to go back to fighting and killing each other. The same dudes, they were just playing soccer with them, hugging and drinking. Yeah. And sometimes shots picked up on Christmas or the day after Christmas. But in some places, some of this truth went on beyond New Year into the New Year. That's awesome. It is very awesome. But what's crazy, Chuck, if you ask me, is not that the Christmas truth happened on that Christmas in 1914 in the trenches along Flanders, Belgium, but that they ever went back to fighting again. Agreed. And that is the story of the Christmas truce. Josh, that is part three. Was that part four? In the fog of the Christmas spirit, Chuck? I can't even count. I'm so giddy. Let's move on to one of my favorite parts about Christmas. It's not the big gifts, but the stocking stuffers. Right. One of my favorite parts growing up was getting up on Christmas morning, going downstairs. Scott, Michelle, Chuck, each had our own individual stockings. They weren't even the same. They were styled differently each time. Okay. Yeah. And seeing what was in there. And because it was my family, it was the occasional small action figure or bobble, but generally it was things like toothbrushes and deodorant and socks and these necessities of life that my family should have been providing me with anyway. But they were stuffed in the stocking, and I always get a good crack up about that. Thinking about that. Yeah. I didn't get deodorant. My family had matching stockings. They were all macramade by a family friend. Oh, sure. But yeah, there would be stuff in there, like little things like chapstick or something like that. An action figure. Great stocking stuffer. But we always got an apple and an orange. Yeah, we got candy and stuff. We get candy as well. And I'd be like, Why is there an apple and an orange in here? Who wants this? Apple and orange? Yeah. This is not candy. So I would give mine away. Right. And I'm probably less healthy today because I didn't eat that apple and that orange on Christmas morning. But you're eating them now. I am. My favorites were the little hollowed out plastic candy canes with the little tiny Eminem like things inside. But they weren't m and Ms. They had a very distinct flavor, which was not MINEM flavor exactly, but Chuck, I remember being a young lad and getting my stocking down and being so excited and just stopping and being like, this is insane. Where did this start? You remember thinking that. Now I know. Now I understand where the idea of stocking came from. Well, we have the answer. Josh. Saint Nicholas. Originally, Saint Nicholas goes back to the third century. Yeah. Remember we talked about him in how Christmas worked? Yes, sir. So, Brief Recap, the ancient town of Myra and what is now Turkey, had a shrine dedicated to Bishop Nicholas. Over the centuries, tales sprung up about how generous Bishop Nicholas was. And this is where we first got the idea of Saint Nick being a gift giver. So that's where it starts. The actual stocking part of this whole story is Nicholas would go by the homes of these ladies that were too poor to have a dowry, which is the dough that your family has to give to your husband goat, which I got no dowry. Are you going to get a dowry? No, I don't believe so. My dowry is in happiness. Exactly. That's what Emily always tells me. And then the bishop would throw these gold coins down to these poor maidens, down the chimneys, and they would fall into the stockings, which were already hanging there to dry out of fire. And boom, there's a little bit of trivia. And I went back and looked, and I was like, were there stockings in third century Turkey? There may have been, if you consider socks stockings. But they would have been a new invention because socks were invented by the Romans in. About the third century. And stockings, they didn't proceed that at all of it was an offshoot of stocks, in my opinion. I would have thought socks would have been an offshoot of stockings, but I don't think so. That's what I know. The other, closer to home, temporarily idea is that we put stockings out because we're mimicking little Dutch children who, for their center claws, who rides a horse, they tend to leave in their little wooden shoes for the horse? For center claws, horse. Is that why we leave out cookies and stuff? For Santa? Yes, for the reindeer, we left beer. We left Old Milwaukee and Christmas cookies and a carrot. And your family did? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Beer wasn't allowed in our household. We left milk and cookies. My father strongly encouraged us to leave beer for Santa. I wonder why an Old Milwaukee tall boy? So Dutch children would leave their little wooden shoes out with hay, and then Santa would take the hay and feed it to his horse and in exchange leave presents in the little wooden shoes. And they think that it started in America in the early 19th century, and it was from Emulating, the Dutch custom. Pretty cool. That's where we get stockings. So let's just roll this one right in. I consider this next one almost a companion piece. Oh, you do? Because we're talking about Christmas Day. So we're going to talk about an odd thing that happened in Atlanta last year. We actually had our first white Christmas in a long time. We did, didn't we? It was very cool. It was very sweet. Well, Chuck white Christmas. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. It's a song that was written by Irving Berlin in January of 1940. Yes. So he's obviously still in the Christmas spirit. It's in the Guinness Book of World Records for selling 100 million copies, which is a lot of copies. Wow. Remember I was telling you that I think being Crosby may have the best Christmas album ever? Yeah. It's a great version. Yes. This popularized it. He's the one who really kind of got it on everybody's radar but the Carpenters. You mentioned Willie Nelson. What a great Christmas. Ellife is Gerald Louis Armstrong. Pretty much everybody's done white Christmas. So he did it. Yeah. And Noah, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency. What's that got to do with Christmas? They got in on the White Christmas thing. If you search White Christmas and Noah, you're going to come up with a pretty cool map that shows your chances of having a white Christmas based on weather data from 1961 to 1990, I think so. It's just a historical record. That's all it is. It's a prediction based on that. Okay. So, like, here in Atlanta, we have a less than 5% chance. Yeah. Shows how lucky we were. But if you live in Calyunt, Michigan, on the Upper Peninsula, and that's, I think, the Upper Upper Peninsula Right. You have a greater than 90% chance of having a white Christmas. Ohio, this is where I go every year to Akron. Obviously there's always snow on the ground. Whether or not snows or not is kind of hit or miss. I remember those though, as a kid growing up in Toledo, pretty great white Christmas. It didn't matter how much snow is on the ground, if it was snowing on Christmas, it was insanely comfy. You know where it stinks? Where La? Like 1%, I think. I didn't even look, but I lived there for five years and they do their best. In fact, La kind of goes overboard with the decor from what I remember, I think because it's sunny and has palm trees and stuff like that, but it's really tough to get it going out there in a Christmas sense. Yeah. I always felt it when I came home. It's like that in Apache Junction or something, too. Chuck in London, they take bets on whether it will be a white Christmas. And I looked it up. Of course they do. Sky Bet is giving odds and the odds are eleven to two for White Christmas for London this year. I bet London is lovely in the snow. Yeah. And then every once in a while, no matter what your bed is, no matter what Noah predicts, no matter what Bing Crosby and Irving Berlin say, there is a fluke, a fluke white Christmas. And that happened in 2004 in New Orleans. New Orleans had its first white Christmas in 50 years. Wow, that's crazy. And then in 2006, Chuck, two years later in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia, there was a freak snowstorm on Christmas morning that brought nearly a foot of snow to some areas in Australia. And the reason why this is such a strange occurrence was because Christmas falls on Australia's summer because they're in the Southern hemisphere. Sure. So that really was a weird white Christmas. That is weird. Yeah. I bet they were partying it up that day. I'll bet they were too. You know the Aussies. So that's white Christmas. You can go to search Noahnoaa and Whitechristmasstockings. Well, that's two part works. One. Yeah. Okay. No, I mean our story was don't forget to put TheTon HTML for your search, Chuck. Josh I believe that everybody has been good enough listening to this episode that they should get a story of some sort on Donner, on Dancer. Yeah. Alright, what we're going to read here is called Twas the Night Before Christmas, alternately titled A Visit from St. Nicholas and it was written by a guy named Dr. Clement C. Moore, who loved his kids and loved writing poetry. And one Christmas in, I believe, the early 19th century, he put the two together and wrote A Visit from St. Nicholas for his kids as a poem. And it caught on and was printed in a newspaper first and then a magazine, school readers, and then it was turned into its own little storybook with very cute drawings. It was translated into French. German. Braille. Swahili. It's probably the greatest known Christmas poem of all time. So Chuck agreed. You are really good at this. You're very good at reading stories as everybody has ever listened to the Halloween episode knows. I think you should start this off. All right? So we want to encourage everyone, turn it up. Gather the children around the fire. Pour up a hot toddy or some for sale, if you got some on hand and let us take you away to a different time and place. And we want to say to everybody listening thanks for joining us. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Glad tidings to every one of you. We hope this Christmas finds you safe and happy. Absolutely. Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. The children were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads and Mama and her Kerchief and I in my cap had just settled our brains for a long winter snap. I went out on the lawn. There rose such a clatter I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow gave the luster of mid day to objects below when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a miniature sleigh with eight tiny reindeer with a little old driver so lively and quick I knew in a moment It must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles. His coursers they came and he whistled and shouted and called them by name. Now, Dasher, now, Dancer. Now, Prancer. Now, Vixen. On, Comet. On, Cupid. On, Donner and Blitzen. To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall. Now dash away, dash away all as dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly when they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky. So up to the house top the courses they flew with the sleigh full of toys and St. Nicholas too. And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof the prancing and pawing of each little hoof as I drew in my hand and was turning around down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot. A bundle of toys he had flung on his back and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes, how they twinkled his dimples, how merry. His cheeks were like roses his nose like a cherry his droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow and the beard of his chin was as white as the snow the stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth and the smoked encircled his head like a wreath he had a broad face and a little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly he was chubby and plump. A right jolly old elf and I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself a wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread he spoke not a word but went straight to his work and filled all the stockings and turned with a jerk and laying his finger aside of his nose and giving a nod. Up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh to his team gave a whistle and away they all flew like the down of a thistle but I heard him exclaim here he drove out of sight happy Christmas to all and to all a good night. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housedefworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The House of Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. 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 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 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." | ||
c43c6c3a-5460-11e8-b38c-87628aea403c | SYSK Selects: How do dogs perceive time? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-do-dogs-perceive-time | A dog that knows exactly when its owners will arrive home every day seems to have a human perception of time, but in fact, they perceive time very differently than we do. Find out more about how dogs view time in this classic episode. | A dog that knows exactly when its owners will arrive home every day seems to have a human perception of time, but in fact, they perceive time very differently than we do. Find out more about how dogs view time in this classic episode. | Sat, 02 May 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=123, tm_isdst=0) | 25552444 | 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. 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, pals, how are you doing? Charles W. Chuck Bryant here on a Saturday with my select pick for this week from September 17, 2009, one of our many, many episodes on dogs. And this is a good one. How do dogs perceive time? Really, really good stuff. Check it out. 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. Chuck Bryant. Chuck Bryant. Hello. Yes. Nice, Chuck. We'll get to that in a second. Do it again. That's awesome, chuck's barking because this is stuff You Should Know. And this particular stuff you should know is entitled how Do Dogs Perceive Time? And I said in dog language just then, I don't perceive time. That is up for debate, my friend. Up for vigorous debate. All right. So, Chuck, let me do a little intro here, a little lead inseway, whatever. I know I spoiled your parade there. What do we call them these days? What do we what? Segways? Lead ins. Chuck, about a year ago this month, France, Paris, france made history, legal history. How so? They actually used a dog as a witness in a criminal case. Did they get the dog to bark at someone? Yes. Wow. I kid you not. Like an intruder. At the very least, and I hope I'm not a Bangladeshi newspaper here because I found it in the Daily Mail, which is not known for satire, but it can be known for poor reporting from time to time. So you may have egg on your face soon, we'll find out. But there is a dog named Scooby that was brought into a murder case or a hearing to see if there was enough evidence to try a man for murder. For something that was ruled a suicide, and the dog barked furiously at the alleged perpetrator and they gave him a scooby snack. Yeah. So that was the last I heard. It was from a year ago. But there was some concern over whether the dog's memory would serve it or not because it had been two and a half years since the incident. Okay, that makes sense. And that's kind of key to how dogs may or may not perceive time. The best I could come up with that's great, thanks. So what that betrays is a sense by at least the reporter and the courts in Paris that dogs have a memory, that if they have a memory, then they should be able to perceive time. Right. Right. Chuck, let's talk about this. What is time? Well, you know, my whole deal with time, I've said it before. Well, time is just abstract numbers on a calendar and hands on a watch aren't time. Yeah. No, what you're talking about is the human construct of time yes. Based on 24 hours. It's all kind of arbitrary. Seven days in a week? Well, not necessarily. Well, not anymore. Here's why. It was actually kind of ingenious that we should come up with a 24 hours day because we have these things called circadian oscillators yes. Which are the fluctuators in our circadian rhythm, which makes us fall asleep at night, wake up in the morning, body temperature, get hungry at certain times. Neural activity. Right. The neural activity and the hormones are reactions to things like changes in temperature that are on a daily basis. Things like changes in natural light. Sure. Right. So our reactions to these are circadian oscillators. And if you put them all together, like sleeping at night and waking up in the morning, that's our circadian rhythm. But the circadian clocks actually exist on about a 24 hours period. No, that makes sense then. But like you said, days on the calendar and all that, that is a human construct. Yeah. So what we're trying to get to the bottom of is whether or not dogs can perceive this not necessarily the human construct of time, but of time in and of itself, which is essentially a past, present and future. Exactly. And I know that one thing that we will talk about, and maybe we'll talk about right now is you have three dogs. Do you have any dogs? I have two dogs. What? Shut up. I have two dogs, and I'm actually fostering two feral puppy rescues, which you know. So right now, do you want to get rid of those two dogs? Because we could get rid of them like that if we plug this on this podcast. Yeah, we're kind of picky about who we give them to. Okay, well, how about this? If you're not a creep and you love dogs and you live in the East Lake area of Atlanta, just send us an email if you want one of Chuck's puppies. Very cute. Yeah. So anyway, if your dogs are anything like my dogs, and actually my cats, too, they know when the food bell is going to ring. Sure. Actually, they start emily calls it food abuse. They start the food abuse typically about an hour and a half before they typically get fed every afternoon. And in the morning, we feed them pretty much straight away in the morning, so they know then. But my dog, Lucy, dude, comes in the room and looks at you with her head cocked, stamps on the floor with her feet and goes and I'm waiting for her literally to one day say, feed me one day. I told Emily if she did that one day, I would be surprised for about a second. So, Chuck, here is where we reached the bone of contention. Right. Sorry for that pun. I'm not Jonathan Strickland. Your dogs do the same thing, I assume, right? Well, no, my dogs are fed constantly. They always have food. For some reason, I'd lucked out. And they just eat whenever they want, whenever they're hungry. I can't imagine that. It's pretty cool. My dogs eat their food like it's the first time they've ever been fed. I've seen that before, my dogs, they're pretty laid back when it comes to stuff like that. Are they fat? No. Really? No, they're healthier than I am. Well, they're healthier than a lot of people I know. They regulate their food and take on their own. It's weird. So weird. But I know what you're talking about. So the question is this do your dogs know, based on past experience, that food is coming at a certain time of day? Not necessarily like 05:35 p.m.. But say, as far as the dog is concerned, when sun is low in sky over there, right. Are they Native Americans? Yeah, they're like Italians playing Native Americans, right? You think I'm dumbbell? Or is it a circadian oscillator? Well, that's the circadian oscillator. It could be, yeah, it could be. What that is, is they're using their memories of past experiences to predict the future, which is episodic memory, which is our construction of time. Or is this semantic memory, which is totally different but related. Do you want me to go into this? Because this is outside research. I have no choice. Then semantic memory is all right, Chuck, let's say that you have brain damage to your frontal lobe. I do, in fact, which is where your episodic memory is located. That's the region that controls episodic memory, which is learning from experience. Right. You could conceivably learn how to play chess, right? Right. But you won't remember where you learn how to play chess. Right. Much like they say a baby learns how to walk and talk, but they don't remember that day. You taught me how to walk. Right. They don't have to relearn crawling or walking or talking on a day to day basis. Right. Because they learned it. And that's semantic memory. That's like facts and rules and possibly motor movements, whatever. Or if I run into this wall, it's going to hurt my face because I'm crawling. Right. But they don't remember the wall teaching them like, come crawl the mate, that kind of thing. Right. So, yeah, that's semantic memory. Episodic memory would be like, what did you have for breakfast this morning at a fruit smoothie? You had a fruit smoothie? I remember what the light looked like. I remember what smelled like. That is precisely episodic memory. And I should probably give a shout out to Trzantal, who I'm just blatantly ripping off right now. The chess example was one of Zanta's examples of semantic memory, and what you just said is almost word for word, an example of episodic memory. You said you remember these other details. Sure. Whereas had you said, I had a smoothie this morning, I must have because I always have a smoothie. Right, that would be well, not the burping part, but if you always had it, that'd be more like semantic memory. Okay. So we reached the question do dogs perceive time or are these reactions that appear like they're keeping track of time some way, maybe through a circadian oscillator based on semantic memories? And there's been a lot of studies that are not necessarily on dogs but on other animals. Right, yeah. What's this crackpot's name? Roberts. No, what's this guy's name? Doctor Roberts. Yes. I have to say I'm going to take issue with Doctor Roberts. Yes, William Roberts, he's an animal cognition researcher. Right, right off the bat you're taking issue with that? Not that part, no. Okay. Yeah. He did some studies on pigeons and primates, to name a couple, and long term and short term memory as far as remembering a sequence that they would I guess the pigeons would peck it out and the primates would tap it out and to get a reward. And they found that they have pretty good short term memory for this kind of thing. Right. That's working memory. Right, yes. But long term is reference memory. Yeah, but as far as the reference goes, they couldn't remember it that well if there was a big break in between. Right. Roberts actually wrote a very famous paper as far as animal cognition goes, where he basically said that he concluded animals are stuck in time. And I just made air quotes for those of you out there listening in podcast land. And by stuck in time, it means that they live exclusively in the present, that they don't have the capacity performing long term episodic memory. Episodic is the key word. It is very much the key word because I know at home you're saying, no, I taught my dog to sit when she was one. That's not the same thing. That's what you're talking about with the baby learning how to walk. Right, but there's a lot of examples out there in nature that would kind of belly Dr. Roberts idea that animals and dogs are stuck in time. Well, a good one is squirrels foraging food, stocking up for the winter or for the winter and doing it year after year after year. I believe Roberts actually address that and says, but they continue hoarding even when their stores inexplicably disappear, which I assume some researchers went and stole squirrels nuts and then studied them to see what they would do. I don't understand that at all. I don't either. It seems like that would make them want a horde. Yeah. So I kind of have an issue with that one a little bit, but it's possible. I'm not entirely seeing that point all the way. I don't see the point. I'm not quite sure what he meant there. But there's also one about the bananas. Right. Chuck, there are some primates that were given choices between more or less bananas. Yeah. And predictably, at first, if you offered an ape one banana or two bananas, they're going to take the two bananas. Sure. But they found that when they started increasing the number of bananas, like ten compared to 20, they would just go for the ten bananas. He thought this meant they have no concept of the future. Like, maybe I should take these bananas because I might be hungry tomorrow. Right now, I think Roberts fails to take into account social structure. Sure. Right. We know that we could use ten bananas for tomorrow, but we also have things like preservation techniques or refrigeration available. That's what I thought, too. And if you go back in time just a few thousand years ago to huntergatherer societies, or even huntergatherer societies that are around now, they don't store food at all. They forage for what they need right then, and that's what they eat. I would imagine that would actually explain a lot of the primate decisions. There's no real reason to their society isn't set up on this idea that I need more and more to protect myself in the future. Exactly. I don't know that that necessarily means that they don't have any concept of the future. I think that there's all these other explanations out there. Right. When I read that, the first thing I thought was maybe they've never taken more than ten bananas in their life because they've never needed to. So it doesn't even dawn on them. That should be something they would do. Right, exactly. I guess what we're saying, both of us are on the same page here. There are other explanations. I agree. And I think one of the things I took from this article was that Roberts found it conclusive that animals are stuck in time by cherry picking some studies here. Yeah. We kind of disagree with them. There's a lot of other factors. I know that my dog Lucy is stuck in time at 05:30 P.m. Every day because she's always asking for the food so I guess another problem. It's entirely possible, Chuck, that our brains just aren't big enough. They're not as big as Robert's brain. Maybe. Did you ever hear that, like, goldfish have an eight second memory span? I've never heard that. So I have. Right. Do you have a goldfish in here? I do have a goldfish here. Very cute. Yeah. Molly, she's very cute. His name Molly. I didn't know that. Yeah. Interesting. But having an episodic memory makes it almost impossible to think about not having one. So like, if a goldfish does have a memory of 8 seconds, does that mean that every 8 seconds all of its memories are purged? Like getting rid of the browser history in your computer? Or as new experiences come into the present? Our older ones pushed out after they hit this eight second maturity level. Right. And how do they test that on a goldfish anyway? Perfect, Chuck. Perfect segue. Here's the biggest problem. Robert's position is almost inherently speciesist. Are you familiar with this term? Yeah, this is a legitimate term. I'm not making this up. Animals have no souls. Animals don't have souls. It's impossible for a dog to be happy because that's a secondary emotion and dogs aren't self aware enough. There's a competing explanation for all this. Species tend to rely very strictly or remain very strictly within the structure provided by the scientific method. And all his studies here, he probably came out from that frame of mind. Sure. Right. But there's another way of looking at it, and that is that humans simply haven't come up with tests that are clever enough to get definitive proof that an animal can experience happiness or is aware of time, the future of the past, that kind of thing. You can take that way too far. Like after test after test after test, that proves the opposite. You could still conceivably say, well, there's a test out there that we haven't come up with yet, proves that they can. But I think that the testing that has been done is very much below that threshold. So far, I don't think we have a clue what animals are capable of as far as consciousness goes because we have such a loose grasp on our own consciousness. Sure. And we certainly can't delve into an animal's brain and see what they think and they can't tell us anything. I guarantee you one thing, I bet you Doctor Roberts is not a dog owner. Agreed? Agreed. Because you have dogs, dude. And I guarantee we're going to get tons of mail from people saying, are you kidding? My dog displays emotion every day. And I guess, Caesar, that the dog whisperer, might say that you're putting your human construct on the dog's mind. Yeah. Anthropomorphizing. Yes. I don't know, man, my dog is they're both pretty emotional. Well, yeah, anthropomorphizing is the go to ammunition for speciesist. And I don't mean to say that anybody who's saying like, no animals can't be happy because it's a secondary emotion and they lack that sense of self awareness required to experience a secondary emotion is a speciesist, but the two often go hand in hand. And it's really interesting that there's a line drawn right now between people who think animals don't have a soul and people who think animals can be happy and all the implications that come with that. Jerry, I bet you think your dog is the soul, right? Gerry saying, yeah, Jerry just gave the sweetest face and nodded. Yeah. So I feel like Chuck and I just opened a big old can of worms. So we'll see how this plays out in the emails, right? Yeah. If you want to read more about dogs perceiving time to answer the question, according to Roberts, no, dogs don't perceive time. Time is a human construct consisting of a past, present, and future, and dogs pretty much live in the present. Chuck and I don't necessarily agree with that one. You can go on and type in dogs perceived time in the handy search bar@housetuffworks.com. Since I just said that, it means it's time for a whole mess of listener mail. You are right, Josh. We're just going to call this Muppet mail, and we are going to go on a little longer than usual with our mail because the Muppet podcast, I think we will all agree, was sort of a sea change episode. And plus, we just want to see how long this background music actually goes for. I know. We literally got better response from The Muppet Show episode than anything we've ever done, I would say, wouldn't you? Yeah. The Henson Company twittered about it. Yeah. Heather Henson, we should say our colleague and friend Jonathan Strickland of text fame, his sister sister with Heather Henson, and it went viral thanks to him. Yeah. That's awesome. So we got great response. It's clear that everyone loves the Muppets. And so I wanted to go just through a few of these because I didn't want to just do one quickly before we start. And we never do this, but a guy sent me an email and I kind of touched a chord with me. So I want to quickly give a shout out for Joe to Beth in Ellwood, Indiana. And Joe just wants to say that he thinks that you are a pretty cool chick. Beth. Chuck, are you playing matchmaker? Is that why you're wearing nothing but a diaper and you have those wings on your bag? But Beth and Ellwood, Joe thinks you're cool chick, and so do we, because she actually sent us an Alien Hand Syndrome video, which rocked. Cool. That's good. I'll show it to you quick. Couple of things that we didn't mention in corrections. First of all, I mistakenly referred to the Children's Television Workshop as the Children's Television Network. So I goofed that one. You're thinking of home Shopping Network. I was for kids. We did not mention every Muppet movie. We did not mention every Muppet venture because no, I want to elucidate on this. We did that on purpose. First of all, we mentioned the three that were in theatrical release directed by Jim Henson. Yes. And by first of all, I mean, that's it, right? So a lot of people said, how could you not mention Muppets Christmas Carol? And we wanted to mention everything, but we would have been sitting here reading things all day long about the Dark Crystal and other MUP adventures. So we chose to only do the hints and ones, which, I have to say, Dark Crystal, that creeps me out still. And that was Henson, too, because I know people are going to write and say that was Hinson, but get over it. Right? We had a guy named Peter wrote in, and he told us about the Muppet Whatnot workshop? Yeah. At Goldman Sachs. At FAO. Yeah. And you can go to New York City, and you could do it online, but I looked, and it's down right now. I think it's just around Christmas time or the holidays. No, they got bought out by Toys R US, I think. So that's down right now. But you can still go to New York. You can go to the Muppet Workshop, and you can build your own whatnot at Goldman Sachs. It costs about $100. And he sent me a picture of he and his little cute daughter with her MUP and whatnot. So you want to thank Peter for that. And actually, I'm going on and on, but Peter had one of the big Fu Manchu mustaches like me. Yeah. Did I tell you about this? No. I said, very cool, Peter. Thanks for sending us. It looks like you picked up a mustache while you were there. Sure. And he wrote back and said, no, I got that at the Sam Elliott Supply Center down the street, or something like that. Peter packed a picnic supper. So that is all for the corrections. Now, we have a few emails. Oh, my God. Josh and Chuck. I just listened to how Muppets worked. I was excited to hear you talk about it because you mentioned the costume designer for Miss Piggy, who happens to be my Aunt Callista. Oh, wow. If you look up the Muppet movie, you can see her in the costume and wardrobe department on IMDb. She worked closely with Henson, and I've actually seen a picture of her with Jim Henson setting up some muppets in Emmet Otter's Jug Van Christmas. She left the muppets, I think, when Jim Henson died. But we still see her once a year. That's from Sam. And Josh is in fact, eating a Reese's Cup onto the next one. Hey, guys. Love your recent podcast. I was listening and thought I would mention that Jim Hinson studied muppetology at University of Maryland. I know this because I went to school there. And there is a Jim Hinton Studies program, and it is our claim to fame. I didn't know he went to my school until I went there. And there is actually a little bench statue. It's a bench with Henson sitting on it and Kermit sitting on the back of the bench, and they're kind of holding hands. That is beyond cute. It is very cute. And she also says that this is from Leasha, that they have the rights to it. They need to be in Green and Rainbow connection. So their marching band actually plays that University of Maryland terror turps. Yeah. Go Turps. Moving on, man. Listen to this background music. Chuck is I know we compared The Muppet Show to 30 Rock, and Phil of Lyndon Washington has this to say. I was trying to imagine Sesame Street would look like in real life. Two little boys getting their own apartment. A giant bird that sleeps behind garbage cans. A few scattered, seemingly sensible adults who really have no jobs and nothing else to do. No. Mr. Hooper had a story. That's true. Finally, it hit me while working my job as a special ed classroom assistant. It is one big government operated group home facility for special needs children and adults. Think about it. Bert displays classic asperger syndrome. They share a bedroom and obviously have some adults taking care of the rest of their house. Oscar is schizophrenic with his mood swings and a worm is the best friend as his big bird with his imaginary friend snuffle up against. And tell me Grover is not dealing with severe ADHD and Cookie Monster from Manic. Bipolar tendencies. And the jobless adults gordon, Susan and Bob. So that's from Phil. Are they jobless adults or the caregivers he says are jobless adults? All right, I've got two more. Jerry's laughing at how long this is going, but I warned her I was listening to your fantastic podcast, and I had to write in, I am getting married at the Henson Sound Stage next year. Sweet. So cool. He and his wife to be toward the sound stage. It was like being behind the scenes at The Muppet Show. We were honored as the first wedding ever to be hosted there. And I asked him. I ronab's like, Dude, what's the hookup? And he had none. He just asked. They rented out to people, apparently for things, and no one's ever thought to have a wedding plan. And he gave us some facts, but we don't have time for that. That is from Dan andof Tdfillistration.com because he's a cool artist. So I wanted to plug that from Dan. And finally, Josh from Jake in Newport. Richie, Florida says, I was an accident of the missed them up at Heyday, but I was lucky enough to have three older sisters and parents who had the foresight to ensure that they taped several seasons of The Muppet Show. So Jake is a big fan of The Muppets now, and he told us this fact which I did not know. Since Jim Henson's death, Ralph the dog has not spoken and is seldom used. It's my understanding that they do this out of reference to Mr. Henson, because Ralph was his favorite muppet. Oh, yeah, check the swipe, the way it's here tearing you sweet old softie. So that's muppet mail. We got hundreds of pieces of mail and good blog response, and thanks for sending them, and it was a good show. Yeah, and we'll try to keep you supplied with mortgage shows in the future. If you want to send an email and try to make Chuck cry, not that hard. You can send it 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 are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime 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." | |
86fe99fa-3b0e-11eb-9699-a3be26b64e79 | Noise Pollution: Arrrgh! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/noise-pollution-arrrgh | If you’ve ever found your blood pressure rising because some guy down the street doesn’t know how to keep the trigger on a leaf blower pulled all the way, then you’ve experienced noise pollution. Not only is it annoying, it turns out it’s deadly too! | If you’ve ever found your blood pressure rising because some guy down the street doesn’t know how to keep the trigger on a leaf blower pulled all the way, then you’ve experienced noise pollution. Not only is it annoying, it turns out it’s deadly too! | Thu, 14 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=287, tm_isdst=0) | 49862606 | 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. And there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. Can I tell people what just happened? Sure. After going on 14 years coming up yeah, I guess in April, Jerry hit record and you went, hey, everybody. Oh, wait. I've been having a lot of trouble with my brain lately. I think I'm just hey, I think you're doing great. I don't know if I told you thank you. I think you're doing great, too. I don't know if I told you, but I had trouble remembering how to what six plus seven added together, too? Did I tell you that the other day? That sounds familiar. That really bothered me, man. Yeah. And that's, like, my favorite number, and I just couldn't do it. I was putting my daughter to bed the other night, and as she was going to sleep, literally falling asleep daddy, what's four plus four? Eight. What's six plus two? It's also eight. Okay. She's learning math, and that first stuff you learn is literally just that simple addition. And it's just funny to think about, like, wow, that's what's on her mind right now. Yeah. But also, she's learning acceptance, too. Just unquestioning. Yeah. Can I tell people how you spelled this document that you sent my way for this noise pollution episode? Sure. Boy, you're just laying it all out there, aren't you? It was fun because it looked like a heavy metal band. It was N-O-I-Z-E-P-O-I think it was pollushun. Yeah. And looking at it on paper, I was like, oh, man, that's a good, bad band name. It is. That's a good name for a made up band in a movie. Like Wild Stallions. Yes. Bill and Ted. Yeah. Although that's tough to compete with. You know, it is. I also think we should give a little COA here. I think it's 100% impossible for you and I not to turn into old men complaining about, like, loud music and loud mufflers and stuff in this episode. So it's going to happen. I think everybody who knows us and saw the title this one knew it was going to happen, but let's just put it on the table now. Well, and it's also funny you mentioned this because I did mention noise pollution. I introduced that concept to my daughter the other day and said she was like, well, what's that? And I said, well, it's as bad as trash on the road, but it's noise that's doing it, and you should be aware of it. And she's like, oh, okay. And I guess it never occurred to me that loud noises for kids, unless it's something that really bothers them, is just part of life. Sure. It definitely seems to become more bothersome the older you get. Absolutely. I don't know why, but I'm going to hypothesize that it's because you grow to learn that it doesn't have to be that way, and you come to really resent the things and the people who are making it so. Yeah, and I think that's why people one reason people retire to the country or something like that, if they've lived in the city their whole life, just a little more tranquil, perhaps even bucolic, lifestyle quieter, and there's a lot of science behind it. It's not just like, oh, I don't want to hear those noises. As you will see throughout this episode, it's bad for your health. Hey, speaking of retirement, have you seen that documentary on the Villages? I have. It is bonkers. Yeah, I saw it, actually, when I had Covet, I went on a documentary, binge. And that was one of them, man. It was, like, one of the most disturbing documentaries I've ever seen. And I've seen, like, Dear Zachary, and somehow it was, like, up there with it. It was good, man. I mean, I don't want to give anything, but the one guy that was the sort of the van guy, stew. Sure, yeah. It's kind of funny at first, but then I got really sad, too. Yes. A lot of layers. All of it was incredibly sad. It was highly recommended. Yeah, just bizarre, man. And then I was watching the credits, and I saw Darren Aaron offski was an executive producer. I'm like, okay, here we go. Nothing suddenly clicked a little more. I thought a great idea for a movie would be a setting like that. You couldn't call it that because it's proprietary. But the town yeah, a setting just like that, where they wake up one day and there's been a murder, and then Kyle McLaughlin is kind of a Twin Peaksy thing. The stranger from a strange land comes in to investigate a murder in a very unlikely place, and all the sort of weirdos there. I think that would be a cool movie or TV show. Sure. Well, I mean, that is Twin Peaks, basically, right? But if you set it in a retirement community in Florida, people, you could just walk away dusting your hands off, like, Job well done. There's plenty of things that have done that. It's not just Twin Peaks. Sure, I know. Just nobody did it better than Twin Peaks. I agreed. All right, so noise pollution. I think the fact of the podcast, to me came right up front and that I never thought of the fact that a decibel was a 10th of a bowl or a bell. What's his name right there? Yeah, I know. I never thought of it either, because you never hear of any other variation. It's like 1 decibels, 100 decibels, and apparently a bowl or bell, B-E-L is named after Alexander Graham Bell, too. Didn't know that either. And the reason why a decibel is used, which is one 10th of a bell, is because one 10th of a bell. Difference in sound is the smallest difference that humans can detect. Right. So we trade in decibels here on the human level, and we trade in an algorithm when we talk decibels, because it's one of those weird things where it's not like 100 decibels is it twice as loud as 50 decibels. It's split into an equation that's actually 100,000 times as loud. Yeah. The difference between ten decibels and 20 decibels is 20 decibels is ten times louder. The difference between ten decibels and 30 decibels. 30 decibels is 100 times louder. It's logarithmic and zero DB, as we'll call them. That is the threshold of human hearing, period. And 140 decibels is about where you can start to experience literal physical pain from a sound. Yeah, I saw between 120 and 140. Yeah, it ranges. I've been to some loud concerts in small venues. Yes. Dinosaur Jrior. At Variety Theater. Was it for me? I was just about to say Dinosaur Jr. They're one of the legendary loud bands. It was insane. It is super loud. But it's not like I don't remember feeling pain, but I do remember feeling discomfort in a couple of days where I was like, Jeez, I like my music loud, but this is a little much, dude. Yeah, I don't wear earplugs. I wore earplugs in that, and I was like, I'm saving myself right now. It was so loud. And I meant to say variety playhouse, not variety theater. Yeah, because we played there before. We don't want to disrespect. No, I know they're various things, but all of this to say God bless J mask us. Yes. No, it was great, but it was really loud. What about this conversation that we're having? What is that? Well, it depends. A normal conversation, something around 60 decibels. And I saw that people standing about a meter apart, speaking without raising their voices, that's 60 decibels right there for reference. What about a car? Cars are about ten times louder to 100 to 1000 times louder than normal conversation, depending on the car of the truck, between 70 and 90 decibels. What about an airplane or a siren? So you would think, okay, a normal conversation is 60 decibels. Airplane being 120 decibels is twice as loud. No, my friend, it's 100,000 times louder. An airplane is 100,000 times louder than a normal conversation if it reaches 120 decibels. All right. If you've ever been on a tarmac, like a live tarmac and heard a plane kind of landing or taking off, that's some loud stuff. Yes. And that's why they wear those cans on their ears. Yeah, and they definitely should, because we're starting to realize that there's all sorts of hearing loss besides the traditional ones that you can pick up on a regular hearing test. There's something called hidden hearing loss that we're just starting to get our mind around. Where the structure of your hearing apparatus in your ear, the little cilia that's almost like a Venus flytrap trigger hair, but for sound instead. Those things can be intact, but the neurons that form the chain between your ear and your brain can be permanently damaged. So that the sound that gets to your brain is garbled or partially missing. And that's a huge thing. And that can happen at much lower intensity than we understood before. And speaking of intensity, I think we should say real quick, a decibel. To us humans, we basically talk in decibels as like a measure of volume, because that's what it appears to like us like. An increase in decibels is an increase in the volume of the sound. But really what a decibel is measuring is the intensity of the disturbance of the air that something has made. So if you're really close to that disturbance, it's going to be a very intense exposure to your ear. If you're further away, it's going to be a much less intense exposure because it kind of dissipates over distances. But to you, it's just registering as a difference in volume, where really it's a difference in the intensity of the wave that's being produced, that's traveling through the air. That's right. And this is all sound. Yes. That's not noise. Noise is different. Noise is what we're talking about, mainly. And noise is classified as unwanted sound. And that can be simple enough. Yeah. That can vary depending on who you are. Obviously, the sound of your significant other's voice after 40 years may be noise to you asking for some tea. The sound of a Harley Davidson motorcycle being revved up in front of your house might be noise or those blowers that you used to hate. And that's what you love and use. I still don't love it and I want battery powered, but it's still, even while I'm using it, I'm like, I'm a terrible person. But you get it done quickly, probably, right. So quick. So quick. I'm like Mincing and Prancing just getting it done. And there's a lot of kinds of different noise. Sometimes. Let's say you work in a machine shop or something and you use a machine. The sound the machine makes is like, it's not necessary, but it's a byproduct. It's a result of the machine working correctly. It's not like, well, let's just make this thing loud. It's like, Well, I'm sorry, a jackhammer is going to be loud because that's just the way it goes. You can reference our jackhammer episode. It's fantastic. So that sound isn't necessarily noise, but the intensity and repetition of that sound makes it becomes noise. Yeah. It's an unwanted intensity or just the sound existing itself, like you're saying, like a leaf blower, just an unwanted existence of sound. So either way, the operative thing is it's unwanted sound. That's the key. Right? Yes. And this is another cool fact of the episode, I think, is that they think that as late as through the 1940s and into 1950, natural sounds were still the dominant sounds that you heard. And then things really changed. Yeah, because there's a big qualifier that a lot of researchers make that and not everybody does, but that noise is, by definition, human caused. Right. Like, either we're yelling or whatever, or one of the machines that we've created is making noise, but you wouldn't say the sound of that waterfall is noise. We don't think of natural sounds typically as noise. It's just sounds. And as we'll see it's probably because we have been living like our species has been living around those sounds and has definitively excluded them as threatening so that they don't produce an irritation in us. They just are sound almost regardless of how intense they are. Right. And again, that irritation is subjective because that rock concert that I enjoy, someone else might call that noise, that space shuttle launch that is super loud might be noise to some people, but to others, it's the same sound, but they don't think of it as noise because they're excited and exhilarated at the moment to see and hear that thing. Yeah. So, you know, the other night, the inspiration for Crew came back on the Dragon Castle. Did you watch that? No. Did you see it live? We didn't see it because they splashed down in the Atlantic, but we heard the sonic boom it made when it came back into the atmosphere over Florida. It was astounding. That's awesome. Did you see that dollar sonic boom? No, I didn't. Oh, it's really good. It starts out like, oh, God, this is not good. This is like a terrible corporate ad. And then it really starts to find its feet. It's crazy how it evolves over just the first couple of episodes. I got to see it. It's good. It's definitely worth seeing. What other kinds of noise you've got? Industrial noise, which that's classified as kind of from the beginning of the process all the way to the end of any kind of industrial process. And that's basically called continuous noise. From raw materials all the way to the end, disposal of whatever. Byproducts can usually cause a lot of racket. Yeah. So like a generator humming or something like that. There's not a lot of variation in intensity. It's basically this or steam being released. Or even like a rhythmic like something being like hammered? No, not hammered. That's a different that's called the impulsive noise, but just something that doesn't really vary. It's just kind of a monotonous sound that's kind of a subcategory called continuous sound. And it just so happens that most industrial processes are continuous in nature. Right. Whereas a train going by your house or a plane flying or a car going by, or a siren is intermittent. Yeah. And then also you could probably say, like if you held the trigger down on a backpack leaf blower, which, again, is the worst thing that anyone's ever invented. Right. But if you held it down that would be a continuous sound for the whole time it was going. But no one does that ever. They just rev in this arithmetic pattern that your brain is just giving it all to try to find a pattern in. And so you get worn out and irritated so quickly because of those things because they don't follow rhyme or reason. And in conjunction with that, it's an intermittent sound, which is, from what I can tell, one of the worst sounds for us. Right. And then you've also got community noise, which is just people noise. I think the leaf blowers are thrown into that lawn mowers. If you got a festival in your neighborhood or fireworks on the 4 July or people playing their music in their cars or their houses, this is all just sort of people generated community sound. Yeah. So those are basically the three categories that I saw industrial trafficking, community. Should we take a break? I think we should all we'll be right back. I got to go quiet down that racket outside and I'll be right back. Okay. Do you finish shaking your fist at those teenagers on your lawn? I'm lucky because we don't have one neighbor on one side and our neighbor beside us is pretty quiet. But I do live near and I've talked about it before. A pretty main road, and you kind of get used to it. But I also yearn to be a few blocks in. But you can't pick up your house and move it. So what are you going to do? You get used to it. You can. But it's really expensive. Well, no, that is true. You can move a house sometimes. Didn't we do an episode on that once, how to move a house? Yeah, I don't know if we did one just on that. It may have been like historic districts or something. I don't know. Okay. And by the way, that episode we couldn't think of the other day was Crumple Zones. Oh, boy. So we did do a whole episode on crumple zones. We did. Boy, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel there. But I remember that being an interesting episode, though. Totally interesting. Okay, well, that's the stuff you should know way, isn't it, Chuck? It is indeed. Should we talk about hearing damage? Yeah. So like I was saying, there's that kind of new type of hearing damage that we're wrapping our minds around. That is like the death of the neurons that are supposed to transmit the electrical impulse to the brain. And so we don't hear very well. Our communication is garbled. And yet you can pass a traditional hearing test, no problem. But other research is really starting to unfold, like less predictable ways that noise and noise pollution actually affects our health. And it's like our entire system is negatively affected by noise and noise exposure. It is. And basically at the beginning of the whole process is triggering the same exact thing that triggers your fight or flight response. You're going to have the same reaction to if you hear a siren go by, the same thing is happening, as far as your brain knows. Then what happens if a bear walks up to you and roars? Right. Yeah. So our hearing is always on and it's always on the lookout for a potential threat. And one of the ways that a potential threat can give itself away is by making a sound. Right. It was like I was saying earlier, we've been around waterfalls and the sound of waves in our evolutionary history for so long that basically it seems like when you're born, you come equipped with this don't worry about that sound. Actually, you can be sued by it. It's not something that should stimulate your fight or flight response. But we've lived around industrial machinery and the sound of a text message or a leaf blower. The stupid leaf blowers. For such a little amount of our evolutionary history that our minds are not at all attuned to those things or we haven't kind of adopted this idea that a leaf blower is non threatening and so it stimulates the fight or flight response in us when we hear it. That's right. So you're going to hear that sound. Your amygdala, which we've talked about plenty, contributes to emotional processing, is going to send that same distress signal to the hypothalamus again, that gets if you are in a fight or flight response, which is why you probably want to run screaming if you hear too many sirens or hear too many leaf blowers. Sure. And then that's going to signal your adrenal glands to get your adrenaline going. And I believe Cortisol gets going as well. Yes. It's like literally mimicking fight or flight. Yeah. And so they figured out that people who are continuously chronically exposed to sound like, say, people who live, like, really close to an airport, really close to the subway tracks, or people who work in a really noisy factory, they have all sorts of crazy, random health problems. Like, their kids sometimes have low birth weight, obviously. They can develop tinnitus, heart disease, obesity, diabetes. Their children who are exposed to chronic noise can have cognitive impairments, high blood pressure, like, all sorts of crazy stuff. And so you think, well, okay, that's terrible. Anybody who has to live near noise or work near noise, like, we should do something about that. But it's even worse than that. Like, noise pollution is even more insidious than that because you don't have to be chronically exposed to it. You don't have to live in a place where you're like, this is an objectively noisy place that I live or work in to still suffer from the effects of noise pollution. Yeah, I mean, it can affect you when you're sleep because, like you said, your ears are always on. It's not like you go to sleep and the ears say, well, I'm going to take a nice break. That would be a fantastic evolutionary adaptation, actually. Well, actually, it would be terrible. It would these days it would be great. The mountain lion sabertooth tiger days. Yes. It'd be nice if there was a switch and you could kind of control that. Oh, it'd be so nice. I think the switch is the White Noise wave machine. Is that switch? Yes. Which I've gotten addicted to such that I have to travel with them now. Yeah. Everywhere I go. I've heard that. Yeah. Basically, once you start, you can't go back. Yeah. I like it, though. I do. Brown Noise is my drug of choice. It sounds so gross, though. Brown? Yeah, I make a brown noise every morning. You know what I mean? Wow. I was not expecting Dangerfield to make an appearance. Well, that's what you meant, right? Poop or no? Yeah, I mean, I guess anytime I hear brown, I think it's poop. You think of that or you think of wean the band. Did they have a brown song or album? They talk about the brown thing, the brown sound, and brown is just sort of their color and how they used to talk about sound, and I've heard other groups talk about brown sounds. So what does brown sound like? Well, Brown noise. If White noise is brown noise is okay. That's the best I can describe. Yeah, it's sort of a lower end, and if you actually play it through a speaker, like, if you put it on your phone and play it through a little bluetooth, you can get some good bass. And it really works wonders for me. I should try Brown Noise or even White Noise. I've been using Chrome Noise where it's like and it's really not helping me sleep at all. I have the sound of an early Internet connection being made. Did they ever name that? They should have named that. I don't know. Just call it whatever it was they called it the Tickety Widget. Right. Interrupted sleep, though. That's the big problem, or one of the big problems, because your ears are always on. If you have uninterrupted sleep or poor sleep overall, you're going to be tired, obviously. Your creativity your memory can get impaired. Your creativity is going to be low. You're going to have impaired judgment. Your psychomotor skills might be impacted. You might have more headaches. They've done studies. If you live near airports and stuff like that or next to, like, a rail yard, you're going to have more headaches. You might take more sleeping pills. As a result, you might be more prone to minor accidents, and you are going to be more prone to seek psychiatric treatment in your life. Studies have shown this. Yeah, there was a study of people living near European airports. They found a ten decibel increase in aircraft noise was associated with a 28% increase in anxiety medication, and that people were also likelier to have like 25% more likely to have symptoms of depression. So again, all this is just from having not good sleep, which is bad enough, but apparently, Chuck, it even gets worse because even if your sleep isn't disturbed where you're waking up and not getting sleep because of noise, right? Like, you get used to it. Sort of the noise is still affecting you while you're sleeping because, again, your ear never turns off. It's always on the listen out for some sort of threat creeping up on you. And so if you're exposed to noise while you're sleeping, it still has that stress effect on you. And what they figured out is that one of the problems of just being chronically stressed through something like noise and I think stress in general is that it affects I think it's called the endothelium, which is the lining of your blood vessels. And they respond to chemicals that tell them to constrict to relax. And they get constricted when they get stressed. When they're exposed to stress, like cortisol or something like that comes along and says constrict. And when they do that, you get high blood pressure. You can end up with heart disease. You can end up suffering from heart attacks. And what's insane is they figured out that after one night of being exposed while you're sleeping to something like train sounds, your endothelium starts suffering. Like it doesn't function as well after just one night of that. Right. Isn't the idea that you can have no other sort of poor health markers and it can actually be brought on because of this noise? Right? Yes. While you're sleeping, you're still getting sleep, but it's still happening to you while you're sleeping. And not only like high blood pressure or a heart attack or something like that coming down the road, but also like diabetes, obesity. There's a lot of things that we're figuring out are tied to the lining of the blood vessels. And whether they're healthy or not, it's a huge predictor of a whole range of diseases. And when you hear noise, your stressors trigger your endothelium to constrict. And that is a really bad thing. Here in the United States, we kind of started studying this stuff in earnest in the 70s. That was when pollution was a big deal just all around in the United States. And we started to say things like, hey, maybe you shouldn't just have a family picnic and then just pick up your blanket and dump all the trash on the ground like they did on that episode of Mad Men and on Anchorman when they were all eating McDonald's and throw it on the ground in the park window. I saw a guy throw a fully, like, McDonald's thing out the window the other day and smashed on the sidewalk. Oh my God. And I was just like, who does that still? Yeah. The problem is, we're at a place in our country's history where if you confront people like that, there's a chance you're going to get shot for confronting someone like that. But I don't confront but that is the kind of behavior you should under normal circumstances, non shooting circumstances, feel perfectly fine confronting somebody about and being like, what is wrong with you? Like, we're so far beyond that. Everyone knows you shouldn't do that. It's just, oh, it drove me insane. Oh, I got to a good fight with them in my brain. Yes, I know. Where's the solution? Where's the answer? I don't know, man. I think the Zen path is you go pick up that McDonald's cup and throw it away totally. And say a prayer for that person. Good luck. So, yeah, New York is where they started studying this stuff in the 70s because it was kind of wrapped up, like I said, folded into larger pollution studies. They're like, well, we might as well talk about noise pollution. Sure, New York is the place to do it. And there were a couple of studies in the 1970s about subway noise that really sort of gave put the whole thing on some terra firma as far as the health effects and learning effects. In the case of kids at PS 98 in Manhattan, it was very close to the train tracks there. The subway train tracks, like real close. Yeah, like 220ft away. And they found, and this is pretty startling they found that the kids that were closest to the train tracks were eleven months behind their classmates that were on the other side of the school. Yeah, like not in another school, just on the other side of the school. Yeah, almost a full well, I mean, that is basically a full school year. Yeah, because the summer is off and stuff. That's an academic year. Plus that they were behind and they installed acoustic tiles in the classroom and some dampening devices and they did a follow up study and the gap had closed. Basically, there's proof right there, like, your kids are not learning as well if they're near that subway noise. There's another kind of landmark study in the 70s in New York that established the concept of noise pollution at a place called the Bridges Apartment high rise, or a cluster of them in Manhattan that I believe 95 maybe drives under or really close. And the traffic noise is so bad that even as high up as the 8th floor, the traffic sound is about the level of a vacuum cleaner. And like, just sitting in your apartment, you have to raise your voice to be heard, which, I mean, just the stress of that I can't imagine, like, that's an inhabitable, uninhabitable place. I believe people are still living there as well. But the study found that children living there were far behind at reading comprehension, at listening comprehension, and just weren't learning as quickly as other kids their age who did not live in the. Bridges. So those two studies together from New York kind of established this idea, like, okay, there's a real problem with noise pollution. And then it just went away for many years until about 2011, when The Who there's a bunch of other studies. A lot of the other ones that we've referenced so far came out around 20 10, 20 11, 20 13. I'm not sure what exactly kicked it off, but there was a big spate of them. But then The Who released a really big report. Not the who? The band. The World Health Organization. They're not a loud band, actually. Yeah. They felt terribly guilty about causing hearing loss and their fans, so they launched the study of basically all of Western Europe. They looked at, I think, something like 500 different studies and did a meta analysis of them to calculate what's called the Disability Adjusted Life Years, or Dailies, that were lost in Europe every year to noise pollution. Yes. The idea of a daily is they basically say it's like the healthy years of your life that end up being lost to this human made noise that you're living with. Right. And it's kind of an esoteric way to think about it, but once you wrap your head around it, it makes a little bit more sense. Yeah. But they found that at least 1 million healthy years of life are lost every single year just in Europe due to noise pollution. A million healthy years of people's lives annually. Yeah. And that means, because of all of the disease burden that noise pollution produces in humans, that's how much of our healthy lifespan is shaved off every year collectively, or how much Europe is. And they did a follow up study in 2018, Chuck, and found that, actually, no, we got it wrong. It's 1.8 million dailies are lost in Western Europe alone each year. So they definitely established through these couple of who studies like, noise pollution is still a thing, and we should probably do something about it. And there was another study that was released this past year that said, yes, dailies are significant, but we may have found a link that shows that noise pollution can actually straight up kill you under some circumstances. Potentially. Yeah. And this one was this is pretty startling because they looked at well, not necessarily heart attack, but nighttime deaths. No, I guess it was heart attack. Yeah. But if you die overnight dying your sleep, quote, unquote, from heart attacks and the link to commercial aircraft flying over your house, and I guess they had a way to sort of cancel out all the other factors, and they got down to the nitty gritty that 3% of all nighttime deaths from heart attacks can be attributed to the sound of aircraft flying overhead while you're sleeping. Yeah, it's just like that was it. That was the last stress response that your body could handle. And you had a heart attack, and died from that sound. They said, like, okay, we found a definite correlation, but if there is causation here, then we can chalk up about 3% of those. That's astounding it is, astounding we're going to take a break. That's the human grossness, and we'll talk about the awful things that we're doing to our animal friends in nature right after this. All right, we talked about a lot of studies that basically all added up to noise pollution. Very bad for human beings, like, literally bad for their health. And I know we've talked about a few of these before over the years, especially when it comes to whales, but all manner of Mother Nature are impacted by this noise. They did a study in the early 2000s about stress hormones for what kind of whales were they? Right whales. Yeah, right. Whales in the Bay of Fundy. And they saw and this is remarkable they saw a really weird, unexplained declined in the stress hormone concentrations that went away and then came back up again. And they eventually realized it was a halt in the shipping in the bay after 911 happened. Yeah, because shipping is probably human's noisiest marine endeavor that we do all the time constantly. And the idea of a break in that having being connected to a huge decline in stress hormones and whale poop, that's significant. But it was an accidental discovery, and I think it led other people to start studying stuff like that, like the effects of noise on wildlife. And there was this, I think University of Idaho. I'm sorry, if it's Idaho State, please don't be mad. I think it's Idaho. Okay. A study from 2012 where researchers set up. Like. What they call the phantom road. Which is basically they have fixed a line of loudspeakers to some trees out in the wilderness that stretched about a half a mile in length. And they just played road and traffic noise and not like city stuff. Just like the kind of stuff that possibly a remote road through the wilderness would sound like because they recorded it in Glacier National Park on a road there. And just from that, just from this rural Glacier National Park, road noise, something like more than a quarter of all the birds in the area just left. They were like, we're moving. Yeah. We're going to Canada. So everybody in the United States. Yeah, I definitely noticed. And I heard other people talk about in April of last year when things really slowed down, commuter and traffic wise due to the pandemic. And I don't think it was just our imaginations, but there was a lot more bird activity going on, and I think I remember us even talking about it, or maybe it was just quieter for us, so we noticed some more or maybe a combination of both, but there was a difference. And when shipping stops after 911 or when traffic stops, nature says, oh, the human eyoles are gone. Now we can start behaving normally again. Yeah. Like, things are back to normal, and that's just on land. Also, they found that Idaho study found that the birds that stuck around lost a bunch of weight, which they would have needed to migrate. So maybe they couldn't leave even if they wanted to, but that was a landslide. There's been other studies on land, but it seems like we're doing a lot of damage to marine ecosystems as well. Probably even more, because sound waves travel in water a lot better than light, which means that most of the animals that live in the water have really sensitive hearing. That's what they've evolved to use to communicate and listen out for. Right. So when we make noise, it's really problematic. And marine ecosystems yeah, and we make a lot of noise. That shipping activity we talked about is super disruptive to anything underwater. When they search for mineral deposits on the sea floor or under the sea floor, they use these seismic air guns that are you can hear those things like a fish can hear that thousands of miles away. Very disruptive. Sonar. I know we talked about sonar in an episode years ago and how that affected marine life. I can't remember what it was. Did we do an entire episode on the time they blew up the beach whale? Like, what to do with the beach whale? Maybe. I think we do. But they basically kind of say now, like, they think the reasons whales beach themselves is because of these noises. And sonar is a big culprit. Right. Like, it just drives them out of the water. Which sounds bonkers, but if you ever think about how humans sometimes jump from tall buildings rather than being burned by the intensity of a fire, I think it's virtually the same principle. Sure. So we have become aware of just how much noise pollution affects not just us, but the environment as well. It is a form of pollution, and it seems like it started to accumulate in the last few years. But really, we've known for a good 50 years that noise pollution is really bad for everybody, and yet we've done almost nothing about it. But we had the start, Chuck. We started out like we were going to, like, almost immediately. When we realized how bad noise pollution was in the 70s, we started to do something about it. And the federal government passed, like, three. And actually I saw a fourth. One huge act that had to do with basically controlling noise pollution. Yeah. Either controlling noise pollution for people in general or through OSHA, making sure people were working in safe conditions, or at least had the ear cans and things they needed to work safely. And like you said, it was headed in the right direction. We knew it was bad, and we were trying to stop it. And then the Reagan administration came along and said, nuts to that. That's federal regulation. Let's just leave it to the states. Because you ask any governor of any state and they'll tell you their citizens know to do the right thing and they'll do that right thing. And so we'll just leave it up to the states and let them volunteer to phase itself out. The Office of Noise and Abatement Control on paper still exists, but Congress said let's just not fund them anymore and let's keep these laws on the books, but really not worry about it too much because the states will take care of it. Right. Because states always do the right thing. Yeah, and the states, of course, did absolutely nothing. And it's partially because they can't do a lot about it. A lot of noise is really best understood, studied and regulated by the federal government. Like Georgia has a bunch of money reserved to study the effects of noise on humans. No, that's totally a federal kind of thing to do. And that's what some of those 70s acts set up, like that Office of Noise Abatement and Control, or Noise Control and Abatement. Its purpose was to study that kind of stuff. That's not what states do. So the states have well, not the states, but usually more municipalities and counties. They have taken steps to kind of mitigate sound pollution. Like there's noise pollution. There's usually regulations on how early or late a landscaping crew can work within the city limits. Or some of them say, like you can't boom your stereo or you're not allowed to have that broken glass muffler on your Harley. There's some stuff like that. But then if you live kind of under a flight path, if your town wanted to say, you know what, you can't fly over our town and wake everybody up between twelve at night and seven in the morning, you can't fly an airplane over it. The airplanes would just be like, I didn't hear you. Sorry. I was listening to the feds who say you can't make laws like that. Yeah, I get the feeling with municipalities it is more like complaints from neighbors kind of noise, or the lawn crews and construction, like you were saying. Unless like stuff with big teeth recently. Weird reason I won't get into, but I was looking up noise ordinances in Athens, Georgia, and they're kind of funny. When you look at these noise ordinances, it's like it literally said, like walking down the sidewalk yelling at one another. Talk about basically drunk kids. Sure. Like the French Quarter kind of thing. It said this includes hooting and hollering. And it was something about being able to hear you from like 300ft away or noise from your apartment, but it's like good luck with that. Like you can call the cops on someone maybe, but there's no teeth or what do you call it, or enforcement, kind of with a lot of this stuff, aside from singling out people when it happens in the moment and you may get a cop come by and say turn it down. But even if there's a will to do something, it depends on if it's like rail traffic or air traffic. The federal government ties local towns and county's hands like they can't do anything about it. And as a result, there's a lot of noise pollution that people can't do anything about it. There's a town in Canada, I can't remember the name of it, but it's got like a rail system that goes through it and it doesn't have alarms or the arms that come down. So trains have to honk their horns at least three times as they cross through this town and there's a bunch of different crossings and they calculated that train horns Blair 1200 times a day in this little tiny town. And obviously everybody's going nuts, but they can't do anything about it because the federal government of Canada is in charge of regulating rail travel like every other developed or industrialized country. Yeah, and even if it's something like ocean and you work in a loud factory and they're trying to regulate that, they say that A, they don't cover all industries they should cover and when they do, it's very inconsistently applied. And even when they do apply, it inconsistently. They say that these limits aren't even low enough to protect all the workers anyway from hearing loss. Said OSHA regulations allow workers to be exposed to 95 decibels for 4 hours a day, five days a week for your entire 40 year career. That's like you're going to suffer from hearing loss if that's the case. Yeah, that's like holding a leaf blower right next to you for 4 hours a day, five days a week, for 40 years. Of course you're going to lose your hearing. It's crazy. Well, and then factor in the other health effects that no one ever talks about that we mentioned in the whole first half of this thing and you have an unhealthy population if you're stuck in one of those places. Yeah, so we can sit here in Quebec all day, which we would love to do, but there are solutions to this. But I want to point out one more time, all these solutions are zero thanks to the Reagan administration. Instead, there's some simple stuff you can do to help us humans. Like you can change aircraft routes, you can build barriers along roadways and railways. You can even green it up. Like they found that if you use shrubbery and trees mixed together so that they basically produce a fence and you plant them close to the road or close to the railway rather than close to the place that you're trying to protect, they do pretty good at reducing the decibels of the sound, the noise pollution coming from the traffic. That's the easy stuff you can do. And then on the user end, on the individual's end, there's all sorts of acoustic insulation and paneling you can add to your house to make it a little more soundproof and quieter. What about those mufflers? Chuck car? Mufflers? Yeah. So apparently the ones that make the sound are not good. Yeah, they could change that. The EPA could get involved and say, you know what, you can't have those kind of mufflers anymore. Thank God if they did. As far as the shipping go, I know it's always like a Honda Civic or something that tricked out like it's some kind of race car. Right. As far as the water goes in the shipping, stuff like that. Those big ships, they found that if they separate the ship's engine from the hull, they are much quieter. And they even found that there is, I think there's a 75% reduction in acoustic energy, six to eight decibels, which is significant. And they also found that it is less fuel efficient. And if they like, retrofitted or kind of change the way they built these ships, I don't know if you can well, I guess you can retrofit somewhere. Well, yeah, the propellers are what's making them less fuel efficient. So not easily, but you can take off the old propellers and put on new ones. Right. But it costs a lot of money upfront like they will save in the long run. And I think is it pronounced Mersk, the big shipping company? Yeah. They spend $100 million to do just eleven of its ships. So that gives you the idea of how much it costs. There may be some efficiencies if they did more or something, but it's not cheap. And they have 740 ships. They've done eleven. Well, I did see that it's actually a very small fraction of all of the ships involved in shipping that are responsible for the vast majority of the noise. So if you did just focus on the worst offenders, it would have a significant impact. Yeah. There's also a huge amount of noise, apparently underwater noise that comes from offshore wind farms because of the pile driver that is moved by up and down by the blades to help produce the electricity to move the turbine. Right? That's right. And they found that if you just put a perforated pipe around the pile driver, the pile driver is going to produce bubbles and those bubbles will dissipate the noise. Almost all the noise. Think like 95% of the noise coming from those offshore wind farms. It's a really simple, easy solution. Just do it, people. Yeah. And there's one other thing that I hadn't thought about, but I saw a couple of places and it really makes sense, is that the noise pollution we're contributing to, marine ecosystems in particular, is just such low hanging fruit that there's no reason we shouldn't do this. There's some really easy stuff we can do. Even rerouting shipping lanes is one thing we can do, and that by doing that, it will actually stabilize marine ecosystems and marine life. So that it will buy us a little time while we're figuring out much trickier stuff like ocean acidification and things that are also threats to it. So it's like just removing noise pollution would really go a long way toward extending, I guess, the health and vitality of the oceans while we're combating climate change. I love it. Let's get all these things going. Our health is suffering. Let's start with the mufflers. Yeah, that's just annoyance and health. Well, since Chuck said, that's just annoyance. Of course, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail. This one is pretty short and sweet. I just love it when we get an answer about something. I think I might have known this at some point, but we talked about shrinking as humans. And this is from Steve in Roscoe, Illinois. He says, I've been a long time listener, never had a reason to reach out, but you hit my area of expertise. I'm a physical therapist, and while listening to the episode about crash testing, you ask, why do we shrink when we get older? What happens is we age, guys, is the intervertebral discs in our back lose hydration, and as a result, we shrink. There are six discs in the cervical spine, twelve discs in the thoracic spine, and five discs in the lumbar. If each disc were to lose a minimum of 116 of an inch in height, that adds up pretty quickly, and you can easily lose an inch plus in your lifetime. Wow. The other thing to consider as we ages, our muscles and tissues get tighter, pulls us into positions of poor posture, circulation. That's right. And this restricts our ability to stand up straight. You combine all these things together, and all of a sudden, Josh isn't going to hit his goal height of 6ft. I have to stay on my tippy toes now. Thanks for all the good work. I hope I didn't step on the toes of a future short stuff. I think we just did it Steve. That's Steve Marima or Marima from Roscoe, Illinois. Thanks a lot, Steve. That was a good email. We appreciate that big time. And if you haven't stumbled upon it yet, you should check out our episode on Circumvenia. It is old, but it was interesting. Yeah. If you have any physical therapy needs in Illinois, give Steve a call. Sounds good, guy. Yeah. Head to beautiful Roscoe, Illinois. Come on. If you want to be like Steve from Roscoe and give us some more info that we were asking for. We love that kind of stuff. You can send it to us via 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." | |
How Diamonds Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-diamonds-work | There's no denying that diamonds are pretty -- but where do they come from, and why are they so expensive? Join Chuck and Josh as they explore everything about diamonds, from their formation to the mining process and the history of the DeBeers cartel. | There's no denying that diamonds are pretty -- but where do they come from, and why are they so expensive? Join Chuck and Josh as they explore everything about diamonds, from their formation to the mining process and the history of the DeBeers cartel. | Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:38:05 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=15, tm_min=38, tm_sec=5, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=94, tm_isdst=0) | 38770798 | audio/mpeg | "What if you are a gigantic snack food maker who needs to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to manage your supply chain with realtime datadriven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM's, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com.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. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant and we're stuff you should know. Crew with the juice. Crew. Yeah. Big Daddy Cane. I'm Big Daddy Cane. All right. I'm Bismarcky. I'll take it you're a redheaded kingpin. Yes. Okay. You don't remember that guy? No, sorry. We're still talking about our music sampling podcast, which we just recorded. Instead, we're going to talk about something else, something called Diamonds. I kind of hate diamonds now, by the way. Do you? This article is I thought it was good, but after reading all this stuff, I'm just like, it's just a big false market. Well, I mean, they're still pretty, but yeah, they have a lot of they got a lot of problems. We'll tell you the story. All right. Chuck? Yes. Have you ever heard of a magazine called The Atlantic? Yeah, I used to get that. Have you ever heard of a year called 1982? I was eleven. Okay, well, in 1982, in that magazine, The Atlantic I didn't read it back then. You didn't? I didn't either. I was six. I wasn't reading the Atlantic yet. Not yet. I came when I was 1019 82. A guy named Everett J. Epstein wrote an article for the Atlantic called Have You Ever Tried to Sell a diamond? I got this from NATO Rama, by the way. Okay. And in the article, he wrote about someone else who conducted an experiment to try to find out what's going on with the aftermarket for diamonds. Right. Okay. So this guy for a magazine called Money. Which magazine? I don't understand the name at all. In 1970, the guy bought a 1.42 carat diamond for \u00a3745. That's a pretty good deal these days, but back then, I would say it was an average price. Right, sure. So he waits for a year to allow it to appreciate because supposedly diamonds appreciate in value. Right? Yeah. And then he takes it around to all of the gem dealers in London, and the highest offer he got for what he paid the year before, \u00a3745, was \u00a3568. So he's like, I want to figure out what maybe if I let it appreciate a little longer, it'll work. And this guy obviously had other freelance work in the meantime because he waited until 1974 and did it again. This time he finds out that his diamond shrunk from 1.42 carats to 1.4 cars because one of the dealers switched the diamond out on him when he was having it appraised in 1971. What? The same and the worst? The guy buys another diamond, 1.4 carats, right. Okay. Takes it around, he buys it for \u00a32595 in 1974, I think he waited a week, took it around, and the highest offer he got was \u00a31000. Why? This guy is just a dummy hemorrhaging money, right? Yeah. But the point is, the reason why these things are like Cadillacs, the moment you drive them off a lot and they never come back in value is because there is no aftermarket. And the reason that there is no aftermarket for diamonds is because of one single diamond cartel and their advertising campaigns, the Beers, which we'll talk about in this. But there's a lot more to diamonds than just all the shady business monopolies and the cartels and artificial markets created. There is billions of years of history. One of the cool things about a diamond is that when you're wearing this or looking at a diamond holding it, you're beholding possibly a mineral that was created a billion years ago. That is cool. Very cool. I love that. And I very much appreciate the craftsmanship behind what goes into making a diamond in its final form, because, as every kid knows, diamonds are as hard as it gets, supposedly, and they're a girl's best friend. That's another thing, too. There's a lot of slogans around diamonds. Yeah. All created by the Beers let's talk about diamonds. What are they made of? Because they're so expensive, they must be made up of, like, kryptonite and diamonds. Unicornite. Yeah. In diamonds. Right. No, Josh, you know, you're being coy. They are made of carbon. It is basically carbon in its most concentrated form. Right. And carbon is a pretty common element. It's one of the four essential ingredients to life. We breathe it. We're made up of 18% carbon. Pencils are like, at least 60% carbon. And diamonds, if you want to get down to brass tacks, are not rare at all. There are many more precious gems that are much rarer than diamonds, including some types of diamonds. Colored diamonds. Yeah. What we're mainly talking about in this one is transparent diamonds. These are typical, like white diamonds, but yeah, colored diamond and naturally colored diamond. Nice. Let's call it ice. Yeah. Or bling. Do you remember when bling used to be called bling? Bling. Like, there were two bling bling. Bling. Yeah. No. Did they just shorten it to one Bling at some point. Whose day? Who decides the stuff? MTV. Okay. Urban Dictionary. Yeah. So you got carbon. It's pretty ubiquitous. Yes. Very abundant. It naturally occurs in three forms. Right. Graphite, diamond, fairly soft. Yes. Diamond, very hard. And then John Fullerite, which is a mineral made of perfectly spherical molecules of exactly 60 carbon atoms. Yeah. And it was only recently discovered in 1990. And supposedly diamonds are no longer the strongest mineral. Oh, really? Somebody synthetically figured out how to combine foght into something else and it's like 11% harder than diamonds on the most deaf scale. Sorry. That sampling episode really had an effect the rest of the day didn't. Yes. It's carrying over. So basically, if you have graphite, you have a misformed diamond. It's one way to look at it. Sure. Diamonds form under very specific conditions that are found typically about 100 miles or 161 km beneath the Earth's surface yes. In the mantle, as long as temperatures are above 400 and I'm sorry, as long as temperatures are above 752 degrees Fahrenheit, 400 degrees Celsius, and there's at least \u00a3435,113 per square inch of pressure, you will form diamond when there's carbon, heat and pressure. Yes. And carbon will make a diamond. If either of those two things are not met, you're going to get graphite. Right. So these diamonds that we're looking at today, like we said, were formed like 50 million, 100 million, up to billions that's pretty cool. Of years ago under these conditions. And more recently, say, I think between 20,000,001.1 billion years ago, heavy magma eruptions, they are about three times from depth, about three times that blew up. Mount St. Helen pushed diamonds toward the surface and form what are called Kimberly pipes. Yeah. Magma is one of my favorite parts, by the way. Yes. I don't know why. Yeah. And basically they act as like an elevator and they push the diamonds and other stuff up through the mantle. Happens very quickly over a matter of hours, but it's all underground, so it wasn't like a Mount St. Helens. It's so impressive. It's very impressive, yeah. The magma cooled inside the pipes and left behind these veins of kimberlite rock. And that's where the diamonds are. Right. And Kimberly's bluish and I guess the diamonds are inside the kimberly. Yeah. I looked up Kimberly and that's what it looked like. It looks like a big bluish rock with spots of crystals. Right. You crack that open, you have raw diamonds. That's right. That's not the only place you can find diamonds, though. You can find them alluvial diamond sites or river beds that were originally they all came from the mantle, but they get pushed around by things like glaciers and water and they can end up thousands of miles from where they started. Those are called alluvial diamond sites. That's right, yeah. Did you say that? I did. Are you sure? I'm positive. I don't think you did. Okay. Diamonds like you said they're not as rare as they have been artificially made to be. They can be found all over the world. Some of the major sites are in Russia, Borneo, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Venezuela. Canada? Yeah. I didn't know that. And they're often found in these things called archaea and craytans in the center of a continent. Well, Africa, too, we got to say. Africa. Oh, yeah. Africa is huge. 50%, I think, come from Africa, for sure. I can't believe I left that out. That's right. But if you're more likely to find diamonds in the center of the continent, and these things called archie and cratans and archie and Criton is basically a horizontal piece of earth that is kind of relatively immune to geological events like earthquakes and tectonic movement and all that. And this is usually a pretty good site to find diamonds. Yeah. It says here they're found in the center of most of the seven continents. Six of them. Yeah. Like what? They just say there's only seven things. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. When they find diamonds, Josh, they're rough. Have you ever seen a big, rough diamond stone crystal on TV? Yeah. It doesn't look like much. It looks like a crystal that you would dig up from the Earth or something. But you have to process it, obviously, by carving the sucker up and then making it pretty and then making it shiny. Right. Which is cool. We get specifically into that. But that's the basics. Well, you said that's one of the things you like about diamonds is the craftsmanship. Yeah. And it takes a lot you want to talk about it? All right. Cutting diamonds, Josh, which, again, this is not the easiest thing in the world to do, and it takes some special techniques, like cleaving. Yeah, this is my favorite cleaving, is when they take the diamond at its weakest point, which is the tetrahedral plane. We'll talk about that in a second. Oh, you know about that? Because I looked it up, and I can only come to guesses about what that is. Oh, well, I don't know what the plane is, but I know I just figured it was the point where I guess I don't know. So I sort of assumed it was where there were fewer links of the atoms. Yeah. I think, like, the lattice connection between carbon atoms and a diamond is what makes it strong. So each carbon atom is connected to four others. Yeah. Instead of just one, it's like the five side of a dice of a die. Right. Connect all those, and you're on your way to forming a diamond. Whereas with carbon or graphite, the five are connected in a ring. So one is only connected to one other one. Right. Which is why it's weaker. Right, right. But if you look, if you kind of plot out a tetrahedral latticework of carbon atoms, if you go straight across there's a point where each of them where you're only cutting through one atom at a time. There's only one connection. Yeah. That's got to be it, then. That's what I would think it is. That's my guess. I think you're right, Josh. So they find this tetrahedral plane where it's weakest, and they hold the diamond in, like, cement or wax or something. They cut a little groove, and then they put a steel blade in that groove, and in one big whack, they cleave this sucker into two pieces. I don't bet that is nerve wracking work. I couldn't find a video of it. Oh, yeah. I could imagine. It's probably pretty well guarded. I mean, I saw an old video from the old black and white thing, but I don't know if there was a new method now or whatever. Yeah. Then sometimes you can't just cleave it. Sometimes there's no plane of weakness, and you have to saw it. And there's probably always a plane of weakness in the diamond. But for the angle that you're trying to get to, I imagine that there's not necessarily going you can't find that tetrahedral plane yeah. Because you're cutting it in specific places for a reason. You're not just like, hey, let me cut the sucker in two. You're cutting it very specifically for what you want the end result to be, whether it's I want to get five different cut diamonds out of this single rock or whatever. Yeah. And you need to think, like, that many steps ahead. And for each diamond, the first thing you do is figure out where the table is, which is the top of the diamond. It's the most exposed surface area. And then you figure out what the girdle is. And that is the part of the diamond with the largest diameter. Right. And once you establish those two things, then everything else just makes sense because there's just a certain way to cut diamonds. Yeah. And I can go crazy. Make like a squirrel. Diamonds are shaped like diamonds. Exactly. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. So you've got cleaving, you've got sawing installing. You're using a special tool called the phosphor bronze blade that rotates at 15,000 rpm. I did see this online. That's crazy. It's pretty crazy. You can also use a laser, but that takes forever. Yeah. I got the feeling lasers aren't really the way to go, which is surprising. I thought it'd be like yeah, exactly. I've seen James Bond movies. Lasers can do all sorts of cool stuff if you want to shape your diamond, which you will want to do if you ever want to sell it, if it's one of the lucky 20% of diamonds, because I think it's only 20% to actually make it to market. Oh, is it that? Yeah. And 80% are used for saw blades and other industrial uses. Abrasives. Abrasives. Yeah. Diamond dust, bowling balls, piano, brooding or cutting gives the diamond the shape. And brooding is when you do it by hand, and cutting is when you use a machine. And I couldn't find out how many diamonds are hand cut, like, percentage wise. I'm curious about that. I don't know if it's a lost art or if that just means it's a higher quality because it's hand cut. Yeah. Do you know? No, I don't. Okay. Both of them seem to use a lot of human intervention, though, brooding and cutting and other diamonds. So brooding is kind of like taking two pipes, filling them with cement, and then putting a diamond in it so that there's just a little bit sticking out, and then rubbing them together. Using a diamond to cut a diamond. Yeah. Which is the only thing you can cut a diamond with. Do you want to talk about the Moscow real quick? Yeah. Because you can only cut a diamond with a diamond because, as we said, it's pretty much the hardest substance on earth. Right. Anything beneath that is not going to scratch it. And there's actually a scale to describe the strength of minerals by a guy named Friedrich MoS. Yeah. The Mose hardness scale. Yeah. And he was a German mineralogist, jeez man from the Think, who created this scale. Yeah. It goes from one to ten, although you said now eleven. I guess it goes to eleven. Well, it's 11% harder than diamond. So it's got to be above diamond. Right. It's got to be above diamond level. It's platinum level. We start out with TAUK. You can scratch TAUK with your fingernail. It's such a wimpy little thing. Gypsum. You can scratch with your fingernail. Barely calcite. You can scratch it with a copper coin and it scratches a copper coin. Okay. Which is a measurement. It's quite a dual. Yeah. I'll get you off site. Versus copper fluoride. You cannot get scratched by copper coin. And it does not scratch glass. It just kind of sits there yeah. Doing its thing. Appetite. I take it as appetite. Appetite. Either way, I'm hungry. It scratches glass, sort of, or just scratches glass and it's easily scratched by a knife. Yeah. It's crazy. I remember when I was a kid, I didn't understand what the word barely meant, and I was playing kickball, and one of the older kids is like, man, just go out there and just barely kick the ball. And he's telling me to bunt. Basically, he kicked it like a bear wood. No, I thought barely meant, like, to just barely miss it. Not just barely make contact with something. So I kept going out there and just perfectly barely missing it, and the kid was going crazy. I'm like, I don't understand you. You're in my yard, go home. Is that your excuse for why you struck out at kickball growing up? I struck out a T ball, even six strikes. Wow. And they still would be like, Go sit down, Josh. That makes me feel bad. Orthoclase Josh is number six quartz is number seven. Then you got topaz corundum. Corundum is like sapphires and rubies. Yeah. And then the diamond. And that is the most hardness scale. So as you can see, since diamond is the last, because the Mow scale hasn't been updated, you have to use a diamond to cut a diamond. Right. Which some of those industrial uses of diamonds is diamond cutting tools. Yeah. I have a diamond saw blade. Crazy. I know. I'll be rolling in it and loaded, dude. It also has diamonds just bedazzled all over the saw itself spells Chuck and diamond. So we talked about brooding and then cutting. You would use a lathe, which is something that spins it around very fast. That's one of my favorite words, lathe. I used to work with a wood lathe back in the day. Yeah, a lot of fun. And then you want to polish it if you want to. By the way, there's only five major cutting centers in the world. Like, if you're going to get your diamonds cut, they get shipped to New York, bombay, Israel, Antwerp, or Johannesburg. Generally. Johannesburg either way. So like I said, you want to polish it because you want it all shiny and pretty, and it's a polishing wheel coated with, once again, diamond powder. Yeah. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Diamonds. Cut diamonds. So once your diamonds cut and you say, hey, this is pretty good diamond, I'm going to try to sell it to somebody for too much money, right? Exactly. One of the things that you're going to use to describe this diamond and increase its value are the four C's, right? That's right. You've got cut, clarity, carrot, and color. And we'll start with cut. So basically cut is how well a diamond is cut and what shape it's cut in. Yeah, there's all sorts of different cuts, including the most confusing of all, the emerald cut diamond. And the one we're referring to initially was, I think, just the round cut. That's like the standard diamond shape. Okay, so you got cut, right? Yes. You have clarity, and that measures the diamonds natural flaws. That's a big C. The flaws are also called inclusion, and you have flawless down to slightly included. In between, you have very slight, very slight, and then slightly. And then there are different degrees of that, like vs. One VVS, two Si two. And it just keeps going until you're like, you need to use this as a saw blade. I like a little flaw in my diamond. That's nice, Chuck. That just shows what kind of guy I am. That's also a way that diamonds are cataloged. Like a specific diamond is cataloged and tracked as by its inclusion because they're frequently for diamonds that are sold as gemstones. The flaws are so infrequent that they're almost like birthmarks. Right? They're birthmarks for diamonds. Carrot, josh is the third seed, and that is the weight. A carrot is about 200 milligrams right. And that actually came out of India. The carab seed was used as a weight for diamonds, and that became carrot instead of carrot. And then you've got a color, and we were talking about transparent diamonds. So basically what you've got is totally colorless, which means it's 100% carbon. There's no other mineral or element in this diamond. Right. All the way to a light yellow. And that's ranked but from D to Z. So weird. I've never understood that. There's a lot I don't understand about diamonds. And then you also have transparency, luster, and dispersion of light. Fire. Yeah. Fire. That's right. Fire. I think brilliant. Is that the other word for it? Probably. And that's all dispersion of light? Yeah, I think fire is, which means you can see different when you hold it up to light, you see different colors, and it's like the disco ball quality of the diamond. Exactly. 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. 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. So we also mentioned that the truly rare diamonds are colored ones, and they come in like a rainbow of expensiveness there's black diamonds, there's yellow diamonds. Even though transparent diamonds go down to light yellow, those aren't yellow diamonds. Yeah, yellow diamonds, yellow diamond. They're awesome. You've got pale green pink are popular with rich people, are what I've seen. Yeah. They go with Chihuahuas. I think JLo had a big pink diamond from one of her husbands. Is that right? I think so. Do you track such things? No, I don't. I don't know why I knew that. You're a benefit fan. You know how things get caught up in your brain that should not be there, and then you can't forget it no matter what? Yeah. Now you'll always remember that. Hold on, I'm getting rid of it right now. Shoot. Donkey eating grass and donkey. Okay, so let's talk about the history and why diamonds haven't always been so popular with the Americans. They were not always an engagement ring. No. Before that, it was like colored gemstones. Yeah. Like a nice looking ruby. Yeah. Wouldn't you give that to somebody you like? Sure. Look at it. It's gorgeous. And then De Beers came about. That's right. De Beers is a cartel, if you don't know what a cartel is. Founded by Mr. Rhodes, who Rhodesia is named after. And the Rhodes Scholarship. That's right. And De Beers is the family name of the people whose farm he bought initially in South Africa. If you don't know what a cartel is, it is a syndicate of competing firms that all gets together and says, hey, let's fix prices on all our stuff. Yeah. It's illegal. Create a monopoly and let's run the show. Yes. And that's what De Beers is. De Beers, consolidated Mines Ltd. Pretty much says it all the different well, not all. Up until, like, 2000, it was mostly all. Yeah. I think now it's something like 70% to 80% of all the diamonds are controlled by them. They produce like 50%. It used to be like 90% to 95%. But they also go around and buy up diamonds from the market and sit on them. And then every year, through these things called sites, I think the sales, because there are only 200 people or groups that are licensed to buy from the Beers, and they have, like, I think, ten sales a year where they say 200 people are allowed to come buy diamonds from us. And they so tightly control the market that they control the price of diamonds. And that's why diamonds are so expensive ten weeks out of the year. That's it. Is that right? Yes. And they could buy in packages from, I think, like one to 200 million or something like that, of uncut diamonds, and then the site holders take them to go get created by people who cleave. That's right. And in 2000, I said that their monopoly sort of ended. Russia, Canada, Australia, basically said, Enough of this, and they went outside to Beers, and that essentially ended their big monopoly. Although they still, what is it, half the world diamond supply, and they control about two thirds of the whole world market. Right. But it used to be close to 100%. How did they do this, Chuck? How does the company do this? I mean, obviously by buying diamonds. But how did they take the diamond and make it the precious sought after gemstone? Well, when you control supply, obviously you can say it's rare, but then they did it through clever marketing, basically. That's about all there was to it. Diamond is Forever in the 1940s was voted in 2000 as the ad campaign slogan of the 20th century. That's pretty big that's huge. And that basically sold the American public in Japan japan in the in the late 40s, sold them on the fact that a diamond was what you needed to save up two months salary for and spend on your wife for her engagement range or on your fiance. Right. And then following that, the beer said, hey, we should get rid of the aftermarket. And they said, by the way, that diamond you bought as an engagement, that's a family heirloom. You want to hang on to that, which keeps diamonds off of the market. This is why I said, I don't like diamonds. It's just none of it was true. Yeah. It was just a cartel that got together and said, we're going to snow the American and Japanese public on the fact that these are really rare, precious gyms right. When they should have just said, you know what? We've got lots of time, actually, and appreciate the craftsmanship and pay a decent price for it, and everyone's happy. It doesn't sound like something the beers would say. No. So in addition to the fact that the industry is virtually controlled by a cartel, diamonds also they routinely get bad press for conflict diamonds. Blood diamonds. Yeah. Which are essentially diamonds that are mined illegally to fund as far as the people who oversee such things, rebel groups that seek to destabilize legitimate governments. Right, yeah. We have a whole article on that, I think. Yeah. I think our blood diamonds making a comeback come back or something. Yeah. So they've come up with this thing called the what is it? The Kimberley the Kimberley Process Certification scheme. Right. I hate it when they use scheme like that. Even though it's correct, it always sounds bad when you use the word scheme, but it's really just a plan, and they call it the Kimberley Process. The UN. And the Conflict Free Diamond Council got together to basically monitor the diamond at every point of its production process. So they know basically the birth certificate of the diamond all the way through till it's on the little lady's finger. So supposedly that's what's supposed to happen. But really what the Kimberly Process entails now is getting governments to control their imports and exports of diamonds and certify them. So, like, if you are shipping a certification or a bunch of diamonds and each diamond doesn't have a certification, you can't get the shipment. You're supposed to package them in tamper free or tamper proof containers. So people can't slip blood diamonds into these shipments mid shipment. Yeah, that makes sense. But the problem is what you were saying, like, they control every aspect. That's not true. Cutting, polishing, all of these things aren't overseen. Oh, really? Yeah, which leads to a lot of possibility. You can introduce blood diamonds at the beginning of the stream, and they just become bonafide through a shipment. So when the UN. Says that they're 99.8% of diamonds now on market are. Conflict free. Is that not true? Also, the other criticism of the Kimberly Process is it depends on your definition of conflicts. The UN. And the Kimberly scheme. People are basically saying it's a rebel group that can produce a blood diamond, and this is a human rights organization above all else. But they're turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by these legitimate governments. Like Robert Mugabe's government of Zimbabwe, hugo Chavez, apparently his government in Venezuela has some human right abuses regarding diamonds. But these are still considered legitimate diamonds. Right. Not blood diamonds. Even though they are still conflict diamonds. Right. Interesting. Yeah. Well, in 2001, Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 13194, which basically said, america is no longer going to get any roughs from Sierra Leone. And then Debbie came along later that year and signed another executive order saying no more rough from Liberia. And then in 2003, we passed in the United States the Clean Diamond Trade Act, which supposedly has legislation that helps implement the Kimberly process. Yeah, but it sounds like a big scam now. It's not a scam, it's just flawed. Okay. It has inclusions. I was just about to say that. And if you buy a diamond, you can request to see it's. Kimberly Process certificate. Yeah. Another way to get around this altogether, to make sure that there's no way that your diamonds are blood diamond, is to buy synthetic. Yeah. And there's plenty of different varieties out there. Yes. Growing up in the 70s, we all heard about the cubic zirconia, the CZ, and it's a lab, Jim. It was made in a lab and it's been on the market since 76. Yes. The Russians created it. Right? Yeah. And it's hard. It's an 8.5 on the most scale. And the problem with the CZ is it's too perfect. So perfect. It looks fake. It's like the diamond that hit the uncanny valley. Right. Like there's something wrong with it because it's just too good. Yeah. So it looks artificial when you look at it because they have manufactured it too perfectly. So nowadays sometimes they will put slight inclusions in there, which is just so funny. It's like the new stuff, like the hat you get at Abercombie, that's frayed. Oh, yeah. On the bill, there's also moissenite, which is named after Dr. Henry Moisten, who discovered diamonds and a meteorite in Arizona in 1893 and somehow managed to replicate it. Yeah. And if it was just moissenite, like the natural moissenite, it would be one of the rarest things on the planet. The asteroid version or the meteorite version. Yeah. The non man made moissenite. Yeah. Because it's essentially just silicon carbide, but it's really rare to get the real thing. It's like a crystallized version of diamonds. Yes. In the company called Pre Incorporated developed a way of producing silicon carbide crystals, and Moissonite was now available as of the late ninety s, to take the place of your natural diamond. Hot. I couldn't get a price on those. I don't think moissenite is cheap. I don't know. I know that manmade diamonds. That's a different class. It's a different category. Oh. From even moissenite? Yeah. Moissenite and cubic zirconia are synthetic. Okay, got you. Man made. No, man made is synthetic. Cubic zirconia and moistenite are simulates. They're not actually made from carbon. Man made diamonds are made from carbon, but they're made in a few days rather than eons. And they are structurally diamonds. So much of that the German logo gal Institute of America recognizes them as diamonds. Yeah. But they sell for about 30% of a natural diamond, and those are, I guess, second most expensive. So I would think moisturize cheaper than that. Probably, yeah. And the man made are sometimes so hard to tell apart from the real thing that Gemologists can't even tell and jewelers can't tell. And so they are now selling machines to help jewelers determine whether or not it's a real diamond or it's man made. And who makes that machine, Josh? I couldn't begin to guess. The Beers. The Beers? In November last year, late last year, the Anglo American company, global mining Company acquired it was the Oppenheimer family. Who was one of the original the Oppenheimer fund people? No, they were one of the original families for the De Beers cartel, I think. Got you. But they bought out the Oppenheimer families 40% of their stake in De Beers for $5.1 billion in cash. In cash? Yeah. Not like stock certificates or future promises. And now they raise their state to 85% because they already had 45. So the Oppenheimers are no longer part of that. Well, but they are rolling in the cash. They went straight. 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 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. I think we would be remiss. There's plenty of famous diamonds, but I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about probably the most famous diamond, the Hope Diamond, the Pink Panther. Oh, is that real? I don't know. It's a real movie. Yeah, a really good movie about a diamond and a great cartoon. Yeah, but the Hope Diamond, have you seen it at the Smithsonian? Yeah. Awesome. 45 carats, which is big, and it has a curse associated with it. Do you know that? Yes. There was a newspaper in 1911, I guess several of them wrote about the curse of the Hook diamond, and that's when it started to come about. And in a book in 1929, the mystery of the hoax dimension kind of established its lower in popular culture. But starting with a guy named Jean Baptiste Tavernier, he stole the Hope diamond and was torn apart by wild dogs. That was the first bad thing that happened associated with the Hope diamond. Louie the 16th lost his head during the revolution. Really? Lost his head? Yeah, louis XIV had it. He died of gangrene. George IV died deep in debt, all the way to one of my favorites, mademoiselle laurens Lidiu borrowed the diamond from her lover Ivan, who had been murdered by Russian revolutionaries, and she was murdered before he could be murdered by Russian revolutionaries. And then all the way down to the Abdul Hamid II, sultan of Turkey. He paid 400 grand for it. And it just brought horrible luck to everybody, from his favorite member of his harem to his royal guards. And then finally, Harry Winston got his hands on it from Pierre Cartier. And Harry Winston decided to just end it all and send this thing to the Smithsonian. And he said, Hope Diamond just regular postal. What regular post didn't tell them it was coming. I mean, they knew that they were negotiating. He's like, okay, I'll send it. And it just arrived very unceremoniously. And a guy named James Todd is the mailman who brought it down to the Smithsonian, and he later crashed his leg in a truck accident. His head was injured in an automobile accident, and he lost his home in a fire. I'm not laughing at him. Boy, the madman curse has nothing on that. No, that's crazy. No way. So that's it for diamonds. Do you have anything else? No. What are we at, like, an hour and a half now? Yeah. Okay, let's end it then. If you want to learn more about diamonds, type diamond into the search barhouseofworks.com, and it'll bring up a lot of cool stuff. And I said, search bar, so it's time for listener mail. Yeah. In addition to diamonds, it was blood diamonds, and there was also an article about diamond thieves. Yeah, I want to look into that. It's kind of a history of diamond. That's what it was. Okay, this is from Liz, and I'm going to call this pickpocketing for spring break. During my junior year of high school, I went to Europe as a part of a group trip organized by my school's art club. There were maybe 30 of us in total, spending three days each in London, Paris and Madrid before we left. Our art teacher, who had put together the entire trip, warned us repeatedly about pickpockets. We even had an in club project where we made little bags for our passports to hang around our necks and under our shirts. During this trip, we did have occasional brushes with suspicious people, including one lady who stepped onto a crowded subway train, pushed against my mother, and immediately started unzipping her purse, which was hanging in front of her. When she saw my mom looking directly at her, she turned and walked off the train right before the doors closed, about five or 6 seconds in the entire exchange. The big story, though, was one night in Madrid, where a group of the adult chaperones and anyone old enough to drink went out to a pub. By sheer chance, the Swedish rugby team was also there that night. The smallest among them was about six foot six, and they were all built like Mac trucks and they were already very drunk and very rowdy, but also very friendly. So you got big, burly, drunk, friendly rugby dudes, swedes. They were Swedish. Yeah, but that was a handsome group of guys. Now, I had went back to our hotel, but this was the story related to me. Our art teacher was chatting with the coach of the rugby team. She felt a hand reaching out of her purse. She grabbed at it as it was pulling out and realized that the pickpocket had her wallet, passport, and two passports of my classmates. The entire team rushed the guy and took them outside, where they recovered at least two other wallets that had been stolen at the same bar. I can't say what else they did, but I'm fairly certain he wasn't picking any pockets for a while. That is from Liz in Philadelphia. A-K-A New York light. Nice. Thank you very much, Liz. Yeah, that was pretty cool. It's a good pickpocketing story. Yeah. Go Swedish rugby team for beating up people who steal. Yeah, anybody beats up people who steal. It's pretty great. Unless it's one of those kind of like morally gray things from Lehman Jarrod. Right? It's tough. Well, if you have a cool story about, I don't know, Western justice doled out by Swedes or other nationalities, we want to hear about it. Sure. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook@facebook.com stuffyshenknow, and you can send us an email at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House of Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing 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 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 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." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-07-08-sysk-hela-cells.mp3 | SYSK Selects: How HeLa Cells Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-hela-cells-work | In this week's SYSK Select episode, after she was diagnosed with the cervical cancer that shortly killed her, a tissue sample was taken from Henrietta Lacks in 1951 without her knowledge. Those cells would go on to become the first immortal line of human | In this week's SYSK Select episode, after she was diagnosed with the cervical cancer that shortly killed her, a tissue sample was taken from Henrietta Lacks in 1951 without her knowledge. Those cells would go on to become the first immortal line of human | Sat, 08 Jul 2017 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=189, tm_isdst=0) | 25954932 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. This is Chuck. And welcome to this week's Saturday stuff you should know selects episode this week was my pick, and I picked the episode on the HeLa cells because I think this one had a great mix of history and and science. History episodes are some of my favorites. And we got to tell a little bit of the story of the great Henrietta Lacks and on the science, and we got to kind of delve into the importance of helocell. So I hope you enjoy it this time around. If you've heard it before, give it another listen. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant's with me, and Cherry's with me. And that means that the three of us all together make it stuff you should know. Hey, man. Hey. Good to see you. Good to see you too. So I'm pretty excited about this one, actually. Oh, yeah. It's been a long time coming. We have tons of people email us about this book. Lady Henry at ALAX. Right. And her heila spella heila, it's Henrietta Lacks. It's probably less. I hear that, but I think it's hyla. Hila is probably the way to go. We'll just do our own thing. Okay. But yeah, this has been, like, a really big fan request over the years. Yeah. But it ties in. We did a show on right. Do you own your you have a right to privacy after you die. Yeah. And I think that's when we got the most feedback about this. Yeah, for sure. It ties in heavily. It definitely ties in heavily. There's a big movement about basically respecting the dead, whether you're an ancient mummy or a woman from Baltimore who died in the 50s, how much of an expectation of privacy and how much of a right to what makes you you do you have after you die? And the plight of Henrietta Lacks has definitely raised this national discussion about it. And great, I guess, is the only way to put it. Like, it's really good that people are talking about this. And it's not just privacy. There's also a lot of allegations of racism, profiteering. It's a really morally complicated story, but a pretty interesting one, too, because at the end of the day, this lady has done more to further science than cells have then possibly any one person on the planet. Yes. Jonas Hawk. You say he is helicopter. Yeah. Is that going to bug you every time I say that? No, it's fine. Okay. I've adjusted my brain so I hear it the way that I want to now. Okay. So go ahead. Great. What we're talking about are the cells of a woman, an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks in Baltimore, Maryland. She was pregnant with her fifth child, and she felt what she described as a knot to her family inside her mid section. And after childbirth, it was discovered that she had a lump on her cervix and had cervical cancer. Yes. About a year after she gave birth. Yeah. And the only place that would treat African Americans at the time in that area was Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Right. Which is sad in its own right. So while she was sick and being treated, one of her doctors how are you going to pronounce this? Is it gay or gay? Gay. He wasn't her doctor. He ran the tissue culture lab. Yeah. But they sent part of her cervix away to a lab to get tested, and it turns out that it was pretty remarkable in the way that her cells divided. Yeah. You got to understand this guy, Doctor gay. It's G-E-Y-I would say gay. Is that what you were saying? It could be Gay. I was going to call him Doctor Gay. Why isn't everyone named Clark? So easy. Yeah. And boring, though. Yeah. So Dr. Gay is basically this guy who he his wife and an assistant run this tissue culture laboratory at Johns Hopkins. And for literally decades, this man has been trying to find a line of human cells that will continue to reproduce and not just die when placed in culture. One day, he got a sample of some cells taken from the tumor in Henrietta Laxis cervix, and he put them in Coulter, and they started to divide, and they divided again after that, and they divided again after that, and every 24 hours, the population of cells and culture divided, doubled. Right. Yeah. And this guy said, holy cow, this is it. This is the first time I've seen a line of immortal human cells. This could advance science forever. Yeah. By this time, I think Henry Delaxe was dead because was it a biopsy or was it from her autopsy, do you know? It was from the biopsy, but she passed away on October 4, 1951, and I think all of this happened post mortem. I don't in any way want to diminish what happened in between the time of her biopsy and the time Doctor Gates, like eureka, this woman had she got treatment, but I mean, the treatment at the time was fairly primitive. Apparently, radiation treatment meant that you sewed little radioactive tubes into the cervix and left them there. That was radiation treatment. There was X ray treatment. She was in a tremendous amount of pain, and she died horribly from this extremely aggressive case of cervical cancer at the time. And she died and her family was poverty stricken. A lot of them didn't grow up to be very well educated. And by the time this rolled around, the public awareness of Henrietta Alaxis plight or post death, her family couldn't even afford health care for the most part, which is a great irony of this whole thing. Yeah. So let's talk about what happened after she died and her sales continued on. Well, he named them first of all, and it's a common thing to name the cells after the person from which they came. And so a lot for many years, people thought they said it was a lady named Helen Lane or Helen Larson. Right. Because they're trying to create anonymity like, you're trying to protect the donors identity, and they were actually trying to throw people off by saying they were lying. It was Helen Lane or Helen Larson. Yeah, I don't know about that. Anonymity why would they name them after the person then? I don't know. If they're trying to protect their name, why would they name them after that? I think rather than calling it at the time that Henrietta Lack sells hila was good enough. Interesting. I would think if you're trying to protect them, you wouldn't call anything remotely close to that. Right, exactly. Well, that's what they do now. Okay. So anyway, people didn't really check a lot because no one really cares that much in the medical community. Like, who did these come from? It was really common at the time, and still to take tissue samples and use them without consent. Right. And that's one of the big issues that came about later, is she never knew that her cells were going to be used in this way. Right. Not only did she not know, her family had no idea, too. Yeah. But we should point out it wasn't, like, against the law or anything, and there was nothing shady going on because it was commonplace. Right. We should also point out that Dr. Gay never sought to profit from these things. Now he would send them off to people for free. You have to buy them now, of course. Right. And they're all different kinds of strains that range in prices from $250 to, like, thousands of dollars per sample. Yeah. And we'll talk about that in a little while. And, like, you can get online and buy them. Yeah, right. I went today, and I added some to the cart, and then I was like, I'm just kidding. That car is like Brian. Yeah. I just was curious of how easy it would be. And I don't know if there was something later on in that process that I would have to fill out or something, but I added it to the cart. No, I don't think you have to fill anything out to get human culture. Really? Yeah. You don't have to prove that you're, like, a researcher of some kind. I don't think so. No. As long as it's not like, a biohazard, I think. Interesting. And I know some places to charge different prices for nonprofits as well, for the sales, but it's not that much of a discount. Like, I saw somewhere it would be like, maybe you or I would pay $250, but if we were a 501, we'd pay, like, $190. That's not bad. $60. Yeah. I just thought it'd be more. Okay. All right, so let's talk a little bit about why. Well, first of all, we don't really know for sure why her sales were so unique. Okay. So they think they might have figured it out. I saw that in nature. Yes. I don't know. I don't know if I thought that was solid. You didn't buy it? Well, I don't think they even went on record saying it's super solid. It's just a theory, from what I understand. What's her name? Rebecca Sculut. Yeah. She's who wrote the book? The immortal Henry Delac. Yes. Which is being options by Oprah for HBO. Yeah. That'll be a good one for a movie. Yeah, it should be. So she apparently buys it because she was saying that for many years after the book came out. Well, for a couple of years after the book came out, because it came out in 2010, and this explanation came out this year that they had to tell people on book tour, like, we have no idea why her cells kept growing and growing, and now we have a better understanding. But the explanation Chuck and I are referring to, everybody. So you get cervical cancer from the human papioma virus. There's two l's, so it's Vo. Right. Okay. HPV, apparently, which is very common, by the way. Yes. But that's what cervical cancer comes from, I understand. Right? Yes. Okay. So the HPV and Henry at ALAX had insinuated its own genetic material into her DNA right above a gene called Mike MYC. Yes. And this gene is a regulatory gene, so when its expression starts to get haywire, it can lead to cancer. So they think that the placement of this HPV is what causes these cells to grow and divide so quickly and so robustly. Because these HeLa cells are an immortal line of cells. When you put them in the right conditions, you take one cell, it will keep dividing indefinitely. And we should probably talk about why that's a big thing, why other people's cells don't normally do that. So before we move on, I think it's a good 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. Hey, now we're back. Should we get into apoptosis? Yeah, apoptosis or cellular suicide is or program cell death, take your pick, many names. So from what I understand, program sell death is like the whole general idea that a cell self destructs, but there's different ways, and pop toasts is one of them. Okay. Basically, when a cell is no longer needed, it commits cellular suicide. It's not abnormal or scary. Healthy adults, we have billions of cells dying in our bone matter and intestines every hour. Yeah, and then your white blood cells come along, absorb all the detritus and move this stuff out through your sweat. Yeah, it basically balances cell division out tissue would grow or shrink if it wasn't for Apoptosis. So it's a good thing. Right? Apparently we have web fingers as we develop in the womb. Right. And thanks to Apoptosis, these cells degrade and your fingers go back to non webby versions of themselves. Well, they don't go back to or go to yeah, basically all the cells die in between your fingers. Right. And you don't look like a man from Atlantis. Right. And this is also, like you said, I think, a check on cancerous growth. Because cancer is tumor is a cluster of cells that are growing out of control. One of the conditions of life is controlled growth. Cancer is uncontrolled growth. One way to keep that in check is to have cells have a lifespan, and they typically do. In a healthy person, the cells divide between 40 and 60 times and then they die. That's what's called the Hayflick limit. Yeah, we've talked about that. Yeah. And do you remember what it was? We've talked about that a few times. Yeah. Well, it's just so fascinating. It is. So cancerous cells, like we said, don't have the PCD. And hers, thanks to Mike, are just the hardiest they've ever discovered and went on to be used in at least 60,000 cases in medical journals and articles published in medical journal 76,000. Well, this is probably written three months ago. 110 patents relate to the use of the Helas sales and they're easy to store, they're easy to ship, they're basically the best cells out there to work with for most kinds of disease, although in viruses, although some doctors say they can be a little too robust and mess things up. So these cells are extremely robust, they divide very quickly, they're very hardy. They also apparently are airborne is one way that they go and contaminate other cultures. They can easily be transferred on clothes or gloves or whatever. So to some researchers they basically are like invasive. They're an invasive cell line and by the early 70s they contaminated so many other cell lines that doctors had to figure out a way to identify helic cells from other cells. So they said, well, we'll just call the family. And in, I think, 1973, Delac Henry and his husband got a phone call that just completely confused him. And this was the first he'd ever heard. This is the first the family found out that these cells that this was going on, this family had no idea. Yeah, but like we said, they weren't highly educated. So when someone calls from Johns Hopkins and says, your wife is still alive as cells in a lab, they were really confused. And the daughter even thought for a while that they had literally cloned her mom and that versions of the mom were living in London. She had no idea what they were talking about. Right. But not only that, the call apparently was later proven to be very misleading because they were saying, we need to find out if your kids have cancer. Well, what they wanted was to see if they had the same properties as their mom. They wanted the kids DNA so they could identify HeLa DNA in other cultures because it had become so invasive. Right. So they were basically saying, you guys might have cancer. But really what they were after was their genetic material for DNA typing. That's right. That's extremely misleading. It is. And mean, because once the kids went in and got their blood workups done, johns Hopkins never called back. So they were just left to wonder what was going on. But, I mean, think about it. Let's say somebody called you and said, hey, you think you might have cancer? Come in and do some blood work. You go in and get your blood work done and then they never call you back again. Wouldn't you be worried? I'd get on the phone? Sure, yeah. So like we said, Chuck, this is a pretty morally complex situation. When the family did finally find out, they also realized that their mother's sell line was a multibillion dollar cottage industry and they hadn't seen a penny from it. Medical science kind of said, well, hold on, let us explain all the great things that your mother cells have done. Right. And, I mean, they've been involved in some pretty spectacular scientific achievements. Yes. Like we said, the study of viruses, everything from measles to mumps, created vaccines. In fact, Curing creating a vaccine for HPV, which is what she had. They ended up getting a vaccine for that from her cells, which is pretty great. You said Jonas Salk. Yeah. With polio, which has been eradicated here in the west, we should explain how that happens, too. When you have a live human cell, you have an opportunity to do whatever you can to it and simulate what would happen in a normal human body. And with polio, they took the polio virus and injected the helicopter with the polio virus and then they injected the helicelle with some of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine. And the polio virus was eradicated in that Helicelle. That's right. Yeah. You just figured out that your vaccine works. They've used it to study tuberculosis. Yeah. HIV. We already said HPV. Parkinson's. They've used it a lot in Parkinson's research and even in the transportation and standardization of just using cells like this period because they were so great and they wanted to use these, they had to figure out a better way to ship them back and forth. And just a lot of the standardization of these procedures are in place now because of everyone wanted to work with these cells. Right. Which is pretty great, too. Okay, Chuck, the family finds out about this, they spend basically decades saying, like, hey, can somebody fill us in on what's going on here? How are you guys making money off of this? What's the deal? And we're just being ignored. And finally Rebecca Scoot gets involved. Yeah, she's a science writer. I don't think we even mentioned that. Yeah. And the author of The Immortal Henrietta Delaxe. Right. Yeah, I think it's the Immortal Life. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Delaxe. And over time, Scoot kind of befriends the family and ends up writing this book and telling the story of Henry at ALAX and basically just captures the national attention, basically says, this family, you can make a pretty good case, was totally exploited as a whole or by the medical establishment as a whole, and let's talk about this. And that's exactly what happened as a result. Yeah. The family did look into getting money from it, but that is pretty much completely off the table, because that opens up a can of worms that everybody sells. Ever used in any experiment would have to be tracked back to their original family members and compensated in. The courts have resoundingly said, no, we can't do that. That will halt medical research as we know it, and we can't do that. There is a case in 1980 where this patient with leukemia found out that his doctor had taken cells from a biopsy and created a sell line worth $3 billion. And this case went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said, sorry, man. Once it's taken from your body, it doesn't belong to you any longer. A lot of people still don't necessarily agree with, but that's the status quo. As it stands, I think everybody's very protective of scientific progress. Sure. Especially in eradicating diseases, as they should be. However, earlier this year, there was finally some good news for the Lax family. The National Institute of Health invited two of her descendants to be part of the HeLa Genome Data Access Working Group, which basically now they're a part of the board which considers applications to use her cells. Yeah. Because in addition, while this whole thing is going on, this whole national conversation about what should be done with the sell line and what rights a person has to their own cells. This European scientific agency cracked and published the Heila genome, which they published Henrietta Lack's genome just out there open to the public. And it's been proven that you can find someone's identity out just from their genome, and you can also find out a lot about their descendants. So it was a big deal. The European agency took it down, but now it's been placed behind this. It's under, like, a password locking key in this database. So there's access to it. You can get access to it, but you have to apply to that working group. That's right. So now the data access group, they apply for permission. They agree not to contact the family members of Henrietta Lacks, agree to use them only for biomedical research only, and some of the family members will handle those requests along with the other people on the board. It's not like they're the only ones that are left to decide this, of course. Right. And like I said, they did ask about paying, and they said, maybe we can think of some other ways for you to make money off this, like patenting a genetic test for cancer based on your mom's cells, but they have not yet come up with any way to make money off of it. So a lot of other people have. Like you were saying, you can go online and buy a vial of cells for $250 or something like that. There's other ones that you can buy that have heal of cells that are like, $10,000. And I read this explanation of all that, that if you take one of those $10,000 vials, it has all these other patented processes and proteins and genes and things in it that account for that increased amount of money, that increased cost, and then even the $250 vile, it's like, well, it costs money to produce these things and store them and ship them and all that. So the idea that there's somebody out there that's just making tons of cash off of this is not that. It's much more spread out, and it's much less obvious. And there's really not that much of a bad guy in the story as much as you want there to be. And even the author of the book is, like, there's a lot of, like, shifting sands in this, and it's not cut and dry in black and white. And at the end of the day, we want biomedical research to keep progressing. Yeah. I don't think anyone necessarily is looking for a bad guy as much as they're looking for a good ending for that family. Well, it sounds like they got one. No, I mean, they got an apology. Yeah. There's now endowed scholarships and chairs at universities around the country in her name. True. And I think if you use hilo cells now in a study, you say these cells used in the study were donated by henrietta lacks. Yeah, I think that was part of the agreement. Yeah, I was talking money, though. Got you. Like, they're still poor and they still don't have medical coverage. Actually, I don't know if that's true today, but 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. There's also a Henry at ALAX foundation too. There is? You got anything else? I got nothing else. All right, well, if you want to learn more about henriette ALAX, you should probably go read the immortal life of henrietta lacks by Rebecca's clue. Sure, check out the website, foundation, all that stuff. And you can also go on to housetofworks.com and type henry at alex in the search bar. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this biodiesel dad. Guys, after listening to ten easy ways to save money, when I tell you about my dad's super cool garage biodieselop. He got into home brew biodiesel about five years ago, in a sense developed a very sophisticated set up which can produce a 90 gallon batch of biofuel in three to five days. The simple rundown is that you filter, use vegetable oil, boil off the excess water, add lie and methanol, and filter, filter, filter. He regularly gathers the used vegetable oil from various restaurants and bars around town who are happy to give it to him. He uses the biodiesel to selfsufficiently fuel my mom's SUV, his sedan, his truck, and his 26 foot fishing boat. Wow. No engine modification is required and can be mixed at any ratio with normal petroleum diesel. As far as money savings go, the raw chemicals only end up costing about one dollars per gallon. So I'll let you do the math. While I'm not recommending that everyone go out and build their own biodiesel plant in their garage, especially since I'm not sure how legal it is without a permit, I was wondering that, too. I thought you guys find this interesting at least. I started listening to the show in September during a long drive, moving to Stanford, where I just started working as a grad student and I've been a die hard fan ever since. And that is from Ben. Thanks, Ben. And Ben's dad, who I don't know his name, but good on you, sir. Yeah, really. That's pretty cool. French fry machine. Well, let's see. If your family members are doing something pretty interesting, we want to hear about it from you. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comsenaw. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and you can join us at our websitestepyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
How Yo-Yos Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-yo-yos-work | You may have played with a yo-yo before -- perhaps you've even walked the dog -- but do you know about the physics behind what makes a yo-yo sleep and wake up? Learn all about inertia, angular momentum and the history of the yo-yo in this episode of SYSK. | You may have played with a yo-yo before -- perhaps you've even walked the dog -- but do you know about the physics behind what makes a yo-yo sleep and wake up? Learn all about inertia, angular momentum and the history of the yo-yo in this episode of SYSK. | Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:09:09 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=17, tm_min=9, tm_sec=9, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=3, tm_isdst=0) | 29867430 | 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 howstuckworkscom. Hey. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. This is Charles W, Chuck Bryant. That's me. Same as ever. Scratching the old back? Yeah, just got a little itch there. Do you ever use one of those little dealies, the little creepy hand, the little monkey paw on the end of the stick? I have before. I don't like to do that. It hurts. I guess you could call it painful sensation. I get up against the wall sometimes and do the balloon, the bear. That I'll do sometimes, too. But it's weird. Like, I only have baggage in about the same place, and that would be on my left shoulder blade on the western side of it, depending on which direction I'm facing. Curiously, this is going to be the most interesting part of this show. That is not true, chuck man. So, Chuck yes. This is going to be a great one. Okay. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those ones where it's like, wow, that turned out to be really good. If physics heavy out the union. Yeah, everyone loves that. But the fact is, when we finish this, you're going to know how yoyo works. This is probably the most truly truest titled episode we've ever done. You think? Yeah. I don't know. All right, well, we'll find out. I think it should be called physics through the eye of a Yoyo. So listen, have you ever seen the movie Harlem Knights parts? Dude, that is go back and watch it again. Oh, you're crazy. It's one of the best movies ever. Eddie Murphy red Fox richard Pryor. Great cast, and like, everybody else in it, too, I think Bernie Max in there. Awesome cast, terrible script. I don't think the script is terrible. I thought it was great. There's one thing about that movie that bugged me to no end. It's set in, like, the 20s, right? Yeah. And throughout the movie, eddie Murphy uses the word yo. Yo is obviously a modern term, and it just sticks out like a sore thumb every time he does it drives me crazy. Like, it drives me crazy that he did it drives me crazy. The director wasn't like, you can't say yo. This is like 1920s New York. Yo wasn't around. I don't know that they were going for historical accuracy in that one. They were wearing spats. Yeah, Jerry like that one. So I went back to the little digging, Chuck, and it turns out that Yo was in fact around in the 1920s but Eddie Murphy was still wrong for using it in that capacity. Okay. Okay. So Yo goes back at least to, like, the 15th century as, like a hunting cry, right? When somebody's like, somebody else might go, Yo. And you go, chase fox. That was kind of the first wave of Yo as far back as 1859. We know that there were sailors that were using it. Yo ho. Yo ho ho. Or also, it was a response for roll call. Like Yo. If somebody called your name, you would say, Yo Akee. It wasn't until after World War II, though, that the modern incarnation comes. And it came out of the Italian quarters of Philadelphia. Of course it did. So that's where they think Yo came from after World War II. Hence, Eddie Murphy was wrong in using yo especially frequently in the movie Harlem Knights. So I did all that research or I could have just looked into Google Translate from English to Filipino or vice versa okay. And find that it just means.com yeah, but I don't think that's what it means here, does it? It does now. Okay. So the word Yoyo, as it stands right, means come. Come or come back. Yeah, that makes sense. Did you know that? I did. You want to talk a little bit about the history of Yoyo? Did you know before reading this fantastic article that Yoyos originated, as we understand them now, originated in the Philippines in the 1920s? I didn't know that. I did know that. It was around for a long time before that, though. In other forms? Well, pretty much the same form. There were, like, two forms of Yoyos in history. Yeah. And one came out of the new one came out of the Philippines. The other one yeah, it's pretty old. Well, ancient Chinese, or at least ancient Greeks more than 2500 years ago. But they think the Chinese had something similar to that. Yeah. I'm starting to strongly suspect that the Chinese are the origin of human civilization. Yeah, they came up with beer. Yeah, they came up with beer. There you have it. They win right there. And it is the oldest toy on the planet. Except the doll. The dolly. I thought that was pretty interesting too. Yeah, of course. Although I wonder if they're kind of diminishing any kind of ancient rituals or rights by saying, look at this cute doll, when really it's some sort of fetish. I don't know. You never know. So it's been around a long time. They've designed it in different ways over the years. The original design had the string tied tight to the little axis there. We'll call it the Greek design. The Greek design. No, we'll call it the Chinese design or the European design? Well, not design, but it was popular in Europe. Yeah. And that obviously, if you ever used an old yoyo like that or redesign yours to where it's tied around the axle, it'll pop up as soon as you throw it down. It will pop back up. Yeah, because it's tied to the axle. Exactly. Right. And you said it was popular in Europe. There were other words for it, other names for the yoyo before it was a yoyo. That's right. There was the Lemigret, the Bangalore. The Bangalore is British, I believe. The Quiz. Yeah. I didn't get a country of origin for that, but it was very popular in Europe. There's a painting of, I think, Louie the 18th. Is he the boy king? I don't know. Whichever Louis was the boy king of him holding, like, a yoyo, like a royal painting of him with a yoyo, or what was the little hoop on in a stick? I think that's what it's called. That was an awesome game, the hoop on a stick. And then I don't think you can compare the yoyo to the hoop on a stick. No, I'm not comparing it. I'm just saying. I just never got that toy. Okay, well, here's another one for you. Napoleon was well known for carrying and using a yoyo, apparently for stress relief. Oh, yeah. It didn't work too well. He's a stressed out dude. Yeah, he needed the but as you said, that's the European favorite or Chinese design, where the strings tied really tight to the axle, and it just basically goes up and down. Yeah. Right. So the Filipino design led to the modern yoyo, as we understand it now, and the huge distinction is that the string is just looped around the axle kind of loosely, which has the added benefit of allowing the yoyo itself to spin once it reaches the end of the string. Yeah, that's why people yoyo. I think it's all about the tricks. I mean, it's sort of fun for a minute just to go up and down, but it's really all about the tricks. Right. It's just a stress reliever if it just goes up and down. Did you yoyo when you were a kid? Yeah, here or there. But even as a kid, like, I could sense that these new modern ones that we'll talk about with, like, ball bearings and clutches, they just seem like cheating. I agree. Let's not even talk about them. It's not even a real yoyo. So, Chuck, you want to talk about a little bit about physics? Well, let's finish the history first, shall we? Okay, well, I have plenty of that. It was originally in the Philippines. They think it was a hunting weapon for like 400 years, but not like a little, tiny yoyo. They were really big, and it was basically a big spindle attached to a rope with, like, spikes coming off of it. They were like, the size of a Hugo. Yeah. And I guess the benefit there is you could get it back after you threw it at somebody. Right. The string was almost just useless, though. Well, you just throw it and run after it. Oh, really? Okay. It was actually heavy rope. And use it for hunting, too, right. Well, at some point down the line, well, yeah, you would think anything used in hunting does double duty and more. Exactly. Anything you're trying to kill. Yeah. At some point, though, they became smaller and became toys and in. The Filipino immigrant to the US. Named Pedro Flores started a company, the first modern yoyo company in the United States, and did pretty well for himself. And then in 1929, he sold out to a man named Duncan. Right. Donald Duncan. Yes. Donald duncan or Duncan properly. And Florence is in Santa Barbara, and like you said, was selling these things, like, hotcakes enough that Duncan said, hey, let me buy that. I'm going to keep the name Yoyo because it's catchy, I'm going to trademark it, and now I own it. And through the years, he had competitors that made similar devices with different names, and they were like, dude, everyone's calling the singer Yoyo. We want to be able to call a Yoyo, too. And he said, no, I own it. Then the federal courts in 1965 says, you know what? That's generic enough now, where you don't own it any longer. Right. They're all Yoyos. Well, there's legal challenges to the trademark. The name Yoyo was one of the things that bled the company dry. It eventually went bankrupt. Duncan company went bankrupt? Yeah, the same year they ruled against them. They were like, well, that's it for us. But they also had other money troubles. They were actually victims of their own success. The Duncan Company was. So they moved in the Luck, Wisconsin, which very quickly became known as the yoyo capital of the world. And at their peak, they were making 3600 yoyos an hour. Wow. Mostly out of wood at first maple. They were using a million board feet of maple wood every year. Yeah, it's a lot. And they actually, in addition to their legal challenges, like the money going to fight their legal battles, they were paying tons of money in overtime to advertising. And as a matter of fact, I think in 1962, Chuck, they managed to sell 45 million yoyos. And in that same year, there were only 40 million kids in the US. Wow. That's pretty astounding a chicken in every pot and a yoyo in every other hand, at least. Yeah, sure. I guess some kids were yoyo with both hands. They're rich kids. Yeah. But like I said, the company ended up going bankrupt anyway. But yoyo enthusiasts still look very fondly on the Duncan name, and I think June 6 is National Yoyo Day, which happens to be the same day as Donald Duncan's birthday. Well, on the dunkin name lives on. Obviously, you still see Duncan yoyos. They sold out. They didn't just shut down. Well, they went bankrupt and sold out. Right? Yeah. So the Flambell Plastics company, they said, we'll keep the name Duncan because it's synonymous with yoyoz. Yeah. It's not generic yet. No. There's a little yoga history for you. Yeah, I got a little more. I'm going to say to the end, I think you'll like, okay, I'm not too easy with it. Now let's talk about physics. Well, I think this is very interesting. Good. Okay. You mentioned with the string tied to the classic Chinese design, yoyo, you have one kind of energy going on, right? Yes. And that is linear momentum. The ability of it to go up and down. Or I should say down and up. Right? That's right. With the Filipino design, the modern design, it has two kinds of potential energy. It has that same linear momentum to go up and down, but it also has angular momentum, and angular momentum is its ability to spin on an axle. Okay. So you got two things going on, and like you said, when the yoyo hits the end of the line of its linear momentum, it can still build up. Since it's wound around the spool, it's built up a lot of angular momentum. So we can just sit there and spin or sleep, as you called it. Yeah. It actually increases as it goes down, which is the key to keeping it spinning. But it gets faster as it falls. There's another pretty cool trait through yoyo. Who knew they were so complex? I didn't. Did you? I did not. Okay. So they also have gyroscopic stability. Check. They do. Okay. So if you have a yoyo that's sleeping and you push down on top of it, it goes down and then back up. That's because of its gyroscopic stability. That point that you push down on the yoyo is transferred from the front and spun around to the back. So that even out. So the yoyo just keep spinning as long as it's spinning fast enough. Gyroscopic stability. Yes. That means a spinning object will resist change to its axis of rotation. And if you've ever thrown a football, it's the same thing. Yeah. Or if you've ever thrown a football poorly, what do they call that? A wobbler turkey? Wounded duck brick. That's why wounded duck doesn't go very far, because it doesn't have that tight spin. Yeah. So it falls off its axis and won't travel as far. Exactly. Same as the Brisbane. And then the whole team's mad at you. Basically anything that spins. Yeah. Frisbees footballs. There's got to be a baseball. We could liken it to a baseball somehow. Let's say curveball. Knuckle ball slider. Definitely not a knuckle ball slider than spin. It all really is. It like a shop put? No, knuckle ball. The whole key is it doesn't move. It travels like this. And that's why it moves all around. Crazy. Isn't that nutty? Yeah. So you've got your yoyo sleeping. You're totally aware of its gyroscopic stability, and you understand that it's angular momentum is just awesome. It's far out. Right? It's far out, but you want to wake it up, and that's when you bring it out of its sleep and rewind it back up the spool. Right. Little tug on the old finger. Yeah. And the reason why is because the loop right, there's less friction with the loop around the axle. When you tug it, you increase that friction and you allow it to rewind. It just grabs a hold of his buddy and says, let's go back up to the palm. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I like yoyo physics a lot. 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. 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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. So we basically just talked about the two hardest parts, right? Sleeping and waking. Yeah. And like I said, sleeping is the key to do any kind of trick, like walking the dog, which I was pretty good. I used to do a few yoyo tricks. Really? Yeah. I could walk the dog and I could do the deal where you make a triangle and then ticktock through the triangle, something like a cradle, or probably the cat's in the cradle. Let's call it a cat's cradle. And then I could do the around the world. Wow. Around the world. Yeah, I couldn't do any of those. This inspired me to get a new yoyo, by the way, I like the vintage Duncan ones, specifically the yellow ones with the butterfly, like the gold butterfly, the inverted ones. No butterfly on that because they had those that looked like a butterfly that were I know what you're talking about. Inverted and I think that actually plays a part in the increasing the moment of inertia section. I think that's why they flipped it out, to put more weight on the outside. Yeah. Okay. You want to talk about that? Why not? So do you remember when we did the Murphy's Law podcast? How could I forget? Remember one of the books that he wrote was for your moments of inertia. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't realize it was a terrible, terrible engineering pun until I read this article. Yeah. Paul staff a little bit. No, we love that guy. So, Chuck, a moment of inertia is basically a way of describing a spinning object's resistance to changes in that rotation, basically being slowed down. Right. And what smarter people than us have figured out is that if you increase the mass and distribute it slightly further away from the axis, you're going to increase its moment of inertia. Right. And that increases the amount of time it's just sleeping. Right? Yeah. And like I said, I don't know this, but I just remember when I was a kid, they had those inverted yoyos, and I bet you anything that's why they did that. It's got to be because they were wider at the outside and then curved in, which had to be less mass. It was less stuff, less wood. So I'm going to go on record saying that's why they did that. But I think you want more mass further away to increase its foam and overnight. Right? Yeah. So there was more mass on the outside, further away from the axis. Right. Yeah. So that allows things to sleep a lot longer. And that was, I guess you could say, one of the breakthroughs in yoyo design. I think in the 60s, they started adding mass to the outside and extending the axle a little bit. Bam. The yoyo has been improved. Think about this, right? 2500, maybe even longer than that. Years ago, somebody invented the yoyo does not change until the Philippines in the early 20th century. Well, I thought it said it did change. We just don't know. Said there were changes in designs over the years. No, not that I took it. I took it like there was one way and then there was the Filipino way, and that was it. We got a correction to make them, and then the 20th century hits, and then there's all these great improvements on these designs. Indeed. One of the improvements, Chuck, was adding ball bearings. Right. Yeah. You and I don't think these are improvements, or at least I don't. Okay, that's absolutely true. That's a good caveat. I think that the Filipinos perfected the yoyo. Let's just call them modifications, okay. For sorry, kids who don't know how to yoyo. Rich kids. Yeah. That makes it easier, I think. Yeah. And that's the whole point of both of these things. Yeah. I guess it makes it easier to sleep. And I guess they're like, well, if you're just enjoying sleeping and waking your yoyo, then why make it tough if you want to have fun with your toy? Right. I can't believe they made it easier for kids to have fun. How dare they? So the ball bearing design, I think, is kind of clever. Basically, this modification takes the axle and splits it into two races, which are basically little courses for ball bearings to spin around. Right. Now, does that split the axle? These are just around the axle. So one is connected to the axle, that's the inner race. One is connected to the string, that's the outer race. And then in between the two are ball bearings. They're not connected in any way except maybe via the context of the ball bearings. Right. So when you release your yoyo toward the ground and it's linear, and angular momentum really build up when it hits, the inner race can tilt a little bit and connect with the outer race via the ball bearings. So they're spinning. Right. And then as they straighten out, they're not connected anymore. So that the string no longer has any effect on whether the yoyo spins or not because it's just the inner race connected to the axle that's spinning. So your yoyo can sleep far, far longer. Yeah. The outer race spins the inner race, which spins the axle. Right. It's like a transfer of angular momentum. Exactly. And then the strings is like you just let me know when you're done and we'll wind back up. Well, it'll get a little tiger. Do the same thing with that style. Right, right. Okay. Or you can just completely take yourself out of the equation altogether. Except for a snap of the wrist, the initial release is all you need to do with what's called the Yoyo with the Brain. These are really fake yoyos. Yeah. I want to get one, though. It's kind of cool if you could be in a vegetative state and do this yoyo. Yeah. This was in the 90s. Company called Yamaica released these and they called it the yoyo with the Brain, when in fact they should have called it the Yoyo with the Clutch. And the deal here is you've got these two clutch arms, weighted ball on one side, and it's not attached on the other side, and they're spring loaded. The spindle is not attached to the axle, but the clutch arms are attached to the spindle. So when you throw this thing down, it's going to spin slower at first and the clutch is engaged as it gets faster. All of a sudden, it's enough inertia to pop the clutch, essentially against the edges, and it releases the spindle, which makes the whole thing spin faster on the axis. Right. The centrifugal force pushes down the weight, which pushes down the arm onto the spring, which releases the two, which allows it to spin. And it only spins for a certain amount of time. It's not like the kind that you tug back up. It'll spin till it slows down, and then the clutch locks back down, and boom, it shoots back up. Right back up. I wish we had one of those. I want to see what it's like. So, basically, the two modifications are based on separating the string from the axle by creating two different kinds of, I guess, axles or spindles or whatever, which are really just sort of taking the Filipino design a step further, because although it made contact with the axle, it wasn't, quote, connected to the axle. Yeah, I guess it was, but it wasn't tight. Right. A guy named Michael Caffrey is the one who came up with the Yoyo with the brain, and Y Omega started selling them in 1990, but he came up with it in 1082 years after a man named Tom Kune created the no jive three and one Yoyo that you could take apart and replace the axle and do all sorts of modifications with. Oh, really? Big time for changes in Yoyo design. So did he rip this dude off? Is that what you're saying? No. Okay. No, I'm just saying, like, these two big steps in Yoyo design. You said two years after it was sinister. Well, you're a very suspicious person. I am. When it comes to yoyo design. Chuck that's pretty much the physics of Yoyo. Did you know that? We just explain how Yoyos work. I looked online at videos and stuff to make it a little easier, because this is a very visual thing, and they do have videos. But what I found out is that a lot of teachers, physics teachers use Yoyos to describe these, whatever, four to six properties that we described. I have to tell you, I understand angular momentum far better now. I understand although it went through the Yoyo, through the football, I understand the moment of inertia. Okay, wait, is that moment of inertia? No, that's angular momentum. Angular momentum spinning on an axis. Yeah. Oh, you're talking about the gyroscopic stability. That's what it was. I get confused. I need to chuck, it's physics, man. Don't feel bad. You want to know a couple more pieces of Yoyo trivia? Yeah. Let's hear it. In 1968, when Abby Hoffman of the Chicago 7th was indicted or charged with contempt of Congress, when he started doing the walk the dog during a House on American activities committee oh, really? A session that was investigating him. So he was like, I'm just so over this. I'm going to Yo. Yo. Well, apparently the way I read it is that he was trying to entertain, lighting everything up. I was like, here, watch me Yoyo. And he was walking the dog who. Exit. So that's how Yoyos are connected to McCarthyism. If you want to take an FYF quiz and that comes up. Plus, Yoyos were huge back then. Totally. That was like the heyday, I think it was the 60s. Yes. Nixon have you seen Nixon try to yoyo? No, man, if you don't like Nixon, this will just make you hate them even more. The night that they opened the Grand Old Opera and I think some time in 1974, what's the main guy like the whole cast of Hehaw is behind Nixon. And then the main Roy Achieve, he presents Nixon with a yoyo and has to put it on Nixon's finger. And Nixon looks like. What's going on? And then he tries to do it once, and it just kind of like, flops down and makes, like, a sad trombone noise. Wow. And he just has this stolen look on his face like, I don't like yoyo. Right. He looks kind of like you did at the beginning of this episode. Yeah, me and the tricky day. And then they took a yoyo in space, Chuck. Yeah, I saw that. And it still worked. It did work. They found that letting it drop did nothing because they were testing it in micro gravity. But if you throw it, it will go slowly. You can do it slowly, but it will still spin. And it moves kind of just kind of gracefully along the string, like in just mid air, horizontally. But it will never sleep. Well, thank God NASA did that. Yeah, back in 1985. Those are all the videos you see, though they do much more than that. That was back when NASA was like, we have so much money, we don't know what to do. Let's launch something. And let's say the toys and space project. Right. And they did. Yeah. This is just for yoyo. That was the only thing they did on that flight. Well, no, the Toys and Space Project encompassed 60 shuttle missions, one for each toy that they tested out. Wow. Jack's was one of the best ones. A bolo paddle. Yeah. So that's yoyo. Frankly, I'm pretty happy with this one. I thought you were going to lead in with something on yoyo ma. No, man. Try to look up yoyos in the news and not get yoyo maz. Can't do it. Stupid. I searched yoyo minus MABA to finally get some stuff on Gabba. Gabba? Sure. Yeah. What was the other one? TV Raps. That came up too. Did it? Yeah. I stopped searching before. I minus MTV too. You could minus? Yeah. And it'll root out all the search, all the results that have that. Really? So you just put the minus on minus and then the next letter, no space. I had no idea. And you can do a bunch of different ones. No commas, no nothing. Just like minus gabba. Minus yo. Really? Minus mom, minus knee. You've literally just improved my life. Oh, good. Or my research for like that 8th time today. Yeah. 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. 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 twelve. Compodcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast. And start taking charge of your future today. All right, well, that's it. All right. Yoyo. I was in a jewelry store once, and Neo came in. It seemed nice. Who's Neo? He's a rapper. He's from Atlanta. I thought you're talking about the Matrix. His real name is Keen. This is Neo. Yeah, I've heard of him. Yeah. Well, if you want to learn more about Yoyos, including some really top notch illustrations, this is one of those ones that you will see why we have staff illustrators here. Printed these out, actually in color. You want to type in Yoyo in the handychurch bar@howstepords.com. That will bring up that really cool article. And I said, handy search bar. So now it's time for Chuck to shine with another edition of Listener Mail. Josh, this is one of our oldest and not by age, but one of our most loyal fans, anna Spies. She has a band, and they put together well, let me just read it. This is coming out shortly after Christmas, and she said it was still great to read this. Hi, guys. And Jerry. Since we're firmly in the festive, greedy little griff of the holiday season, I was wondering if you could give a shout out to a project I'm involved in, or my band is at least it's a charity album to raise funds for the continued fallout from the Japanese earthquake and nuclear disaster. In the light of everything that's happened since, I know it's been put on the back burner of most people's charitable contributions, which is why we were thrilled and honored to do our part to re raise awareness when the label releasing this compilation approached us to contribute a track. So she's right. You hear about these tragedies that happen, and then six months later, you kind of forget about it. It's the curse of the new cycle. Exactly. But luckily, there's a lot of people that my friend Dave is one of them that's still working, like on The Tsunami from five or six years ago. That's great. So continued help is always needed. There's a CD. It's going to be out in mid December, so by the time this comes out, it'll already be out. You can stream the entire album, which is 37 tracks by 37 artists on the website. Morehopeforjapan.com and her band, New Century Classics, wrote and recorded a brand new song just for this compilation. And she's quite proud of it. And I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but I'm not. And she said there's a lot of far better known artists on there. And anyone who likes instrumental music, post rock, ambient and basically pretty melodic guitar based in should dig it. So check it out. That's anna's Band. New century classics. Cool. Morehopeforjapan.com very cool. Thanks a lot, Anna. I appreciate that. Thanks for letting us know. Thanks for doing what you do. And thanks for listening for, like, years. She's been around forever. Yeah, I guess if you're working on something that you feel like everybody's forgotten and shouldn't have, let us know. And we'll try to help you re raise awareness, too. Yeah, send us a tweet to Syscade podcast. Or you can shoot us facebooksomething facebook. Comstepyshino. And as always, you can get really personal and send us an email, a real live email to stuffpodcast@housetofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstep works.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The houseworks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. 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 fans favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | ||
44901ada-53a3-11e8-bdec-036a047d559b | How Class Action Lawsuits Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-class-action-lawsuits-work | Class action lawsuits seem a little odd – a bunch of people get together for a sue-fest against somebody – but in the legal world they’re a practical way of handing huge wrongs. And! They keep justice just in their way. Learn all about them today. | Class action lawsuits seem a little odd – a bunch of people get together for a sue-fest against somebody – but in the legal world they’re a practical way of handing huge wrongs. And! They keep justice just in their way. Learn all about them today. | Tue, 08 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=343, tm_isdst=0) | 47183494 | 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. 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 a production of. iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, legal Eagle. Clark. There's Chuck, Deborah, Winger. Man, that was going to be Jerry. Okay. All right. Well, Jerry can be Robert Redford. So Chuck deborah Winger bryant and then Jerry Robert Redford. Roland. And this is Stephanie shannon. I never saw that movie. Really? Yeah. I was kind of too young for a legal procedural, I think, and then I just never caught up to it. Not just a legal procedural, a romance one, too. Yeah. Boring. I saw it a bunch of times when I was younger for some reason. I guess my mom must have been into it or something. Now it's just along for the ride, right? Exactly. Yeah. But it was good, if I remember correctly. Yeah, it was a good I mean, you can't go wrong with either one of those two, you know. Wasn't there a third? Legal Eagles three olympus has fallen, I think of it. Was it there a third person in that? Wouldn't it a romantic triangle, or am I just making that up? I don't know. I think you're the Last Days of Disco I'm looking now. Daryl. Hannah's on the cover. Oh, yeah. She might have been popped in for a tasteful nude. Then she probably plays a big couple. She convulses on the floor. You know who she's married to, right? No. Neil Young. I didn't know that. I could totally see that now that you say it, though. Yeah. They're the reason that Neil Young and David Cross david Cross. That would be funny. David Crosby don't speak to each other anymore. Why? Did David Crosby used to like Daryl Hannah? No, he's just a big jerk. And he like said something about her in an interview that wasn't nice right. When they got together. Jeez Neil, whose problem is dead to me, he's a notorious jerk. I didn't even know that, but I could kind of see it. Yeah, he admits it. That's even worse. I think that's worse. People who are like, I'm just a jerk. Deal with it. It's like, no, why don't you change your personality a little bit to conform a little better to the rest of our expectations? Sob well, let me rephrase that. And this is all coming from the great, great documentary about him recently. He admits it and has deep regrets over how he treated people. Well, that's good. He's an older yeah, he regrets his behaviors. That makes it easier to kick somebody when they're down. If they're like, deal with it. You can't bring them down to your level and kick them, but if they're like, I really regret everything, you'd be like, yeah, you should really rub it in because an old man sure. Exactly. So obviously today, Chuck, we're talking about class action lawsuits. I think anybody who could read the stuff, you should know, tea leaves could have discerned that or they could have just looked at the title of the episode. Yeah. Something that occurred to me while we were doing researching this, not about most, but many people listening to this show have maybe even unknowingly been a part of a class action lawsuit. Sure. I know I have. I have, too. I've gotten those little emails that say, you got $0.75 coming to you from whatever. Right. Every bit of your personal information was stolen in Equifax breach. So Equifax is going to give you some identity theft protection. Right. Or a discount, which is that's always the rub. Yeah. A lot of people probably have been a part of a class action laws, and you may not have paid attention to it. You may have gotten one of those things in the mail and just been like, what is this? Who cares? Or even if you read the fine print, you might have been like, this is literally not worth my time and responding for. But there's a lot of things that happened by virtue of you not responding to whatever card or something you saw or even like an ad on TV apparently qualifies as notifying somebody that, hey, you may be a member of this class action lawsuit. Yes. This kind of came up recently in my life and that I've mentioned before that I'm on a Facebook page of a community in rural Georgia where I have some land in rural Georgia, and there are some Donald Trump supporters that were pretty upset that we're asking if they could bring a class action lawsuit to overturn the election, presumably because they don't like the result. But I didn't get involved. I didn't jump in there and say, what kind of damages you're going to prove? Or whatever, because I think it would be interesting to try and prove emotional and psychological damage for an election result. That would be an interesting case. But that is like most of the cases around the election, it turns out. But with that though, you've kind of hit upon a few things here. The idea that there's a group of people who were wronged in some way in similar ways, who on their own might not get anywhere with the case, but collectively pulling together their resources or their multiple harms done, like taking those individual harms and turn them into one big mushy pile, that's the basis of a class action lawsuit. And it really kind of gets to the heart of why they exist. And that is that a lot of times you're suing a big giant corporation with enormous resources at their disposal. They can fight you all day long until not only does the lawsuit go away, but you don't have any money left. And when you really look at it, at the end of the day, you might have really just been after 100 or 1000 or even 10,000, even $100,000 worth of damages, which might seem like a lot to you, but might actually be less than the amount that you would spend on that case. And so when you face those kind of odds, that kind of challenge, you're just not going to file that suit. Any reasonable person wouldn't file a lawsuit like that. But the problem is, if that's the case, then that means that giant corporations who are doing ill stuff can just keep doing ill stuff, which is a new phrase I'm working on. I'm taking it out for a walk right now. The BC boys coined that term. Okay, well then this is an homage to the Bboys. But the idea that people are just going to let them get away with it because they can't afford the court fees, that's a problem. Which is one of the big things. That is one of the big benefits that class action suits provided. You can take all the separate people, put them together, and now all of a sudden you have a formidable opponent. Yeah, and it's obviously a part of civil law as opposed to criminal law, where I mentioned you have to have some sort of injury. It could be physical, it could be emotional, psychological, obviously financial. And it's what's known as a device in civil litigation. And all that means is that it's sort of the same thing as any other civil case, but it just allows multiple people to take part and we'll go over all the little minor differences. But it's sort of like treating that big body of people as a single plaintiff. And in fact, they do have to even have a representative plaintiff. Like it can't be all Volkswagen owners versus Volkswagen. And of course we'll talk about that real case, but I'm just making this up. It would be Josh Clarke versus volkswagen, and then Josh Clarke would have a million angry Germans standing behind him. Do I win in this theoretical lawsuit? Tell me, what's the average I shouldn't have picked Volkswagen because that was a real case that we'll talk about, but it was, I don't know, a Hugo Josh clerk versus Yugo. Okay. Remember those? Yes, sure. I don't think you go was trying to advertise itself as anything but Yugos. That was their whole stick. They weren't super cheap. You don't see those on the road much anymore, do you? Oh, no. I think after just a couple of years, you stopped seeing those on the road. But yeah, you have a representative plaintiff or a lead plaintiff, and theirs is the name that appears on the case, even though and we'll learn later, too, that they in fact also get a little bump your little extra money for being the lead plaintiff. Yes, they do get a little because they're the ones who have to go through all this stuff. They might have to show up to court. They're the ones who have to coordinate with the lawyers. They're the ones actually suing. But the thing is, if you show up and say, I am a we'll take a recent example. I'm a woman here in this situation. I have a vagina, and every day for 50 years, I've been using Johnson and Johnson's baby powder on my vaginal region, and as a result, I have ovarian cancer. And the doctors have said yes to come powder is really bad for you. Johnson and Johnson has known this forever, but they just didn't tell anybody. So I want to sue Johnson and Johnson and the legal offices that I walk into and say this to. The first of all, the lawyers going to jump up and click his heels and then say, I'm very sorry that this is happening to you, but the lawyer will probably think, you know, there's a lot of people who use Johnson and Johnson's baby powder. I wonder if there's anybody else like you will start to do research and all of a sudden your one lawsuit is going to include a lot more people and will probably become certified as a class action lawsuit. But you, the person who initially filed this, will remain that representative plaintiff. Yeah. Boy, I got to say, that story had a lot of emotional peaks and valleys. Thank you. I'm doing much better now, by the way. Good, I'm glad. It does usually, but not always, because there are also cases like Enron, which we'll talk a little bit about, but a lot of times it involves product liability. When Bridgestone Firestone had stuff going on there in the early 1990s right. And I guess for a decade, the US came down and the judge said from anyone who had car owned or leased 91 through 2001, if you had a Ford Explorer during those years, then you are part of this class they call that the class. Right. And then the attorney who represents that class, we'll talk about how they get selected. They are many times referred to as class counsel, which sounds very much like some middle school title that you would run for or something. But whenever we say class council, just think that's the attorney representing all these people, right? Class. Yeah. So you want to take a break and then talk a little bit about the history of this stuff? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. It's 2022, and things look different, like doctor's visits, for example. Sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for non emergency situations, like a sinus, infection or allergy. And that's why teladoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video. That's right. Doctors are standing by 24/7, so you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. You can see for yourself why teladoc is ranked number one by JD. Power and Telehealth satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Tele doc is available through most major health plans and many employers. But even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use teletoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teladoc. comStuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's teladoc.com stuff. For JD power 2021 award information, visit JD. Power.com Awards. 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 you should Know so, Chuck, you said that high section lawsuits are a type of civil law, right? Which is not criminal law. But even more specifically than that. Because they're a part of civil law. They're actually based on common law. Which is the legal body that's been formed over the century. Starting in England. And even further back than that. It turns out the Vikings are really the first court that was ever set up in Europe that they actually started a lot of legal precedent that made its way over to England. That. In turn. Made its way over to America. So helmet tip to the Vikings for all that. But common law is like the sum of all the judicial decisions made over those centuries that set precedent that was built on and expanded on and refined. That's common law. And common law is the basis of originally of hearing these kinds of cases, which are class action lawsuits. Yeah, and they didn't call them class action suits in 1125, but they had them. And it wasn't thousands of people against a tire company it was a few people. But in England they allowed a handful of people to get together occasionally in the village. Yeah, and maybe I'm not sure, I didn't really find why exactly they did this initially. My guess would just be efficiency of the court, maybe early on, which is sort of how it still is in a lot of ways. Rather than trying thousands of cases or even hundreds of thousands of cases, you can just get everyone together in one room. And that's what they did in England. They allowed a few people to file a single complaint against the court. And this kind of carried over, over the years, eventually into colonial America, along with some other stuff dealing with law, as you said, a lot of it sort of some didn't stick. Some did, yeah. There's like a period apparently from about the middle of the, I guess about the 1400 to the middle of the 19th century, where this just kind of went away in England, but it persisted in colonial America and then carried on and then went back to England and found purchase in about the middle of the 19th century in England's. Equity Courts, which is a specific kind of court. It's now part of regular civil court now, but for a little while it was its own thing where if say like you hired a Tin Smith to make a gravy boat for you in like 1758, you would take that guy to civil court. If he gave you one that was like only half of a gravy boat, you couldn't hold gravy in it. So what are you going to do with this thing? It's totally useless. So you take the Tin Smith to court. Well, you would probably expect money for damages. The money that you gave him returned to you. Civil court would handle that. If you wanted to, say, make the tinsmith finish the job to complete this gravy boat, then you would probably take them to Equity Court. Equity court was court. That had to do with everything except monetary damages or criminal court. It was the creative kind of court where it really kind of called on a judge's fairness and imagination to solve whatever problem was brought before it. And these equity courts, like I said, were eventually fused into regular civil court. But they are where our understanding, like the modern understanding of class action lawsuits were born. Get some of that 18th century gravy, man, I love gravy. I don't care what Sentinel is from, it's a good band name too. So the problem with equity courts, even early on, is that there was really no kind of codified procedure for everything, especially as these cases got bigger and bigger. As far as people grouping up, there was no standard procedure. And one of the biggest challenges with that, or I guess biggest controversies was whether or not people that weren't a part of that case technically, but we're still a part of it because they had the wagon wheel made by the local townsmith that was faulty, whether or not they signed up or not for that case, whether they were bound by that decision. Right. And it's a little counterintuitive to think about that. Like, who cares if Goody Smith isn't a part of this case? Maybe he doesn't care that his wagon wheel is faulty or not. But what this does, if you look at it on the other side, is Goody Smith can't like, once they settle this thing, goody Smith can't come along and then say, well, I want to see you separately. Right. So then Goody Smith couldn't come around later, or I guess until they changed it, he could come around later and sue again. But they had to work all this out. They were like, that's not fair. You can't have this big civil case, have someone technically be a part of it, but not assigned to it, and then later on try and get their own separate damages. Right? But I mean, that's, I think, how it was for almost a little over a century, where you could say, like, I didn't have anything to do with this thing. Goody, by the way, is short for good wife. So it's like, Mrs. Smith, well, I was just kidding around anyway. Yes, but the 9th grade crucible reader in me could not just let that pass. Remember that play? I do. I love it. The thing is, for a good century, even if you were considered somebody who would be a member of that class, if you hadn't signed on to this lawsuit, you could come back around and say, I didn't have anything to do with that. I want to sue you myself. And that did kind of make things unwieldy, because one of the purposes nowadays for filing a class action lawsuit, at least as far as the defendant, like, say, the big corporation is concerned, is to just settle this once and for all. And so eventually they came up with something called rule 48, which started to kind of include it was like the birth of the rules for class action lawsuits. And rule 48 morphed into rule 23. Rule 23 eventually, 1966, said, you know what? We're just going to say this. If you qualify as a member of a class action class, even if you have nothing to do with this, if you don't sign on, you're considered bound to the decision, which means the people suing these people lose. You can't go back and sue them again and try yourself. You're bound by that decision. And in 1966, they said, well, how are we going to do this? And they said, well, we need to just notify people, give people the option to say, I don't want to have anything to do with the suit, because I do want to sue these people on my own. And as long as you give them that option, the whole thing seems pretty fair. Yeah. 1937 was when the Supreme Court first adopted these rules of civil procedure and the beginnings of Rule 23. And this is when they sort of just dissolved a lot of the separation between the law courts and equity courts. But it was until 66 that they finally realized that was an issue. And they also I mean, it's a pretty dense thing, Rule 23. There was a lot that went on. And then that was amended again in 2005 with the Class Action Fairness Act, which, among other things, said that if it's over $5 million, then this has got to go to federal court, federal district court, because that's too much money. Another one of the things from the Fairness Act of 2005 is it laid out some other criteria aside from the $5 million. It said that any case involving plaintiffs or defendants from a bunch of different states so if it's all across the country, basically yeah. And they call that diversity jurisdiction, then the federal court can actually have to go to federal court under that case. Right. And then also, if it's 100 people are over, 100 plaintiffs are over, it typically goes to federal court. And I get the impression federal courts is basically like, we're a little more equipped for the complexities and intricacies of a class action lawsuit. That's the impression I have. Do you? Yeah, I think they're just set up for it. I imagine it would be tough for a state court to handle a case like firestone bridgestonee with that many hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions. I don't know how many eventual plaintiffs there were, but that's a lot of tires. So I think that's true. But I also feel like this whole thing smacks of federal courts is basically being like, let's just admit it, that state courts are run by Hases and Yoko. That's what it smells like to me. There's definitely the undercurrent federal court rules, state court, Jules. So that Rule 23, which, again, is very dense, as you said, but it's also ominous sounding. If you ask me, Rule 23 sounds like it's going to mess you up pretty good. But it's basically the body of understanding for class action lawsuits that has been established since the 30s up to 2005 with the Class Action Fairness Acts, like you were saying. And if you read it, you can basically get a pretty good idea of what has to happen for a class action lawsuit to go forward. Apparently, each state has its own rules, but as far as the federal districts are concerned, rule 23 is it. And the first thing you have to do is you have to become certified as a class. Like your lawsuit has to go from. It's just me suing Exxon for the oil spill. I've got all these other neighbors and cannery owners around here who are all affected by this oil spill. And we think we have a good case against Exxon. And very importantly, we all have the same kind of harm. We have a common complaint, which is Exxon spilled a bunch of oil, messed up our livelihood and our lives. And because we all have the same kind of case, the defense, exxon could mount the same defense against all of these complaints. So we would probably be certified as a class. Yeah. The common defense in the case of, like, Aaron Brockovich, that movie I can't remember the name of the company that was the defendant, but the GDP, who was it? Pacific Gas and Electricity. The one who keeps setting off wildfires out in California. So they couldn't then have a defense, one defense against a certain number of people in a certain kind of person in town, let's say, it's probably more applicable. And then for another kind of person in town, they had to mount a common defense. It's basically, I think, all about equity or making things equitable, kind of, for both sides, which I thought was pretty interesting. And you have to get certified. And only 20% to 40% of lawsuits that are filed as class action even get certification to begin with. Yeah. The reason that was lower than I thought, but I guess it also makes sense. What I could not find is this, chuck, what happens to the original lawsuit, the original plaintiff, if they're not certified as a class? There's a class action lawsuit. You can probably just go sue on your own. I don't know. I cannot find out. The way that I couldn't find out was the case that first piqued my interest about that was Dukes versus Walmart. I think it was Dukes at all versus Walmart, which turned out to be the biggest class action class ever created. It consisted of one and a half million women wow. Who had been employed it's bigger than the US. Military, by the way, but they were every woman who was employed by Walmart between, I think, any time after 1998. And the whole lawsuit was that Walmart was basically promoting men more quickly and giving men more resources to advance into management positions than women. And the idea was that if you were a woman, you were harmed by this equally. So it made sense that this would get certified as a class action suit because any woman who worked for Walmart would have been harmed by not having the opportunity to advance. But then Walmart argued and said, well, there's no national or company wide policy that says you can't advance women. You can advance them more quickly, that all of these advancement decisions are made up of thousands and thousands of local decisions. So since there were so many different decisions that affected all these different women, this class doesn't make sense. And they actually won. It went all the way to Supreme Court, and Supreme Court said, Walmart's right, this doesn't make sense as a class action suit because all of the harms could have been for different reasons carried up by different people. But the reason that does make sense to have that certification clause is because any defendant has a right to defend themselves against any accusation in court. And so if everybody's accusing them of the same harm, then it makes sense of certifying them together as a class. If there's different harms that aren't quite the same, then the defendant should be able to defend against that accusation, that accusation, that accusation. And you shouldn't lump all those people together into a whole class. Right. So the judge is in charge of defining the class. And like we said, it's got to be specific to the problem at hand. It can't be all Bridgestone tire owners, unless it's all Bridgetown tires. But it turned out it was just this one tire on this one car. And so you have to really define that. Like, if you have this car during these years, then you are part of this class. Right. And from that point, it has the notification that we talked about has to take place, whether it's you've seen TV commercials, probably, to have this kind of thing. Yeah. You see advertisements in the newspaper. You probably get a mailer. It depends on how broad it is. They're not going to do a TV commercial if they don't need to, because that costs money, obviously, and that's an expense. But they're going to notify everyone in pretty quick order, because what they want is for everybody. They're a part of this class that's a part of that class. And whether or not you want to opt in or out, and if you opt out and you are within the scope of that class, you can do so if you want to. I'm not sure why anyone for these kind of small things that seem to happen a lot would opt out. I think they probably just count on people ignoring that kind of thing. Yeah, well, they're checked for $5 in the mail. Sure. But for literally not doing anything. Yeah, you can opt out. I don't know if you're a person who's just like, I don't want my name on any list, and I don't want to be a part of any if you're kind of a paranoid type, as far as the government and court cases go, you may want to opt out just to not be a part of something so small. Who knows? Well, I think the reason that they include it is because let's say you are somebody whose house was washed away by the oil spill of the Exxon Valdez. But the class action lawsuit was everyone who was affected by the oil. So it would include people whose houses lived or whose houses were a mile away, whose front yards got covered in oil. Well, you'd be like, wait a minute. Whatever they're going to get is nothing like what I need. The damages that I'm seeking. So I'm going to opt out. Yeah, there's tons of real reasons to opt out. I'm sorry about the five dollar check coming from the credit card company. Sure. But I'm saying, like, they can't differentiate who's getting that mailer from who's not, which is why they put the onus on the person getting that mailer, seeing that TV commercial to say, oh, I need to opt out because I need to sue them on my own. I can't be part of this class because when that settlement is reached and they say, everybody's going to get $5 for the trouble, that's what you got for your house being washed away. You know what I mean? Yeah. So then the judge is actually going to appoint the counsel, which is different than how it usually works. The judge is going to look at this and say, and this is for, I think for defense only. Right. I guess the judge can change the plaintiff, but it's typically the lawyer who actually files the case. I think it's unusual for the judge to overrule that unless it's someone who just doesn't have the responsibility or maybe that kind of background. Sure. Yeah. I think like if somebody walked in with Johnson and Johnson complaint and the lawyer was just like a local ambulance chaser, they probably would get replaced with like a larger national firm that had the resources or the understanding that had contacts in the professional witness field as far as medicine and cancer is concerned, that guy just wouldn't have the resources. So he might be changed. But yeah, I'm guessing it's probably rare. But the point is that the judge has the ability to decide who is the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the class action. Yes. I think it's probably more rare because lawyers understand this and they probably wouldn't file if they knew that they would be replaced unless it's just to get it going and they know they're going to be replaced. What was the Breaking Bad spin? A Better Call Saul? I think in like season two or something when they figure out that the nursing home is taking advantage of the seniors overcharging them, the first thing that Saul did was go to the larger firm and say, we need to partner up because he knew he couldn't handle it himself. That's what I'm guessing happens. Yeah. And then I didn't see Better Call Saul, but that sounds right to me. Oh, you didn't? It's pretty good. It's not Breaking Bad, but it doesn't seek to be Breaking Bad, you know what I mean? Yeah, I've heard a lot of people like it better. I could see that it's a different show. And then eventually the judge and again, if you haven't noticed and it's sort of like in the early days, the judge has a lot more say in class action cases than a lot of other kinds of cases really making a lot of decisions that they don't get to decide in other kinds of cases. In this case, one of the final things they get to decide is the distribution of damages. And they use other people for insight. They develop a plan with people on their team, but they developed this plan to distribute whatever monetary damages. If it's $3 billion, they're going to figure out how to approve that settlement and how to distribute that settlement. Including and this is a very key thing, as we'll see later, including how much those attorneys are going to get paid. Right? So you want to take a break and then come back and talk about some of the advantages and disadvantages of class action suits? Yeah, let's do it. It's 2022. When things look different, like doctors visits, for example, sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for non emergency situations like a sinus, infection or allergy. And that's why teletoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video. That's right. Doctors are standing by 24/7, so you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. 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Whereas if you can band together with a bunch of other people, it's a huge, huge advantage. Right. And one of the other advantages is the more people you have, the more damages are going to be awarded if the plaintiffs win. Which means you're going to start attracting increasingly higher caliber lawyers to your cause, who could be your class counsel. And the reason why is because in cases where you're seeking damages, lawyers often don't get paid unless they win. But if you win, then the lawyers get a big fat payday out of it. So the bigger the class, the better. The law firm or legal team representing that class is probably going to be at least more experienced. Yeah, for sure. Another huge advantage is that you're going to get your case heard. If individual cases, they go first, come, first serve. So if an individual brings a big lawsuit and they win, that company might be out of business before you can even get your suit going. And if you're part of a class action lawsuit, it's going to make sure that everybody gets their piece of the pie, basically. Exactly. So there's a lot of reasons to do this. Another one too, is it makes sense for corporations, they have an incentive to try to settle fairly with the class action suit because it'll make this big years long, sometimes decade long problems go away finally once and for all. Yes. And there's a lot of press that comes along with a class action suit, far more press than an individual case. So it definitely behooves the defense to try and get these things wrapped up quickly because it's just bad news for them. Yeah. And on the other side of that same coin, Chuck, like that large amount of press that gets generated by these big cases also kind of keeps corporate malfeasance in line. Sure, it probably does more than if we didn't have such things as class action suits, but that's one of the theoretical byproducts. How about that? Yeah, I got some property to show you here. Is it called the Brooklyn Bridge? Yeah, it's wonderful. So there are some problems with class action suits. They're not the Candy Land that we've described them as entirely. Instead, there's a lot of frivolous class action suits that have been filed over the years by lawyers who are looking to make a fast buck, in part using that bad press as a threat. Like, do you really want this to get dragged out in court? Just go ahead and settle and I'm the lawyer, I'll take my big fat cut. And that's a big problem, actually. And that's a big perceived problem too, that class counsel walk away whistling and laughing all the way to the bank while the individual members are just getting $5 for their problems, even though they're the ones who had the thing before them in the first place. Yes, and also, if you choose, like, let's use that exxon example, if you get bad legal advice and your house was destroyed more than other people's property, and you don't opt out, you can't then say, oh, well, I only got this much. My whole house was destroyed. I really want to bring a lawsuit again. I can't do that unless you opt out. So that is a disadvantage. That's sort of your one shot, basically, at any compensation. Yes. I think the rule of thumb is if you didn't even know that this wrong had befallen you, it's probably not that big of a deal, and you're not going to want to opt out, because then that means you have to hire your own lawyer and go through the trouble of suing somebody, which is never pleasant or fun. Totally. So, like I was saying, those class lawyers are a favorite target of tort reformists and critics, because if the plaintiffs win, if the judge rules in the plaintiff's favor, one of the things the judge will do is figure out what the compensation is for the lawyer is going to be. A lot of times that comes out of the settlement. Right. Like, if everybody gets $10 billion, the judge will say, well, you attorney who led this case, and your law firm and your legal team, you're going to get this fee. And I was reading up on it, and it sounds like it's fairly arbitrary. There's no good rule of thumb. And in fact, lawyers who represent class actions may actually get a lower percentage fee than they would if they were representing somebody on an individual basis. But the thing is, these payouts can be so huge that even if it's a really small percentage, it's going to be just this incredibly large amount in real numbers. And so a lot of people are like, that guy didn't earn that. They didn't deserve that. Especially when they find out that a million people got a coupon for half of a free tire from firestone for having deadly tires on their car for ten years. Yeah, they tried to rectify that in part of the CAFA, the class action fairness act of 2005 with these coupon settlements, those really brought me the wrong way. It wasn't a class action suit, but there was something involved. At one point, I was a season ticket holder for the atlanta falcons, and I can't remember what the deal was now, it wasn't a class action suit, but there was something to where they wronged the season ticket holders in some financial way. Terrible playing. We should have brought a class action suit. Right. For the past 35 years, those north georgia people would join. Yeah, exactly. But they did that coupon thing, and they were like, well, because of whatever it was, this upcoming season, season ticket holders will get 25% off anything from the falcons merch store. Oh, no. And that just really rubbed me, because you're spending more like the people that fall for that, right. Or just giving them even more money. That's a big criticism, is that it establishes or keeps established an ongoing commercial relationship between the person who wronged you and you the person suing them. And that is a big criticism. Some people say a good reply to that is just have cash settlements. Or you could have a whole product settlement, like rather than you having a coupon for some percentage off, so you still have to give them money. They say, we'll give you the jersey of your choice free and clear, and you never have to see us again. Or maybe even like from the NFL.com store. It doesn't even have to be like a Falcons jersey. That's a solution to that, too. But one of the big problems was lawyers who were representing these coupon cases, they were taking a percentage of the entire value of the coupons, of all the coupons. Right. And so what Kafka in 2005 or six sought to change was saying like, you really shouldn't do that because a lot of people don't actually redeem that. So you shouldn't get a percentage of the people's coupons who are never going to redeem that coupon. You should get a portion of the coupons that are going to be redeemed. And that is just as hard. Figuring out how many coupons are going to be redeemed is as hard as it sounds, from what I understand. Yeah. And there's one case in 2013 that you sent over that was pretty interesting. There was a teenager, his name was that guy who measured his Subway sandwich, his foot long. He was Australian, so say it in Australia. He was that guy, nice. And he measured his foot long and it was only eleven inches long. And he took it to attorney Jackie Charles. And then Jackie Charles didn't take the case. And so the kid went away. And then another kid measured his sandwich and his name was well, actually, and he actually got this thing taken to court because he didn't have a twelve inch sub from his Subway sandwich. It baked up a little bit short. Yes. And that was an actual case. Of course I'm kidding around about those names, but although I wish I wasn't, the attorneys there were going to get over a half a million dollars in fees for what ended up being no payout whatsoever. Just Subway saying we'll make these things bake up to twelve inches now. Well, Subway even said we can't guarantee that. We cannot. They're like bread doesn't bake in exactly the same way. It's just not how it works. And the court even tended to agree with that. But the point was, no one was going to get anything. Not even like a free six inch sub, nothing. A free inch? Yeah, not even a free inch. You're just going to get subway will stay in business. But these lawyers were going to get a half a million dollars. And the judge is like, you know what? Forget this. We're just going to dismiss this entire case. That's right. Jackie. Charles was very disappointed. There was also a similar one when the center for Science in the Public Interest hired some lawyers to sue Coca Cola, who own Vitamin Water at the time. Vitamin Water used to have this hilarious ad campaign where it promised all these ridiculous health benefits that any reasonable person knew were not true. And they weren't suing for that. They were actually suing because Vitamin Water didn't disclose how much sugar it had in it. Even though it was ridiculous health claims, it was still kind of purporting to be healthy. And the center for the Science and the Public Interest was like, this is not healthy at all. And so they sued CocaCola, didn't do anything, but stopped, I think, advertising the way that they were. But those lawyers still got $2.73 million in fees, even though no one else got anything. 32 grams of sugar in Vitamin Water. Yeah, I believe it's crazy. Tastes delicious. I didn't know it had sugar in it. I'm offended. That's why they got sued. And there have been some very famous civil class action suits over the years. The largest ever, obviously, were the tobacco settlements, and that was by ten fold next to the second highest one, tobacco settlements. And I don't think it's over yet, even $206,000,000,000 so far from that 1998 decision, 46 states, the Attorney general from 46 states were involved, and they obviously couldn't pay that out all at once. But what they were ordered to do was pay out for medical costs for smoking related illness over the course of 25 years. The next highest was the BP spill for 20 billion. Wow. Volkswagen comes in at number three with 14.7 billion. And that one was pretty significant. And that it wasn't a coupon payout. It was a pretty good restitution, I think, in that they said, you know what? We will actually buy back we'll fix your car for nothing, or we will buy back your car or end your lease with no penalty. Right. And this is when Volkswagen cheated the software to try and cheat US. Emissions tests. Big scandal. So long. It was a big scandal. There's plenty that are still unfolding as we speak, like the Johnson and Johnson Tow computer powder one. If you watch spangley or anything else on Me TV, you're probably well versed in the Boy Scout of America sex abuse case. That's ongoing. Yes. Apparently my brother was one of the first plaintiffs in that case. Oh, I think I remember you talking about that. Yeah. Now there's like 70,000 members of that class and growing. And then if you've ever heard that ad for Meso book, that's actually a mesothelioma guide that you will get sent to you by the lawyer of that class action settlement who's still looking for plaintiffs against the asbestos manufacturer, so there's still plenty ongoing. Like, now that we've talked about this, it'll be like that butter minehoff thing where you'll see class action ads on TV all the time now. Yeah. Enron was a big one. Remember Finnfin? The diet drug? Oh, yeah, that was a big one. That was a $3.8 billion payout. The silicon breast implants, that was a big payout. Yes. But that one, from what I understand, was total BS. It was based on medical hysteria, and later, science backed up the company's claims that they had nothing to do with I think it was connective tissue disorder. Nobody was carrying out the science. It was all basically paid testimony for the plaintiffs, who were not necessarily even scientists. And on the other side, nobody had any science. And then science came later on, but it was after the settlement had been reached for billions of dollars. That was a bit of a scam, it turns out. Did they get it back? I don't think so. Probably not. That's not how it works. I don't think so. A Reverse Bisection suit, right? Yeah. It's one company suing millions of people. You got anything else? I got nothing else. All right, well, if you want to know more about class action lawsuits, just watch me TV. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys, this is another coincidence email. And this one we eat a lot of these. Like, hey, I was listening to the show when there was a tornado near me or whatever on tornadoes, but I thought this one was special. Hey, guys, I was listening to the Fort Knox episode in the listener letter about wetlands and having to be at a wetland. And my share I've had two very random, coincidental things. A few years back, I was driving into the small town into a small town in southwest Colorado where I live, and one of you mentioned a penny farthing. If you don't know what a penny farthing is, dear listener, it is the bicycle with that giant, giant front wheel and the tiny little back wheel from the 19th century, I guess. Yeah, early 20th of the two. I glanced over to the bike lane, and sure enough, there was a guy riding a penny parking. That is the most amazing thing I've heard in a long time. I've never seen one in real life, even. I think I've seen, like, an antique in the store or something like that. But I've never seen somebody riding. Although this would not be nearly as amazing if the person turns out to be riding from Brooklyn, because I'm sure that's a pretty common site from Brooklyn to Colorado. That would be something else. Yes, I guess so. But what are the chances this guy's listening to that? That's amazing. It is astounding. Why were we even talking about penny farthings in the first place? It's a good word. Sure. It was the first time I had seen one of those in that town I've lived in for 25 years. Next was this summer after dropping off some clients to put on your episode about ice climbing. Just as I was driving out of town to a mecca destination for ice climbers around the world. It's a little less impressive. I like that. Yeah, I do, too. And that is from Sean and Telluride, Colorado. Very nice, Sean. Thank you for the first anecdote. The second one, thanks for nothing. If you want to get in touch with us like Sean did and tell us your best anecdote, we want to hear it. You can get in touch with us via email at stuffpodcast iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart radio, 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. Two, 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." | |
b898bb88-6a23-11ea-8538-4b074b2c089a | SYSK Distraction Playlist: How Rogue Waves Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-distraction-playlist-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. | Fri, 20 Mar 2020 11:45:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=11, tm_min=45, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=80, tm_isdst=0) | 31485045 | 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 that 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 SYSK podcast. 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 stuffyknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and 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 podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
c4655c94-5460-11e8-b38c-9b8fb9d81625 | SYSK Selects: Research tips from SYSK | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-research-tips-from-sysk | People often ask us how we do our research. We're not going to disclose all of our secrets, but we'll give you some tips on how to root out the bad studies from the good ones. Learn all about shady studies and reporting in this classic episode! | People often ask us how we do our research. We're not going to disclose all of our secrets, but we'll give you some tips on how to root out the bad studies from the good ones. Learn all about shady studies and reporting in this classic episode! | Sat, 20 Jun 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=172, tm_isdst=0) | 41862462 | 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 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@ibm.com. Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I've chosen our guide to research tips. It's a surprisingly good episode that shares the ins and outs of keeping from being duped online by bad information and how to read between the lines on sensational science reporting, all sorts of stuff like that. You might notice in this episode, Chuck sounds different than usual. That's because this is during the period that he was transitioning into a person with a full set of teeth. So that adds to the hilarity of the whole thing. I hope you enjoy this as much as we did. Making it. 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, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. This is stuff you should know. Josh. We're going to do something weird today. I'm going to do a listener mail at the head of the podcast. I know, right? What? All right, let's do it. Okay. This is from Bay. Wait, hold on. Do we have the listener mail music going? Oh, I don't know. Should we go the whole nine yards? Let's do it. People might freak out. I know. All right, this is from Bianca voiceitch, is what I'm going to say. I think that's great. Hey, guys. Wrote you not too long ago asking about hey Research, your own podcast. It just got back from a class where we talked about research misrepresentation and journal articles. Apparently, journals don't publish everything that is submitted. A lot of researchers don't even publish their studies. They don't like the results. Some laws have been put into place to prevent misrepresentation, such as researchers having to register their studies before they get results, and journals only accepting preregistered studies. But apparently this is not happening at all, even though it is now technically law. This ends with the general public being misinformed about methods and drugs that work. For example, there are 25 studies proving a drug works. 25 that don't. It's more likely that 20 of the positive results have been published and only one or two of the negative, and that is from Bianca. And that led us to this article on our own website, ten Signs That That Study Is Bogus. Yeah. And here it is. Nice, Chuck. Well, we get asked a lot about research from people usually in college. They're like, you guys are professional researchers. How do I know I'm doing a good job and getting good info. And it's getting harder and harder these days. It really is. One thing that I've learned is if you are searching about a study and all of the hits that come back are from different news organizations, and they're all within like a two, three day period from a year ago copy, nothing more recent than that. Then somebody released a sensational study and no one did any actual effort into investigating it. And there was no follow up. If you dig deep enough, somebody might have done follow up or something like that, but for the most part, it was just something that splashed across the headlines, which more often than not is the case as far as science reporting goes. So that's a bonus. That's the 11th. Boom. How about that? Yeah. So we just start banging these out. Let's do it. Or do you have some other clever segue apart and parcel with that? I don't know if it's clever. You do come across people who, you know, can be trusted and relied upon to do good science reporting. So like Ed Yong is one. Another guy named Ben Goldacre has something called bad science. I don't remember what outlet he's with. And then there's a guy, I think, scientific American named John Horgan, who's awesome. Yeah. Or some journalists and organizations that have been around and stood the test of time that, you know, are really doing it right, like a nature. Yeah. Scientific American Science. Yeah. I feel really good about using those sources. Yeah. But even they can. There's something called scientism, where there's a lot of faith and dogma associated with the scientific process, and you have to root through that as well. Try it. I'm done. The first one that they have here on the list is that it's unrepeatable, and that's a big one. The center for Open Science did a study. It was a project, really, where they took 270 researchers and they said, you know what? Take these 100 studies that have been published already, psychological studies, and just pour over them. And in 2015, just last year, it took them a while, it took them several years. They said. You know what? More than half of these can't even be repeated using the same methods. They're not reproducible. No, not reproducible. That's a big one. That means that when they carried out, they followed the methodology. Scientific Method podcasts. You should listen to that one. That was a good one. That they found that their results were just not what the people published not anywhere near them. For example, they use one as an example where a study found that men were terrible at determining whether a woman was giving them some sort of like a clues to attraction or just being friendly, sexy, sexy stuff. Or sexy friends. Yeah. Good to meet you, or Buzz off, jerk. Sure. And they did the study again as part of this Open Science Center for Open Science study, your survey, and they found that that was not reproducible or that they came up with totally different results. And that was just one of many yes. And in this case specifically, they looked into that study and they found that one was in the United Kingdom, one was in the United States. It may have something to do with it. But the point is, Chuck, is if you're talking about humanity, I don't think the study was like, the American male is terrible at it. It's men are terrible at it. Right. So that means that whether it's in the UK, which is basically the US. With an accent and a pinchant for tea I'm just kidding you, KC. Soon it should be universal. Yeah, agreed. Unless you're saying, no, this only applies to American men. Right. Or these 100 American men. Right. Then it's not even studied. Yeah. The next one we have is plausible, not necessarily provable. And this is a big one, because I think we're talking about observational studies here more than lab experiments. Right? Because with observational studies, you sit in a room and get asked 300 questions about something, and all these people get asked the same questions, and then they pour over the data and they draw out their own observations. Right. And very famously, an observational study that led to false results found a correlation between having a type A personality and being prone to risk for heart attack. And for a long time, you know that the news outlets were like, oh, yes, of course, that makes total sense. Right? This study proves what we've all known all along. And then it came out that, no, actually, what was going on was a well known anomaly where you have a 5% risk that chance will produce something that looks like a statistically significant correlation when it's not at all. When really it's just total chance. And science is aware of this, especially with observational studies, because the more questions you have, the more opportunity you have for that 5% chance to create a seemingly statistically significant correlation, when really it's not there. It was just random chance where if somebody else goes back and does the same study, they're not going to come up with the same results. But if a researcher is, I would guess willfully blind to that 5% chance, they will go ahead and produce the study and be like, no, it's true. Here's the results right here. Go ahead and report on it and make my career. Yeah, well, and they also might be looking for something. In fact, chances are they are it's not just some random study. And let's just see what we get. If we ask a bunch of weird questions, it's like, hey, we're looking to try and prove something, most likely so that Bader Meinhoff thing might come into play, where you're kind of cherry picking data. Yeah, that's a big problem. That kind of comes up. A lot of these are really kind of interrelated, too. Totally. The other big thing that's interrelated is how the media reports on science these days. Yeah. You know, it's a big deal. John Oliver just recently went off on this and NPR did a thing on it that's great even like, the researcher might say plausible, but it doesn't get portrayed that way in the media. Sure. Remember that poor kid who thought he found the ancient Mayan city? The media just took it and ran with it. Yes. I think there was a lot of maybe or it's possible we need to go check, kind of thing. The media is like, no, he discovered an ancient Mayan city never known before. Yeah. And let's put it in a headline. And that's just kind of the way it is these days. You have to be able to sort through it. I guess it's what we're doing here, aren't we, Chuck? We're telling everybody how to sort through it. Or at the very least, take scientific reporting with a grain of salt. Yes. Right. You don't necessarily have the time to go through and double that research and then check on that research. Right. So take it with a grain of salt. Yeah. Unsound Samples here was a study that basically said how you lost your virginity is going to have a very large impact and play a role on how you feel about sex and experience sex for the rest of your life. Yeah, it's possible. Sure. It seems logical, so we'll just go with it. But when you only interview college students and you only interview heterosexual people, then you can't really say you've done a robust study, now, can you? Plus, you also take out of the sample size or sample population anybody who reports having had a violent encounter, throw them out, that data out, because that's not going to inform how you feel about sex. Right, exactly. You're just narrowing it down further and further and again cherry picking the data by throwing people out of your population sample that will throw off the data that you want. Yeah. And I've never heard of this acronym, Weird. And a lot of these studies are conducted by professors and academics, so a lot of times you got college students as your sample, and there's something called Weird Western educated from industrialized rich and democratic countries. Right. Those are the participants in the studies study subject. But then they will say men. Right. Well, what about the gay man in Africa? Right. You didn't ask him. So that's actually a really big deal. In 2010, the three researchers did a survey of a ton of social science and behavioral science studies found that 80% of them used weird study participants. So basically it was college kids for 80% of these papers and they surveyed a bunch of papers and they took it a little further and they said that people who fit into the weird category only make up 12% of the world population, but they represent 80% of the population of these studies. And a college student, Chuck, in North America, Europe, Israel or Australia is 4000 times more likely to be in a scientific study than anyone else on the planet. And their basic psychology and behavioral sciences are basing their findings onto everybody else based on this small tranche of humanity. Yeah. And that's a big problem. It's extremely misleading. Yeah. And it's also a little insulting because what they are essentially saying is like, this is who matters. Well, also yeah, what's sad is this is who I am going to go to the trouble of recruiting for my study. It's just sheer laziness and I'm sure a lot of them are like, well, I don't have the funding to do that. I guess I see that. But at the same time, I guarantee there's a tremendous amount of laziness involved. Yes. Or maybe if you don't have the money, maybe don't do that study. Is it that simple? I'm probably oversimplifying. I don't know. I'm sure we're going to hear from some people in academia about this one. We'll stop using weird participants or at the very least say like this is heterosexual Dartmouth students. Yeah. This applies to them. Right. Not everybody in the world. Exactly. 80% of these studies use those people as study participants and they're not even emblematic of the rest of the human race. Like college students are shown to see the world differently than other people around the world. So it's not like you can be like, well, it still works, you can still extrapolate. It's like flawed in every way, shape and form. Right. Probably take a break. Yeah, let's take a break because you're getting a little hot under the collar. I love it, man. We'll be right back after this. 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 Ercart and Ash Kelly cover it all and with two episodes released each week, you'll be hooked on this charttopping. 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. 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. All right, what's next, buddy? Very small sample sizes, right? If you do a study with 20 mice, then you're not doing a good enough study. No. So in the article, they use the idea of 10,000 smokers and 100 non smokers. Yeah. And they said, okay, if you have a population sample that size, that's not bad. It's a pretty good start. And you find that 50% of the smokers developed lung cancer, but only 5% of non smokers did, then your study has what's called a high power. If you had something like ten smokers and ten non smokers, and two of the smokers develop lung cancer and one developed lung cancer as well, you have very little power, and you should have very little confidence in your findings. But regardless, it's still going to get reported if it's a sexy idea. Yeah, for sure. And because these are kind of overlapping in a lot of ways, I want to mention this guy, a scientist named Uruk Dernigal. He and his colleague Malcolm McLeod have been trying and there are a lot of scientists that are trying to clean this up because they know it's a problem. But he co wrote an article in Nature that's called robust research institutions must do their part for reproducibility. So this kind of ties back into the reproducing things, like we said earlier. And his whole idea is, you know what, good funding. They should tie funding to good institutional practices. Like, you shouldn't get the money if you can't show that you're doing it right. Yeah. And he said that would just weed out a lot of stuff. Here's one staggering stat for reproducibility and small, simple size biomedical researchers for drug companies reported that only 25% of the papers that they publish or even reproducible and then like an insider stat and doesn't matter. Drugs are still going to market. Yeah. That's a really good example of why this does matter to the average person. If you hear something like monkeys like to cuddle with one another because they are reminded of their mother's study shows. Right. You could just be like, oh, that's great. I'm going to share that on the Internet. It doesn't really affect you in any way, but when there are studies being conducted that are creating drugs that could kill you or not treat you or that kind of thing, and that's attracting money and funding and that kind of stuff, that's harmful. Yeah, absolutely. I found another survey. Did you like that terrible study idea that it came up with? No, I liked it. The monkeys. I like to cuddle. 140 trainees at the MD Anderson cancer center in Houston, Texas. Thank you, Houston, for being so kind to us. At a recent show, they found that nearly a third of these trainees felt pressure to support their mentors work to get ahead or not get fired. So that's another issue, is you've got these trainees or residents, and you have these mentors, and even if you disagree or don't think it's a great study, you're pressured into just going along with it. I could see that for sure. There seems to be a huge hierarchy in science. In the lab. You got the person who runs the lab. It's their lab, and they go against them. Right. But there are people like Science and Nature to great journals are updating their guidelines right now. They're introducing checklists science hired statisticians to their panel of reviewing editors, not just other peerreviewed like, they actually hired numbers people specifically. I got you because that's a big process. That's a huge part of studies, this mind breaking statistical analysis that can be used for good or ill. And I don't think the average scientist necessarily is a whiz at that, although it has to be part of training. Yeah, but not necessarily. And that's a different kind of beast altogether. Stats. We talked about it earlier. I took a stats class in college. Oh, man, I had so much trouble. That was awful at it. It's a special kind of is it even mad? Yeah. I didn't get it. I passed it, though. I passed it because my professor took pity on me. Oh, that's nice. That Ulrich Durnogo. He's a big time crusader for his jam, making sure that science is good science. Yeah. One of the things he crusades against is the idea of you remember in that virginity study where they just threw out anybody who had a violent encounter for their first sexual experience. Apparently that's a big deal with animal studies as well. If you're studying the effects of a drug or something like, there was one in the article if you're studying the effects of a stroke drug, and you've got a control group of mice that are taking the drug or that aren't taking the drug, and then a test group that are getting the drug, and then, like, three mice from the test group die. Even though they're on the stroke drug, they die of a massive stroke, and you just literally and figuratively throw them out of the study and don't include them in the results, that changes the data. And he's been on a peer review on a paper before. He's like, no, this doesn't pass peer review. You can't just throw out what happened to these three rodents. He started with ten. There's only seven reported. In the end, what happened to those three? And how many of them just don't report the ten? Yeah. They're like, oh, we only started with seven point well, I was about to say, I get the urge. I don't get it, because it's not right. But I think what happens is you work so hard at something yeah. And you're like, how can I just walk away from two years of this? Because it didn't get a result. Okay. The point of real science, though. Yeah. You have to walk away from it. Well, you have to publish that. And that's the other thing too. And I guarantee scientists will say, hey, man, try getting a negative paper published in a good journal these days. You don't want that kind of stuff. But part of it also is I don't think it's enough to just have to be published in, like, a journal. You want to make the news cycle as well. That makes it even better. Right. So I think there's a lot of factors involved, but ultimately, if you take all that stuff away, if you take the culture away from it, if you get negative results, you're supposed to publish that so that some other scientists can come along and be like, oh, somebody else already did this, using these methods that I was going to use. I'm not going to waste two years of my career because somebody else already did. Thank you, buddy, for saving me this time and trouble and effort to know that this does not work. Yeah, you've proven this doesn't work when you sought to prove it does work, you actually proved it didn't work. That's part of science. Yeah. I wish there wasn't a negative connotation to a negative result, because to me, the value is the same sure. As proving something does work is proving something doesn't work. Right. Again, it's just not as sexy. But I'm not sexy either, so maybe that's why I get it. Here's one that I didn't know was a thing. Predatory publishing. I didn't know about it. Never heard of this. So here's the scenario. You're a doctor or scientist, and you get an email from a journal that says, hey, you got anything interesting for us? I've heard about your work and you say, well, actually, do I have this study right here? They say, Cool, we'll publish it. You go, Great, my career is taking off. Then you get a bill that says, where's my three grand for publishing your article? And you're like, I don't owe you three grand. All right, give us two. And you're like, I can't even give you two. And if you fight them long enough, maybe they'll drop it and never work with you again. Or maybe it'll just be like, we'll talk to you next quarter. Exactly. That's called predatory publishing. I'm not sure how new it is. Maybe it's pretty new. Is it pretty new? But it's a thing now where you can pay essentially to get something published. Yes, you can. It's kind of like who's who in behavioral sciences kind of thing. Yeah. And apparently it's new because it's a result of open source academic journals, which a lot of people push for, including Aaron Schwartz, very famously, who took a bunch of academic articles and published them online and was prosecuted heavily for it. Persecuted, you could even say. Yes, but the idea that science is behind this paywall, which is another great article from Price nomics, by the way, really just ticks a lot of people off. So they started open source journals. Right. And as a result, predatory publishers came about and said, okay, yeah, let's make this free, but we need to make our money anyway. So we're going to charge the academic who wrote the study for publishing it. Well, yeah, and sometimes now it's just a flat out scam. Operation. 100%. Right. There's this guy named Jeffrey Beale who is a research librarian. He is my new hero because he's truly like one of these dudes that has he's trying to make a difference and he's not profiting from this, but he's spending a lot of time by creating a list of predatory publishers. Yes. A significant list, too. Yes. How many? 4000 of them right now. Yeah. Some of these companies flat out lie. Like they're literally based out of Pakistan or Nigeria, and they say, no, we're a New York publisher, so it's just a flat out scam. Or they lie about their review practices. They might not have any review practices. Right. And they straight up lie and say they do. There was one called Scientific Journals International out of Minnesota that he found out was just one guy, like, literally working out of his home, just lobbying for articles, charging to get them published, not reviewing anything, and just saying, I'm a journal. Yeah, I'm a scientific journal. Look at me. He shut it down, apparently, or tried to sell it. I think he was found out. And this other one, the International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications, they created an award and then gave it to itself and even modeled the award from an Australian TV award. Like the physical status. Wow, that's fascinating. I didn't make you do that. I'm going to give ourselves yeah. The Best Podcast in the Universe award. I like that. It's going to look like the Oscar. Yeah, okay. The Oscar cross or the me. This other one. Med. No publications actually confused the meaning of STM science, technology and medicine. They thought it meant sports, technology and medicine. No. Well, a lot of science journalists or scientists, too, but watch dogs like to send gibberish articles into those things to see if they publish them. And sometimes they do. Frequently they do. They sniff them off the case big time. How about that call back? It's been a while. It has been. It needs to be a T shirt. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right. We'll be back and finish up right after this. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about summer. I mean, 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. Prepare to go deep and become your own detective in the world of serial crimes and unsolved mysteries. Get lost hearing spooky stories with a combination of detailed research and lighthearted analysis. Whether you're a lifetime fan of true crime or you just feel like being entertained while doing the dishes at night, there's a podcast out there for you to 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, 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 here's the big. One you ever heard the term follow the money? That's applicable to a lot of realms of society, and most certainly in journals. If something looks hinky, just do a little investigating and see who's sponsoring their work. Well, especially if that person is like, no, everyone else is wrong, right? Climate change is not manmade kind of thing. Sure, if you look at where their funding is coming from, you might be unsurprised to find that it's coming from people who would benefit from the idea that anthropogenic climate change isn't real. Yeah, well, we might as well talk about them. Okay. Willy soon. Yeah. Mr. Sun, is he a doctor? He's a physicist of some sort, yeah. All right, I'm just going to say Mr. Or Doctor Soon because I'm not positive. He is one of a few people on the planet Earth professionals that is right. Who deny human climate change, human influence climate change, like you said. You said the fancier word for it, though. Anthropogenic. Yeah, it's a good word. And he works at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. So. Hey, he's with Harvard. He's got the cred, right? Turns out when you look into where he's getting his funding, he received $1.2 million over the past decade from ExxonMobil, the Southern Company, the Coke, and the Koch brothers, their foundation, the Charles G. Coke foundation. Exxon stopped in 2010, stopped funding him. But the bulk of his money and his funding came I'm sorry, I forgot. The American Petroleum Institute came from people who clearly had a dog in this fight. And it's just, how can you trust this? You know? Yeah, well, you trusted because there's a guy, and he has a PhD in aerospace engineering, by the way, all right? He's a doc. He works with this organization, the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which is a legitimate place. It doesn't get any funding from Harvard, but it gets a lot from NASA and from the Smithsonian. Well, and Harvard is very clear to point this out, when people ask them about Willison, right? They're kind of like, well, here's the quote. Willison is a Smithsonian staff researcher at Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a collaboration of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Like, they just want to be real clear. Even though he uses a Harvard email address, he's not our employee. No, but again, he's getting lots of funding from NASA and lots of funding from the Smithsonian. This guy, if his scientific beliefs are what they are, and he's a smart guy, then I don't know about getting fired for saying, here's a paper on the idea that climate change is not human made. Yeah, he thinks it's the Sun's fault, but he doesn't reveal in any of his conflicts of interest that should go at the end of the paper. He didn't reveal where his funding was coming from. Yeah. And I get the impression that in academia, if you are totally cool with everybody thinking like, you're a shell. You can get away with it. Right. Well, a lot of this stuff is not illegal. Even predatory publishing is not illegal, just unethical. Right. And if you're counting on people to police themselves with ethics, a lot of times will disappoint you. The Heartland Institute gave Willie Soon a Courage Award for not caring about what other scientists think about. If you've heard the Heartland Institute, you might remember them. They're a conservative think tank. You might remember them in the 90s when they worked alongside Philip Morris to deny the risks of second hand smoke. Yeah, that's all chronicled in that book I've talked about, merchants of doubt. Oh, really? Just a bunch of scientists, legitimate bonafide scientists who are up for being bought by groups like that. Sad. It is sad. And the whole thing is they're saying, like, well, you can't say without beyond a shadow of a doubt, with absolute certainty that that's the case. And science is like, no, science doesn't do that. Science doesn't do absolute certainty. But the average person reading a newspaper sees that. Oh, you can't say with absolute certainty. Well, then maybe it isn't man made. Right. And then there's that doubt that the people just go and get the money for saying that, for writing papers about it. Yeah. Millions of dollars. Despicable yeah. It really is self reviewed. You've heard of peer review? We've talked about it quite a bit. Peer review is when you have a study and then one or more ideally, more of your peers reviews your study and says, you know what? You had best practices. You did it. Right. It was reproducible. You follow the scientific method. I'm going to give it my stamp of approval and put my name on it. Not literally or is it? I think so. It says who reviewed it? Yeah, I believe so. Okay. In the journal when it's published, but not my name as the author of study. You know what I mean? Right. As a peer reviewer. Yeah, it's a peer reviewer, and that's a wonderful thing, but people have faked this and been their own peer reviewer, which is not how it works. No. Who is this guy? Well, I'm terrible at pronouncing Korean names, so all apologies, but I'm going to say non in Moon. Nice. Dr. Moon. Yeah. Let's call him Dr. Moon. Okay. So Dr. Moon worked on natural medicine, I believe, and was submitting all these papers that were getting reviewed very quickly because apparently part of the process of peer review is to say, this paper is great. Can you recommend some people in your field that can review your paper? And Dr. Moon said. I sure can. Yeah, he was on fire. Let me go make up some people and make up some email addresses that actually come to my inbox and just posed as all of his own peer reviewers. He was lazy, though, is the thing. I don't know that he would have been found out if he hadn't been careless, I guess because he was returning the reviews within 24 hours. Sometimes a peer review of a real study should take, I would guess, weeks, if not months. Yeah. The publication schedule for the average study or paper, I don't think is a very quick thing. There's not a lot of quick turnaround. And this guy was like, 24 hours, and they're like, Doctor Moon, I see your paper was reviewed and accepted by Doctor Mooney. I just added a Y to the end. Right. It seemed easy. Yeah. If you Google peer review fraud, you will be shocked at how often this happens and how many legit science publishers are having to retract studies. And it doesn't mean they're bad. They're getting duped as well. But there's one based in Berlin in 2015 had 64 retractions because of fraudulent reviews. Oh, wow. And they're just one publisher of many. Every publisher out there probably has been duped. Maybe not everyone. I'm surmising that, but it's a big problem. I'll review it, it'll end up in the headlines now, right? Every single publisher duped says Chuck. And speaking of the headlines, Chuck, one of the problems with science reporting, or reading science reporting, is that what you usually are hearing, especially if it's making a big splash, is what's called the initial findings, right. Somebody carried out a study and this is what they found. And it's amazing and mind blowing and it supports everything everyone's always known, but now there's a scientific study that says, yes, that's the case. And then if you wait a year or two when people follow up and reproduce the study and find that it's actually not the case, it doesn't get reported on, usually. Yeah. And sometimes the scientist or the publisher, they're doing it right, and they say initial findings. Right. And sometimes even the reporter will say initial findings. But we as people that ingest this stuff need to understand what that means. Right. And the fine print is always like, more study is needed. But knowing if it's something that you want to be true, you'll just say, hey, look at this study, right? It's brand new and they need to sell it for 20 more years. But hey, look what it says. Right? The more you start paying attention to this kind of thing, the more kind of disdain you have for that kind a just offhand sensationalist science reporting. Yeah. But you'll still get caught up in it. Like, every once in a while I'll catch myself, like, Say something. You'll be like, oh, did you hear this? And then as I'm saying it out loud, I'm like, that's preposterous. There's no way that's going to pan out to be true. I got clickbaited. I know we have to avoid this stuff. It's tough because we have our name on this podcast, but luckily, we've given ourselves the back door of saying, hey, we make mistakes a lot. It's true, though. We're not humans. No, we're not scientists. And then finally we're going to finish up with the header on this one. It's a cool story. Yeah. And that's a big one, because it's not enough these days. And this all ties in with media and how we read things as people, but it's not enough just to have a study that might prove something. You have to wrap it up in a nice package to deliver. People get it in the news cycle, and the cooler the better. Yes. It almost doesn't matter about the science as far as the media is concerned. They just want a good headline and a scientist who will say, yeah, that's cool. Here's what I found. This is going to change the world. Loch Ness monster is real. This is kind of ended up being depressing somehow. Yeah. Not somehow. Yeah, it's kind of depressing. I know. We'll figure it out, Chuck. Well, we do our best. I'll say that science will prevail. I hope so. If you want to know more about science and scientific studies and research fraud and all that kind of stuff, just type some random words into the search bar athouseofworks.com see what comes up. Yes. And since I said random, it's time for listener mail. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. You know what it's time for? What? Administrative Details. All right, Josh. Administrative details. If you're new to the show, you don't know what it is. That's a very clunky title for saying thank you to listeners who send us neat things. It is clunky and generic, and I've totally gotten used to it by now. Well, you're the one who made it up to be clunky and generic, and it stuck. Yeah. So people send us stuff from time to time, and it's just very kind of you to do so. Yes, and we like to give shout outs whether or not it's just out of the goodness of your heart or if you have a little small business that you're trying to plug. Either way, it's a sneaky way of getting it in there. Yeah, but I mean, I think we brought that on, didn't we say, like, if you have a small business and you send us something, we'll be happy to say something. Exactly. Thank you. All right, so let's get it going here. We got some coffee from 1000 Faces right here in Athens, Georgia. From Kayla. Yes. Delicious. Yes, it was. We also got some other coffee, too, from Jonathan at Steamworks Coffee. He came up with a Josh and Chuck blend. Oh, yeah. It's pretty awesome. I believe it's available for sale, too. Yeah, the Josh and Chuck blend is dark and bitter. Jim Simmons, he's a retired teacher who sent us some lovely handmade wooden bowls. Oh, yes. And a very nice handwritten letter, which is always great. Thanks a lot, Jim. Let's see. Chamberlain sent us homemade pasta, including a delicious savory pumpkin fettuccini. It was very nice. Yum. J. Graft two F. Send us a postcard from the Great Wall of China. It's kind of neat. Sometimes we get those postcards from places we've talked about. Thanks, Aren't. Here. Let's see. The Hammer press team. They sent us a bunch of Mother's Day cards that are wonderful. Oh, those are really nice. Really great. You should check them out. The Hammer press team? Yeah. Misty, Billy and Jessica. They sent us a care package of a lot of things. There were some cookies, okay. Including one of my favorite, white chocolate dipped ritz and peanut butter cracker. Oh, yeah, man, I love those. Homemade, right? Yeah. And then some 70s macrame for you, along with 70s Macrame magazine, because you're obsessed with macrame. We have a macrame plant holder hanging from my microphone arm holding a coffee mug sent to us by Joe and Linda Hecht. Oh, that's right. And it has some pens in it. And they also sent us Misty, Billy and Jessica, a lovely little hand drawn picture of us with their family, which was so sweet. That's very awesome. We said it before, we'll say it again. Huge. Thank you to Jim Ruane I believe that's how you say his name. And the Crown Royal people for sending us all the Crown Royal we are running low. Mark Silberg of the Rocky Mountain Institute sent us a book called Reinventing Fire. Oh, yeah. They're great out there. They know what they're talking about. And I think it's reinventing fire. Colon bold business solutions for the new energy era. Yeah, they're basically like green energy observers, but I think they're experts in all sectors of energy. But they have a focus on green energy, which is awesome. Yeah, they're pretty cool. John, whose wife makes delightfully delicious doggy treats. Delightfully Delicious is the name of the company. There's no artificial colors or flavors. And they got sweet little Momo hooked on sweet potato dog treats. I thought you were going to say Hooked on the Junk. The sweet potato junk. She's crazy cuckoo for sweet potatoes. Nice. Oh, man, that's good for a dog, too. It is very. Strat Johnson sent us his band's LP. And if you're in a band, your name is Strat. That's pretty cool. Sure. Diomea still. I think that's correct. Yes. I'm not sure if I pronounced it right. D-I-O-M-A-E-A. Frederick. This is long overdue Frederick at the 1521 One Store.com send us some awesome low profile cork iPhone cases and passport holders. And I was telling him, Jerry walks around with her iPhone in the cork holder, and it looks pretty sweet. Oh, yeah. So he said, awesome. I'm glad to hear it. Joe and Holly Harper send us some really cool 3D printed stuff. You should know. Things like SYSK, like a little desk. Oh, it's like after Robert Indiana's love sculpture. Yeah, that's what I couldn't think of what that was from. Yeah, it's awesome. It's really neat, like a bracelet made out of stuff you should know. 3d carved like plastic. It's really neat. Yeah, they did some good stuff. Thanks, Joe and Holly Harper for that. And then last for this one, we got a postcard from Yosemite National Park from Laura Jackson. So thanks a lot for that. Thanks to everybody who sends us stuff. It's nice to know we're thought of and we appreciate it. Yeah, we're going to finish up with another set on the next episode of Administrative Details. You got anything else? No, that's it. Yeah, if you guys want to hang out with us on social media, you can go to Syskpodcast on Twitter or on Instagram. You can hang out with us@facebook.com. Stuffyshonow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepforce.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffyhoodnow.com. Stuffyheanow 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. 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." | |
aba08ab4-3620-11ea-924d-b3ebf7a15364 | Short Stuff: Petticoat Rulers | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-petticoat-rulers | Petticoat rulers were women who ran the show long before anyone thought they could. We’re talking mayors and entire city councils comprised of women in the Old West. What happened since then? Listen to find out. | Petticoat rulers were women who ran the show long before anyone thought they could. We’re talking mayors and entire city councils comprised of women in the Old West. What happened since then? Listen to find out. | Wed, 23 Sep 2020 11:15:45 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=11, tm_min=15, tm_sec=45, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=267, tm_isdst=0) | 11165824 | audio/mpeg | "You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is Short Stuff. And this is a good one. I'm excited about this one. Chuck. Let's go. Yeah. I mean. We're talking about petticoat rulers. And it might surprise people. Considering America today is ranked 81 out of 193 countries and women representation in government. That we actually had women who were mayors and city council people way back in the are two towns in particular. Oscar. Lucia. Kansas. In Kanab. Utah. That had elected all female town councils in 1888 and 1912 respectively. Which is pretty substantial. But then Jackson, Wyoming, home to the famous Jackson whole Wyoming, which I guess is a hamlet or a berg or some sort of affiliated town, but it's basically the same place, from what I understand. Oh, man. We're going to get some email from the Jackson people. They said, you know what? Hold our beer or hold our sasparilla, because we're going to one up both of those towns. And in 1920, the year that women were granted suffrage by the Constitution or the bill of Rights, I should say, that same year, Jackson, Wyoming, elected not only an all woman town council, Chuck, but also a woman mayor for the first time ever. And that group, these petticoat rulers that came to be known, appointed women to the highest positions in the town clerk, health, treasurer, and marshall. Isn't that amazing? It is amazing. And I was surprised to see that the first woman elected mayor in the United States was all the way back in 1887. Yes. I had no idea. Yes, it was in agonya. Kansas? Well, this one was the one. I believe we covered her before in something. Susannah Salter, who was placed on the ballot, is sort of a prank by men in the town who didn't think that women should hold office. They put her on the ballot thinking that she would be humiliated and it would set women back politically. And she didn't know she was on the ballot. It was like a blind ballot until the day of the election, and she won. That's awesome. And went on to be mayor. The other ones, oscar Lucia, Mary D. Lowman, she was legitimately elected mayor and the first woman elected as mayor in Kansas with an all city council full of women, nothing but ladies. That's amazing. But the thing is yeah, we think about it today and we're like, that's just unheard of, literally unheard of. I hadn't heard about that before, but the state of Wyoming is actually known as the equality state, and one of the reasons why is because we associate 1920 is the year that women were granted the right to vote. That is a national thing. They have the right to vote back in 1869 in Wyoming. So it kind of gives it a little more texture or context or both to know that women already had the right to vote for more than 50 years before Mayor Miller and the all female town council were elected in Jackson. Yeah. And that's how Mary Loman won in Oscar. Lucia is in Kansas. They had the right to vote in municipal elections, and they won by a two to one margin on the Oscar Lucia improvement ticket. The one in Utah was interesting, too, and they both kind of had similar stories in that when they got an office, one of their big things was to kind of just clean up the town, collect back taxes. I think they had something like $200 in collected taxes just because people just refuse to pay. And they went around personally to the houses, and I think they left office with $2,000 in the city coffers. And then Mary Wooley Chamberlain of Kenneb, Utah, she was mayor for two years, and she had a female city council, and she was enacted one of the first leash laws for dogs. Oh, cool. And then wanted to protect local business. So she enacted a daily tax on traveling salesman coming through town, because she was like, you can't just come through town, steal a bunch of business, and then leave with your pockets full. So we're going to tax you guys per day just to kind of drive business to protect local business. That's some smart government right there. Yeah. Well, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about some more smart government that was instituted by women around the turn of the last century. Okay, let's do it. 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 of their own sleeves. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com It automation. 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. 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.com. Sysksksquarespace. All right, so, Chuck, you said Kinab's Town Council were elected by a two to one margin. I saw the same thing, too, for Jackson's Petticoat rulers, which really kind of goes to underscore. This was not like some fluke or a joke. Like the first female mayor in America. Salter, is that what you said her name was? Yes. Susannah Salter. That story reminds me of Elizabeth Blackwell getting into med school. Remember? It was supposed to be a prank and kind of blew up in the face. That's probably what I was thinking of, actually. Yeah, because I don't remember talking about Susanna Salter before either. But the fact that they won that the Petticoat rulers and the Kanab Utah Town council won by, like, a two to one margin really shows that this is not like, a joke or a fluke. I think one woman, one of the city council members, beat her husband in the election in Jackson. In those crab tree. Yeah, which that had to taste pretty sweet. And then the fact is that a lot of them were reelected when they came up for reelection. So not only was it a good idea, they proved themselves as worthy for reelection too. And some of the things they did, like you said, they beefed up the town coffers they didn't institute a leash law in Jackson, but they did criminalize littering. For the first time, they cleaned up the town square, meaning that they didn't allow cattle grazing there anymore. That was another thing they did. What else? They graded the streets. They said, how about some street lights and street lamps? Let's expand electrical service. Let's get a cemetery going in this town. Because everyone's always shooting each other, right? Or they used to, when the men ran the place. That was another thing I saw, too. I mean, you were talking about the back taxes not being collected and them getting an additional $1,800 into the treasury. One of the things that I saw, I think it was in a Jackson Hole newspaper the reason for that was that the town had been run, like, really insufficiently by men up to that point, and that there was, like, this kind of pioneer spirit where everyone was expected to take care of their neighbor, and everyone did and stepped up when help was needed. But it wasn't like an organized, structural civic pride. And that's what the Petticoat rulers came in and instituted. They basically said, hey, you know, that the whole take care of your neighbor thing. There's actually a lot of things we could be doing through government, and let's start doing that. And that actually kind of took off. Yeah. And Grace Miller, the mayor of I think she was Jackson, right? Yeah. She said in an interview, we simply tried to work together. We put into practice the same thrifty principles we exercise in our own homes. We want a clean, well kept, progressive town in which to raise our families. What is good government but a breathing space for good citizenship? Nice. And it sort of reminds me of that quote. I don't know the exact quote, but it's sort of like, if you want the job done on time and right, like hire a working mom or something like that. I think you're talking about something to do with, like, lipstick and pit bulls. No, no. Is that a different one? I think so. Okay. The one you're talking about makes a tremendous amount of sense, though. So the Petticoat rulers came in and from what I understand, there's a town historian, Morgan Albertson I'm going to take a stab at this last name. Jawen. What do you think? J-A-O-U-E-N. It's a beautiful name either way. It looks very nice spelled out. But historian, we're just going to call this person the historian basically said that the Petticoat really shaped Jackson and Jackson Hole into the town that they know and love today, and that it may have just kind of become a town that ended up deserted and misused and mistreated and misgoverned and lost to history. The historians willing to go so far as to say that either way, the rulers definitely deserve credit for shaping the place. But the weird thing is, Chuck, is despite how successful the all female town council and mayor and appointed positions was for Jackson, it's like the town was like, okay, well, we tried that. Let's wait another 80 or so years before we do it again. Yeah, we tried that and it worked out really great. So let's just wait till the 1980s. Yeah. 1980s was the first time that women city council people were elected again. And it wasn't until 2001 when they had another woman mayor Gene Jackson was elected in 2001. So it went from Mayor Miller, Grace Miller in 1920 to Jean Jackson in 2001. That was quite a drought. Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. We salute them. I do, too. But I have one last thing. The women were all members originally of what was called the Pure Foods Club, which was a social group that met a couple of times a month. And that's where the idea to run was hatched and nurtured. And that group is still around today, but they call themselves the Birthday Club. But isn't that adorable? This group has been around since the early 1009 hundreds, and they still meet twice a month. And now men are allowed. I love the birthday club. I want to be in that group they'll let you in. You're a man and likable. So I think those are the two qualifications. And I have birthdays. You do? You have a birthday? Well, yeah. Hats off to the petticoat rulers and all the women who helped shape the United States then and now. And I guess that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1215463322391sysk-murphys-law.mp3 | How Murphy's Law Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-murphys-law-works | Murphy's law originates in 1949, and states 'anything that can go wrong, will.' Check out this HowStuffWorks to learn more about how the Air Force discovered Murphy's law. | Murphy's law originates in 1949, and states 'anything that can go wrong, will.' Check out this HowStuffWorks to learn more about how the Air Force discovered Murphy's law. | Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:16:06 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=18, tm_min=16, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=183, tm_isdst=0) | 5532751 | 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 consumerGuide Automotive. We make carbine easier. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here@housetuffworks.com, and with me, as always, is my trusty editor, Candice Gibson. How's it going, Candace? Doing okay, Josh. Doing okay. Oh, yeah. You lied down in the mouth. I am, yeah. Everything today, it's not going away. I planned well. I know exactly what you're talking about. You kind of have the feeling that the entire universe is against you being kicked around a little bit by the powers that beat. Yeah. What you're talking about is Murphy's Law. Do you know about this? I do. Murphy's Law, it says that anything that can go wrong will yes. You know where it came from? I do. Actually, it all originated back in 1949. So this is an ancient history. This is pretty recent. And essentially the Air Force was doing a couple of tests on G forces and trying to figure out how much a human being could handle. And what it all boiled down to was some people who worked for a Captain Edward A. Murphy weren't really doing their jobs exactly right. They were messing up the little things. And he said, pretty exasperated, there are two ways to do something. They're always going to pick the one that results in catastrophe. Yeah, but that's kind of a mouthful, isn't it? It really is. And so colonel John Paul staff later on. Exactly. He was sort of being the mouthpiece of these experiments that they were doing, and he essentially said that while the experiments aren't going exactly as planned, it's all following Murphy's Law. Well, what's that? And he explained that anything that can go wrong will say he started silver tongue it. Well, there's a lot of confusion. A lot of people slap Murphy's Law into just about anything that goes wrong. Right. But there's actually a lot of corollary laws that have come about. Some of them are even older than Murphy's Law, which, by the way, Murphy's Law is a take off on sod's law. Have you heard of that? No, I haven't. It's an old English saying that any bad thing that can happen to some poor sod will so it's pretty much the English version. And in England they still call it sod's law. But there's plenty of corollary laws to Murphy's Law that whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Like, take a tourist observation. You ever been in traffic? The other lane always moves faster. Exactly. That's a tourist observation. But actually that's kind of based on a little bit of psychology. You know that. Yes, it's true. You ready? Yeah. Okay, so say you're standing in traffic and either side of you, both lanes are moving and you're standing stock still. Of course you're going to notice you're in traffic. You want to get home, but your lane starts moving again, you're paying attention to the car in front of you and behind you. You're no longer paying attention to the lanes on either side. So they're most likely stopped or at least going slower than you are. You never noticed? The only time we notice something is when it's not going our way. Are you saying that we want to feel victimized by the universe? I don't know that we want to feel victimized so much, but I think we have a sense of fatalism, that we're all kind of powerless at the hands of faith. We're not actively making our own choices. It depends. I think that there's a whole mindset surrounding Murphy's Law that people adopt, that everything goes wrong and that's when they pay the most attention. I use an example in the article. Say you're walking along and you make it to the place you're trying to get to and you have no problems. You don't stop and think, wow, I really am a good walker. But if on the way you stop or you fall and skin your knee, you're going to sit there and say, Why does it happen to me? That's the thing you pay attention to. We humans are almost programmed to pay attention to all the terrible things that can happen to us and ignore all the great things. So it's sort of a whiny attitude. If you were a little bit more careful or maybe even a little bit more optimistic, you could avoid Murphy's loss. I don't know that that's entirely true. I think that the key is optimism. And I know you're not much on fate, right? Not so much. Well, I kind of tend to believe that Murphy's Law just because I'm clinically paranoid, but there's a certain amount of science to Murphy's Law. Did you know that? I did. We're talking about Pell's equation, right? Yes. Pals pell's equation of Murphy. Well, no. It's Joel Pals Murphy's equation. And Joel Pell's. This guy out of the University of British Columbia, and he basically Quantified Murphy's Law. He took all these factors that surround an event, like how badly you want it to happen in a certain way, or the complexity of the system involved, or the urgency of it going a certain way, and he plugged them into an equation and he used his 89 Tersell as an example. You know about that? That's a Toyota. Yes, it is a Toyota. An 89 one at that. But Pell calculated the probability of his 1989 Toyota Tercel's clutch going out in a rainstorm when he was 60 miles from home, and he came up with a factor of one, which means it would definitely happen. Well, Josh, that could actually be attributed to the fact that Toyota no longer makes the term, so who knows how sturdy and automobile it was in the first place? That is a good argument. Or it could mean that Murphy's Law is real and we should all fear it. If you do fear Murphy's Law and want to know your enemy, go read How Murphyslaw works on howstuffs.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit How Stuff Works.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | |
Will we reach peak oil? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/will-we-reach-peak-oil | A 2012 report showed that the U.S. may be energy-independent in just a few years, but not too long ago the specter of peak oil loomed large on the political and economic landscape. Join Chuck and Josh as they visit the consequences of running out of oil. | A 2012 report showed that the U.S. may be energy-independent in just a few years, but not too long ago the specter of peak oil loomed large on the political and economic landscape. Join Chuck and Josh as they visit the consequences of running out of oil. | Thu, 06 Dec 2012 22:34:45 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=22, tm_min=34, tm_sec=45, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=341, tm_isdst=0) | 35592643 | 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. Hey everybody. If you want a great website, you want going to do it yourself with no must, no fuss. Turn to square space. 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.com SYSK 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 from housetepworkscom. 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. And it's election day. We didn't mention that before. Oh, yeah, it's election day. Not sure when it's going to come out. I can tell you exactly what it's going to come out. How do we know about this one? Well, it'll come out either the 27th or the 29 November. Yeah. Great. What a great time to talk about PECO oil. Yeah. The holiday season. Everybody's still digesting Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah, it's a little chilly out. It's what everyone's thinking about right now. Yeah. Football and sports and stuff like that. And fall colors. Let's talk about oil instead. When will the world's oil production be outstripped by demand? That's right, Irrevocably. That's right. That's what peak oil is. That's what we're talking about. Before we get started, I need to just clear something up. Peak oil is a definite thing. So where's the controversy? When it's going to happen? When it's going to happen? And exactly what will happen after it happens? Okay, because reading this, I was a little confused. It seemed like some people were denying that it was going to happen at all or something. Yeah. No. We got to run out of oil at some point. So if you talk to any peak oil inherent, there's definitely some that are a little more disguised following than others. And I think they probably represent the minority, especially now. But if you went back to 2007, 2008 when I wrote this remember Matt Baker? Yes, matt Baker, who used to work here. He was a developer. He got me into this. Oh, really? And he would go to Matt? Sure. Yeah. He would go to meetings and about the future without oil. He was big time into it. And at that time there were a lot of very smart people talking very loudly saying like, dudes, we may have already hit peak oil and we need to start doing something about it. Or else, like, we're in really big trouble. Right. Those voices have quieted down quite a bit due to some developments in the last couple of years. It's almost kind of like a throwback going down in prices. There's a lot of stuff happening, but for the most part, there is agreement that we will one day hit peak oil in the definition of peak oil is now when we run out of oil, but when our oil production, like removing it from the ground, can no longer keep up with demand. The whole reason that this will probably happen is because oil is a very finite resource, right? Yes. And we are not treating it as such. No. So those two things combined mean that we're going to run out at some point. But even if we did conserve our oil, but we didn't bring any other type of energy into it, it's a finite resource. Like it takes 10 million years for these fossil fuels at least to be produced to turn into crude oil. The reason we have so much of it is because there was a massive die out of large dinosaurs. See, I read that the dinosaurs had very little to do with it and then it was like other living creatures. Well, you tell me who said that. That's good. Look it up. Some guy a lot smarter than me. Okay, but regardless, the dinosaurs may or may not have had something to do with it, but things that lived at least 10 million years ago and whose corpses were subject to these specific geological processes form oil. And there's only a very limited amount of it. It is the definition of a non renewable resource, petroleum. We're going to run out of it eventually. But like you were asking, when that happens and what happens when we reach that point? That's what the debate over peak oil is. Because some people think we may never hit peak oil, right? We may come up with great alternative energy, filling the gaps, as it were. Right. Maybe we'll just leave oil behind. We'll never go back and use up the whole world supply because something else will come along and we'll master wind technology and we'll be fine. But for the most part, people agree that we will hit this point of peak oil, which again, isn't running out of oil. It's where production plateaus and starts to decline while demand keeps increasing. Yes. I think you have a big problem there if people don't get that by now. Well, no, for the third time, if you talk to I can tell you that people who are peak oil adherents are very satisfied with us right now because we pointed that out three times because it's a big misconception. Wait, is that him now? He's coming in here to give us a bat on the back, right? Yeah, I guess. Who could that be? King Hebbt Hubbard. He's dead, probably. I believe so. Alright, let's get in. He was working on the 50s. So we laid out what we're talking about. But it is all based on M. King Hubert's Hubbert curve. That's right. Do we need to talk about the BP report or is that old news? Well, they do that every year. Okay, so what does the recent one say? Do you know? Well, this is one of the recent developments. So this BP statistical review of world energy, BP compiles all of this energy information every year, and it's a huge, awesome PDF of energy information. Right. And in 2008, they published that we have 1230 8 billion barrels of oil improved reserves. That's 1.2 trillion barrels of oil improved reserves. Now approved reserve doesn't mean that you already have it in a barrel. It means that some seismologists have done a geological survey of an area and said, yeah, there's oil there, and it has a 90% chance of being easily extractable. Okay. And you probably have this many barrels in this reserve. That's a proven reserve. Right. There's also probably stuff that we haven't found out there yet. Oh, sure. That adds to the whole oil base. But BP said in 2008 that we have 1.2 trillion barrels of oil. In 2012, they said that we have 1.6 trillion. So we added 400 billion barrels of oil in four years. Right. That was a huge thing that quieted everybody down. Okay, well, that's good. Yeah. It could be a little hinky because the people giving up this information, they get money in funding based on things like this. Yeah. If you're a member of OPEC and they're not checking their work, as it were, either. So what you have is you're not being audited, and if you lie about your numbers, you might get more funding. So a lot of people say, Wait a minute, we shouldn't trust reports like this. Right. Yeah. For every bit of information or data, there are basically two ways to look at it. It's either truthful or here's all the reasons why it's probably not truthful. I know this is one of those things. It's just the point counterpoint just goes on and on. Yeah. And the reason why is because we have no idea how much oil is left on Earth, like we can't say, and like, the people who supposedly do know have reason to not be truthful about it. Right. Or to exaggerate it, even. Sure. So the BP statistical review is very widely respected. It's also criticized for that reason that you just said. But the whole idea behind this is based on what the guy who we were talking about, M. King Hubbert, came up with in the 1950s, which is called the Hubbard curve. Right? Yeah. And this just makes sense to me. I don't know why it took this guy to come up with this, but it basically says, you know what? Oil reserves are going to follow a trajectory. Right. You're going to tap it and you're going to pump oil out and after that, production is going to plateau and then it's going to decline. Yeah. It took some smart guy to figure that out. Yeah. And I feel where you're coming from, I think the same thing, but I think there's a specific like this guy really grafted it out sure. And could predict within maybe a year or something like that, which he did. The reason why everybody listens to Hubert was because he predicted that the US. Would hit its own peak production in some time between 1965 and 70. Well, he missed it by a year. The US oil production peaked in 1971 and it's been declining ever since. And this guy has made other great predictions, but the point is his Hubbard curve for any oil reserve, if you look at all the reserves on Earth as one large reserve, then the Earth's oil supply should follow the same predictable curve. And eventually when you hit this plateau and production starts to decline, it's inevitable. Right? That's right. It makes sense to you? It makes sense to me, yeah. So where's the problem? Well, in 2007, the Government Accountability Office published another study that said, all right, we need to guard ourselves against this potential fallout from the peak oil problem. Right. And so there's a lot of factors here. You liken it to a marathon. This is a terrible analogy. I would say a relay race, that's where you messed up. Oh, yeah. Okay. Because then you've got different team members doing better or worse, contributing or detracting. I walked right by that, man. I walked right by that. So let's look at relay race. Okay. And each of the runners in your relay race is going to represent oil consumption. Production or alternative fuels. So as alternative fuels get more advanced, then you're going to be using less oil. So that's great. Right. As consumption, I guess we're trying to make moves to just consume less. Right. Or conserve. Yeah. Conserving via. I know Obama has put in place a lot of stringent rules for car manufacturers. The Cafe standards. Yeah. So in August, he signed in something in the law that doubles the Cafe standards to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. That's awesome. Yeah. And that will have a huge impact on oil consumption. So if you're in your little relay race still, that means oil is stabilized a little more because you're just not using using you're decreasing supply, which is taxing demand, or you're decreasing demand, which is taxing supply. Yes. But then other bad things can happen. One of the little relay racers might get hung up by the fact that China and India are growing in many ways and need some of that oil. And so all of a sudden, you're going to be using more oil. And it's just sort of a give and take, a little seesaw effect until I guess, what do you get? A plateau or that just changes the formula. I think part of the analogy that I got wrong, too, was like, I was making all these racers, like, racing toward the peak oil line, the finish line. Humanity is, like, on its way toward that. But how fast we get it there depends on these things. Okay, sure. So it's almost like they're marbles or jacks or stuff for us to trip. They're banana peels. These are different kinds of banana peels. Okay. Some are more slippery than others. Very good, then. One thing is for sure is that here in the United States, we use a lot of oil for transportation. That's the primary use. What's the percentage now? 70% of all oil, 70% goes to transportation in the US. Is that worldwide in the US. Sorry. And as of now, we are getting the good news is we're at a 20 year low for foreign oil imports. We're at 42%. Right. That's a very glib percentage. Like, when it gets the energy, you really have to pay attention to how a statistic is worded because there's a lot of different factors involved. There's a lot of different ways of looking at it. And that's a really good example. 70% of all of our petroleum goes to transportation. That's mind boggling figure. But what we're really talking about is not oil consumption or energy consumption. We're talking about where that oil goes to. And actually, our consumption of oil in the US. Has declined in the last few years. So while we're still using 70% of all that oil for transportation, we're actually using less oil overall. What about the imports, though? Is that what you're talking about? Well, the imports have actually declined as well. No, that's what I just said. But you said that's the stat that you have to be really wary of. Well, you have to be wary of all stats, but no, there are some that are just kind of broad and above boards, and one of them is how much we're using, how much we're importing. Right. And actually we're importing more, but we're using less. So we're importing something like 60% of all the petroleum we used in 2011 we imported. Oh, really? Yes. Which is more than the 58% in 2007. So it took a sharp decrease then because we're at 42% now as of August of 2012. No way. Yeah, it's a 20 year low for foreign oil imports. Okay. All right. So currently we're using as far as in 2011, we used an average of 18,830, 5000 barrels per day, which is a very British way of saying 18.83 5 million barrels a day. Yes, a day. It's a lot. Yeah. A lot of petrol, which is also very British. Right. But we were importing less, and that's actually less than we were using before. And you say there's a sharp decline down to what? We're at a 20 year low, supposedly, of foreign imports. Of imports, not necessarily consumption imports. Okay. And why well, a lot of reasons. I know that they found a lot more oil in America recently. Apparently Texas, and I think one of the Dakota's. And from what I understand, also, natural gas is stepping up and providing a lot more energy than it was before. Good for you. Natural gas? Yeah. Aside from the whole fracking problem. Frack that. 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. So, Chuck, where are we at? All right. I think we're at the problems the other side of the coin. 2006. The Cambridge Energy Research Associates said you know what? We got lots of oil. Don't you worry about it. We've actually got 3.74 trillion barrels, three times as many as you guys said is the peak oil proponent. Peak oil proponent? Yeah, that's you guys. Don't you worry about it. It's going to be an undulating plateau. It's going to be this drop off, and we got oil for decades and decades that we can fill in the gaps as things come along with other forms of energy. And the sky is not falling. Just shut up and watch Dancing with the Stars. Right? And if you read that BP report, it says that we have enough improvement reserves to last us uninterrupted for 54.5 years. 54.2 years? Yes. Which is a very long time. That's a lot of oil. Peak oil people say, that's great, man, that's awesome. But we can't just sit back and say, well, we're just going to keep going like this for 54 years, because we will shoot ourselves in the foot. The whole point of believing in peak oil is saying that we have to take steps now to make sure that when we hit that 54.2 year, we're fine, we're totally covered. But as you say, there are plenty of people out there, like the Cera or Sera, that says, you guys are crazy. Just settle down. Yeah. And the reason they say things like this is because there's a lot of oil out there that we haven't even touched in the Arctic. For example, maybe 118,000,000,000 barrels of oil. And we know it's out there. This is not a theory. No. They discovered in the 50s. Yeah, we know it's out there. It's just really expensive to go get because it's in the Arctic. Yeah. It costs a lot of lobbying money to get into the Arctic to drill under the ocean. Lots of oil down there. It's just very deep. We're just waiting. And we got this oil shell all over Canada. Canada is basically like one big oil shell. Shell in the western US. Too. Yeah. So don't worry, people. We've got all these superfields that we haven't even discovered yet. There's tons of oil. Don't worry about it. So, Chuck, the reason why we have all this oil but it's just sitting there is mainly because it's expensive to get it under these conditions. We still have plenty of oil that's easily gotten. Right. And usually the way we get oil is in a three stage process, and most companies are only up to stage two. So it's really a two stage process. Does anyone even go to the third stage? Not yet, because I like Boston in the future. Sorry. When oil prices rise so high that 90% of your paycheck goes to buy gas, that's when they can afford yeah. Because when you're paying $20 a gallon for gas, then they can afford to go down to the art. Exactly. It's an economic incentive. So normally when you get oil, stage one is where you tap the reservoir and oil pretty much just bubbles up out of the ground. You get about 10% of that reservoir from that first stage. Second one, you have to exert a little bit of effort. You pump some CO2 or some water into there and you recharge it and it starts to come up. You get anywhere from another 20% to 40%. Yeah. I think a lot of the if you watch, like, there will be blood. I think those early guys, those are the dudes. They're the dudes that are now the 1%. Like, I don't even think they were probably going secondary. They were just going around from oil, tapping that top 10% cheaply and just moving on. Right, but now they move on after the second stage. Yes, after the second stage, after taking anywhere from 50%, which means there's 50% to 70% of that reservoir still left, you cap it and say, well, let's mark this spot and move on. Yeah. Pee on it. Right. Put your little flag down. Well, no, you want to use like some sort of phosphorescent or fluorescent, like crayon. Mark it and you come back with a black light and be like, oh, here it is. X marks the spot. So they cap it again because of expense. Because to go down and get that final 50%, it's just too expensive right now. Same with extracting oil from oil shale or tar sands or getting into the Arctic or into the deep ocean. There's just not an economic incentive. But if you are a critic of peak oil, you're going to say, we'll get to that one. Like we have all that extra stuff out there. Right. Calm down. Right. It is kind of good to know in a way, I guess it's probably good that it's expensive because it would be very humanlike to just suck those things as dry as a bone and then move on. And there my friend, you just tapped into the central theme of PECO. I did. It is very human like to just keep plodding along and suck something down to the bone and not look beyond that day when the bone is dry. Dry, yeah, you're right. It's sad. I've always wondered, too, if the Earth needed oil. And I've looked it up on the Internet, and I can't find anything. Remember? Yeah, I talked about this before. I don't remember what but that was and I researched again a little bit last night. I was like, and I can't find any intelligent person on the Internet that it's not just a message board saying oil is the blood of the Earth and the planet, and if we suck it dry, like, why do you think we have earthquakes? But I don't know. There's oil on Earth. It could serve a function, right? I would imagine. Maybe. I would think so. Technically speaking, I tend to think of things as a whole like that, like the Earth has maybe there's reasons for everything like that. Or even if there isn't a reason that's been around so long that something's become dependent on it. So it's important to something else other than our cars. Right. And it is a lubricator and it is found within hard rock. I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy. So, Chuck, we talked about how this article is kind of almost a throwback lubricant, by the way, instead of lubricant, it's like a snapshot of this kind of I don't want to say hysteria, because I think it's right, but there was a lot of stuff going on in 2008 that were making these peak oil adherents say, hey, we're right. Everybody pay attention. And probably the thing that verified their beliefs more than anything else came on July 11, 2008, when oil reached an all time high of $147 a barrel. That is expensive. Right. And if you believe in peak oil, or if you are an adherent of the peak oil idea, this is like one of the four horsemen riding out of the sky. But the thing was, they ended up being they were duped like everybody else by the speculators who had driven up prices, but they were saying, no, this is a problem. This is part of what they call peak light, right? Which they think we've hit. Peak light is basically where production starts to plateau, and we don't realize that it's going to eventually decline. But we're in the plateau, right, and there will be, like, little highs and lows, and all of those are going to each one reflects this smaller scale, longer time frame version of the actual peak oil, but it's like the smaller version of it once we hit the peak. And I think that's where we are now. And if you ask me, that peak sounds an awful lot like what Sarah was saying. The undulating plateau and peak lights sound like they're virtually the same. Maybe so, yeah. But they disagree on when we hit that. Well, oil per barrel is lower now, thankfully. That's one big thing. As far as this month goes, $86.37 peril we've added since 2008, we've added almost half a trillion barrels of oil. Improved reserves. Right. It's a big one. So we're moving in the right direction in some ways. Yeah, correct. Alternative fuels alternative fuels are making up a lot bigger chunk. They make up for the first time. And here's a good example of another statistic you have to pay attention to. Alternative fuels or renewables nuke and hydro, for the first time ever in world energy consumption, make up more of the energy being used than any single fossil fuel. For the first time ever in 2011, this happened. That's great. Covering growth and consumption. Right. So there's a very big key factor. That means that everything passed the year before. That's the growth in consumption, right? Yeah. So it's covering 34% of that, not of all energy consumption. So it sounds like this huge, enormous number, and it's a good hardening number. Sure. But it's not what you'd think. Like, you really have to pay attention when you're talking about energy consumption or energy stats. Very true, because stats can be very misleading in this realm. Right. And so one of the big problems of peak oil is anytime you say, well, hey, we have stuff in the Arctic reserve, so we're fine, there's a lot of other problems that come up in conjunction with it. Oil is very dirty, literally and metaphorically. That's right. You could destroy an ecosystem very easily. Very easy in the Arctic. Very precious, balanced ecosystem. Okay, so let's just sink all of our money into alternative energy. It sounds like you're setting me up. Yeah, I would say that's a great move, but it can be promising on one hand. But things like switch grass and cellulosic ethanol are very corrosive, and it's very expensive to retrofit gas pumps at a gas station and gas storage tanks, it's like 100 grand a gas station. Yeah. So it's not like there's some super easy answer. Well, plus, also, it's like you're taking investment money away from finding new oil fields, putting into alternative energy, which isn't necessarily a bad thing until you realize that, well, wait a minute, we're globalized. So if you take away oil from China and india, you're going to slow down this economic engine and strike that balance. Right. It's Homer with the goldfish and Mr. Pinchy again with the salt. It's the same thing. Coal. They can actually make liquid coal now that can power a vehicle, which is great with no alterations. Yeah, you can pump it right into your car. The bad thing is coal is really dirty, and you're going to be emitting 4% more greenhouse gases than gasoline. Even. So, again, no easy answer. Well, the same goes for natural gas. Natural gas made up 25% of the energy provided in the US. That was consumed was provided by natural gas last year. That's huge. It's more than coal. Came out of nowhere. Right. But the problem is, you have fracking alongside of that. To get it, you have to basically create an environmental disaster every time. There's all these problems with mitigating. It, but the worst thing you can do is nothing. This one report that's kind of like peak oil adherence Bible found it's called the Hersh Report. Yeah. Or Aka peaking of world oil production colon impacts mitigation and risk management I understand why they call it the Hershe Report. Yeah. Robert Hirsch put this together and basically laid out three scenarios. It's do nothing, start ten years ahead of time to help out this problem, or start 20 years ahead of time to really head off this problem and to head off these mitigations. It's figuring out alternative fuels, decreasing demand, basically. Like just doing whatever you can to take the pressure off of production. Yeah. So that we still have oil. We're just using less of it. Yeah. And unsurprisingly, he says 20 years before would be the best way to handle this. Ten years before? If you did that, he said it could be a pretty smooth transition. Right. If you start ten years before, then you're going to have a problem for about a decade, a shortfall. And if you don't do anything, then you're going to have at least a 20 year shortfall. And so what we're talking about yes. A global energy shortfall. Yeah. That's scary times right there. Yeah. Because crude oil and petroleum are found in our medicine or foods. They are used by the tanker trucks and ships that deliver petroleum. Use petroleum to deliver it. It's everything to everybody. It's the lifeblood of the global economic engine. And, dude, we've never experienced anything like the catastrophic collapse that would happen if we experience a ten year global energy shortfall. I got two words for you mad Max. Yeah. I think I don't see an end to that. Like, if we experience ten years or 20 years, I don't see how we would ever come out of that. Yeah, because it's easy to say, well, get on your bicycle. But like you said, it's not just, hey, I put gas in my car to go to work. It is everything. Like, all of a sudden, I can't get. Food delivered to the grocery store. Medicines and yeah. It's pretty scary thought I guess probably the biggest problem is we won't know when we hit Peak Oil until a few years afterwards when all these telltale signs start coming and I'm sure most people won't agree so it will probably be several years afterwards when it's just painfully obvious that production is being outstripped by demand supply can't keep up with demand anymore and it looks like it's never going to go back up which means we've hit Peak oil which means we're in trouble. What mitigation measures do we have in place? Yes. One thing you don't want to hear someone say is oops especially when you're talking about the global economic engine yeah and I think you said some people claim that it might have already happened in 2005, others say no, you know what, we're good till what? 20 30? 20 30 is when we hit the undulating plateau which should be not a problem as far as serious concerned but even 2040 is what you said the most conservative peak oil I was about to say enthusiasts but adherence is a copy. That's the latest they think it's going to happen as far as when I wrote this in 2008 now a bunch of stuff have happened remember we added almost half a trillion barrels of oil we're using less our Cafe standards were increased recently the 3.4% of all new car registrations in the US in 2011 no. 2012 so far we're hybrid or electric which is up to 1% just a few years ago but it's such a drop. It is. But all of those drops count and just kind of prolonging this point until we get to Peak Oil alternative energy investments are up it's like we're doing all this great stuff and as a result all of the people. All the really loud voices that had like a real stage in 2008 and had the ears of a lot of people who were governing at the time the climate has changed and I wonder if it was because a lot of these Peak oil adherence shouting really loud that we have made some concessions but now I wonder if we're just going to become complacent. Right? Like oh well. We saved it off. We're fine for now and we're just going to kick it on down the road because I don't see a lot of effort going into it I mean. There are some but certainly not what is needed I just feel like we're all headed towards the cataclysmic collapse of humanity eventually we're all going to turn on each other and ruin ourselves and the Earth will be scorched and empty. Yes, it may not be anytime soon, hundreds and hundreds of years from now, who knows? But anyone that thinks that humans on planet Earth, we're going to be around infinitely forever because we're humans it's just they're fooling themselves fool's gold nice. How's that for happy? That is perfect. 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. If you want to learn more about PECO, you can type those words into the search bar athowstophores.com and it'll bring up this article. And I said, search bar. Since it's time for listening to MailChimp, I'm going to call this where's your orchestra? This is from Eric Stefan, and he is a double bass player, principal double bass player in an orchestra near Cologne, Germany. And he listened to the Ben Solicia about music and emotion, which we got great feedback on. And he says, many thanks to Ben, who played another fantastic and inspiring performance. He has a beautiful, open way of discussing music. Couldn't agree more. Many thanks to him for mentioning the importance of classical music. It's an art form that, unfortunately, too few people are exposed to now having a lot to do with its financial and logistical complexities, but nonetheless one of the most powerful and underrated forms of music today. And it has contributed so much to how we in the Western world here perceive music today. I would really love it if you guys could get out and hear another performance sometime. Even more so if you encourage SYSK listeners to get out and experience and support their local orchestras. It is a difficult time for orchestras right now, and as Ben mentioned, many are being forced to downsize or fold altogether. This is one of the reasons why I ended up in Germany, which still heavily supports many orchestras with state financing and media. The appreciation is very deeply rooted in the culture out here, and while it's a slightly different situation in States, I want to remind people that classical music is not exclusive unless you make it so. And I would go on to even point out that he needs orchestral music. Classical is a period of time oh, yeah. Way to correct them. Probably doesn't appreciate that it is not exclusive unless you make it. So you don't need to have a tuxedo or a deep musical education to appreciate the extreme beauty and the importance of it. Couldn't agree more. Please give it a chance. Help keep it alive. And that is very good advice. Support your local orchestra. I guarantee you, whatever town you live in, unless you're in some really backward Kansas field town, you probably got an orchestra. Even if it's a smallish town, you might have an orchestra. Yes. If you're in a big city, you definitely have an orchestra. Yeah. Go out and see it. It's usually pretty cheap. It's not like paying for $60 to go see Jack White make noise. I like Jack white, actually. Okay. But he's charging too much. $60 ahead. Yeah, when he played that, he got the rock and tourist fan together. Tickets are like, 60 or $75. That's a lot for one album of material. Anyway, thank you for all the years of explaining the world through fantastic podcasts. I hope for many years to come to hear these when I drink my delicious cold beer tonight. Al Prost, you guys. It says Shernagusa Alscolone. Eric. Stefans. Thanks a lot, Stefans. Appreciate that. I'm in favor of encouraging our listeners to go out and see an orchestra. We got a good one, a specific day where all stuff you should know, listeners go out to the orchestra. Well, I don't think you can count on all orchestras playing on that day. Every town in the earth. Well, let's find out about it. Let's find out. All right. Let's see if we can get that together. I don't think we can make that happen, but maybe there's a day when orchestras typically play. Sure. Like traditionally speaking. Or how about this winter season? Make a commitment to go out because you're going to be darn sure that there will be an orchestra playing some sort of Christmas classical churches. Oh, good. Okay. All right, that's it. You have to go out and see an orchestra this winter. Yeah, but don't take it forever. Nutcracker is not bad, depending on where you see it. I like it. A little doll. Really? You think so? Oh, for me, sure. There's, like, giant soldiers and there's a rat that hits people with this. There's a lot of stuff going on. Well, what do you like to go see? Christmas carol? No. I mean, I don't do any of that stuff. I go see Jack White and complain. Let's see if you have a favorite fan you like to see that you think Chuck and I should see or a performance of some sort, whether it's Nutcracker or Jack White or whatever. Well, we've already covered those two, so you should probably leave them alone. We want to hear from you. You can tweet your suggestions to us at syskrodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffysnow, and you can send us a general email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.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." | ||
df59958d-6be9-4dec-817b-ae6e00deaaac | Watermelons: Nature's Gift to the World | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/watermelons-natures-gift-to-the-world | Turns out most people love watermelons. Why? Because they're delicious. And they also have a pretty interesting history. Check it out.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Turns out most people love watermelons. Why? Because they're delicious. And they also have a pretty interesting history. Check it out.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 05 Apr 2022 13:35:58 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=13, tm_min=35, tm_sec=58, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=95, tm_isdst=0) | 41154441 | 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 this is stuff you Should Know, featuring Jerry and Livia. Yeah, Livia helps us with this one on watermelon. I don't know. I think I just literally came up with this idea because I was eating watermelon, and I was like, you know what? Watermelon is delicious. But I know there's a history there, and I know there are square watermelons. I don't know if you're like me, but like 911 and when Reagan was shot, I remember where I was the day that I saw my first square watermelon. Oh, really? Huh. Yeah. It was during how stuff works. I think it might have even been you. I showed you a square watermelon. I mean, not in person, but they are expensive. You're like, hey, come here and look at this over my shoulder. What's going on? I opened up my trench coat, and there was a square watermelon. But, yeah, I think the square watermelon has enchanted me for years now, and I didn't even know that there were heart shaped watermelons until two days ago. That's so cute. Are you bumped now that you understand how the watermelons get so square? Well, no, because I knew how they got square. But whoever told me about this at How Stuff Works at our old job told me it was because in Japan, they have small refrigerators and they make them to fit more easily in a Japanese refrigerator. But I don't think that part is true. Right. That, I believe, based on what I've read, is a myth that we're going to crumble. Yes. Should we go in on square watermelons? Yeah, sure. Why not? So they were invented in Japan, as pretty much all perfect things were. And there was a guy named Tomo Yuki Ono, and he was an artist. He also happened to be a horticulturist. And back in the 70s, he figured out how to make square watermelons and created a patent on it. And they're so charming that within a year, they were ready for sale. They went from an art gallery, like, basically an art project, to for sale in Tokyo within less than one year. That's right. And they are grown in Japan, and they are grown in containers, and it's sort of like a goldfish. They grow to fit their container, including the round ones and the pyramid shaped ones, which are really interesting looking, but they are not very good to eat, and they cost about $100 in Japan. And so I think that it is definitely a crumbled myth that they are grown just to fit into Japanese refrigerators. Yeah, because nobody eats them. You don't eat them. So myth crumbled capao. And is a Japanese refrigerator small? That is probably true, yes. I mean, most appliances in Japan are smaller than the ones you find in America. Well, I think America leads away in humongous appliances, right? Yeah. And humongous portions and stuff like that. Humongous. Everything we need humongous appliances. Yeah. I mean, if you haven't ever seen a square watermelon or heart shaped watermelon, especially heart shaped watermelon is cut open because that's the real money shop. Oh, I didn't talk about that. It's really amazing looking and a little bit of a brain twister. Do you know, I'm such a loser, I didn't bother to look up what a heart shaped watermelon looks like. Yeah. What a heart looks like. They know what a watermelon looks like. Yeah. It's put together and then you said cut open. I'm like, cut open. Yes. You got to see that. Yeah. And the pyramid one looks more like a Hershey's Kiss. Like a giant Archie's kiss. Okay. I imagine, like, pretty much a perfect, rounded edge pyramid, but Hershey's Kiss, which would be great for a fridge, because part of the problem with a watermelon in the fridge is the shape those things roll around in there, and they're huge. It is a big problem. But as we'll see, you shouldn't really be keeping in the fridge very much anyway. But let's talk watermelon, where they came from, because it turns out watermelons are beloved around the world. I mean, people love watermelons around the world. From what I read, Chuck, there is only livestock have more agricultural land dedicated to raising them than watermelons. They take up so much space, but people love them so much that they just go ahead and give the watermelons the space. And apparently by weight, it's the third most eaten fruit in the world. Really? The second? Because the tomato come on. I know it's a fruit, but if you think fruit, I'm just going to go ahead and say the order is banana than watermelon. As far as most eaten, I agree. I think calling a tomato fruit is like saying cooter grass at a pie or saying a brownie is a cookie, right? Yeah. What kind of a jerk would say something stupid like that? Especially insist on it in a pedantic art. That wasn't even you. You were seeing stuff online, right? You didn't invent that. Yeah, I was misled by Internet rumors. The watermelon, though, is a berry, technically, which means the outer part is hard. It's got a fleshy middle, and then the inner part is softer and has the seeds. We'll get to the seedy part later, of course, because we don't really have seeds in our watermelons anymore. And then if you want to talk more specific, it's called a peppo, P-E-P-O which means as a thick rind, like a squash or a pumpkin. You're going with peppo. I don't care what it's called. It's pipo for me. Okay. Watermelon, dude. I love it. Yeah. Okay. And it's a berry, too. I mean, watermelon has just got twice as good to me. Yeah. I dare you to go to the grocery store next time and say, hey, where do you keep the pizza berries? The square ones? Yeah, you got these square people berries. Security. So watermelons are also related to squash and pumpkin, but they're most closely related to cucumbers because they're part of the cucumber batacatia family. And other melons are, too. But I believe cucumbers and watermelons are pretty close together, even though you wouldn't necessarily know it to look at them. But specifically, watermelon species are Citrullis. Lenatus and all of the different kinds of watermelons that we have from what I understand, are varieties of that species. That's right. And we've known for a long, long time that watermelons came from Africa. Thank you, Africa, for this gift to the world. But it was more recently where they kind of zeroed in on exactly where there are a lot of melons in Africa that you could call a watermelon. They are different kinds of citrulous. Either one okay species, but these are a little more pale. They're not like that deep, sweet red, which means they're not going to be as sweet either in taste, so they're more bitter or more bland. And they can be used over there. They still use these things. They'll mash up the seeds and using them to thicken a soup. Or maybe they'll just eat the seeds, roast them up and eat them. Or maybe they'll use them for water, just like clean water, because a watermelon is mostly water. Yeah, I think oh, I can't remember the main character. And the gods must be crazy's name. Oh, yeah. But he cuts open like something that I assume is a species of watermelon and drinks the water out of it. So, yeah, there's a bunch of different kinds of species of watermelons, but none of them are like the ones that we commercially grow and produce, which are typically referred to as dessert watermelons to differentiate that they're sweet and tasty and not I like it. Yes. I ran across it in this. I think it's a great little almost like cellar door dessert watermelon. Yeah, because you usually do hand it out after a meal. It's a great American tradition. It's delicious. I have wonderful memories being a kid eating watermelon with my granddad and spitting those seeds out back when they used to have seeds, or I would put them in between my fingers because they're slippery and I would shoot them. Just great memories of watermelon. And I still love it. And my daughter just can eat ungodly amounts of watermelon. Is that right? Oh, yes, she loves it. That's cute. It's delicious. It's sweet, it's watery. Who doesn't like it? Apparently there's somebody who ranked watermelon and said it's gross. It says that thing. Okay. The name of the fruit literally tells you that eating it is going to be the most boring experience of your life. It has the same bland, mediocre taste of all the melons, except the pleasantly chewy melon. Flesh is replaced by barely fruity flavored wet sand. What a fun person to be around. Please corner me at the next party I'm at. Yeah, they probably say, Coup de gras. Give me all your opinions. So you said that eating watermelon is a great American tradition. Indeed. But Americans are relative newcomers compared to other countries that have longstanding traditions of enjoying watermelon too. Because, like you said, they've kind of figured out that somewhere in Northeast Africa, perhaps Egypt, perhaps the area that's now Sudan where the Nubians used to run the show they probably speaking from recent genetic tests, are the ones who domesticated the watermelon over many hundreds, if not thousands of years of just selecting for sweeter and sweeter seeds. And then it spread. Starting probably with Egypt because Egypt created with everybody in the Mediterranean pretty much everywhere. It reached across the Mediterranean by maybe 24 to 2500 years ago. It hit India, strangely, the 9th century Ce. So not that long ago. China by the 10th century. So it's weird that it took that long, but it definitely spread. One of the reasons why it did spread is because it's fairly easy to grow and it grows just about anywhere. It's adapted from plants that can survive in semi arid conditions. Yeah, we have the Spanish to thank for bringing it to the Americas. And they introduced them to the Native Americans and they were like, hey, this grows like one of the Three Sisters, our beloved squash. And so we think we could grow this stuff. And the Native Americans grew it in abundance. Traded it in abundance such that by the end of the 17th century, there was watermelon all over what we now call the United States. And when the Europeans arrived, they were like they thought it was native to hear because they were growing so much of it. Yeah, I guess as late as the 1980s, they were, like, still debating whether it was of European origin or if the North Americans had it first. But they've definitively traced it back to Africa. What's still under debate, Chuck, is whether it was the Spanish that introduced it or whether it was some of the first enslaved people from West Africa that brought it over with them. That, I think, is still up for debate. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. They'll get to the bottom of it someday. Livia does point out, though, that there are different words for watermelon that are completely unrelated in Arabic and Hebrew and Sanskrit and Greek and Spanish. And that's a good indication that if the words aren't like one another that they have all had watermelon for a long, long time. Right. So watermelon is all over the world. It's been a long standing part of the United States history since before the United States was even a thing. And Thomas Jefferson apparently famously grew watermelons at Monticello and said that there was nothing better than a Virginia watermelon. And he was kind of onto something because apparently. I don't know if it was after Jefferson or not. But yeah. It would have been after Jefferson because as the railroads came along and it was getting easier and easier to ship things like watermelons long distance. They developed a kind of watermelon that wasn't quite as good. But traveled a lot better and they would keep the good stuff to themselves in the south. Where the watermelon naturally grows and flourishes best. And they would send these other ones that didn't taste quite as good up north because they figured they didn't know any different. That's right. And there was a time in America after the Civil War when former enslaved people actually could support themselves and sustain themselves outside the plantations by growing and selling watermelons and being farmers. But of course, that got ruined because starting at about the Civil War, white people turned it into a racist trope of black people eating watermelons. And it has been in everything from Birth of a Nation to Yard Art, kind of supporting this racist trope over the years. Yeah. And what really sucks about it is that it had its intended effect and that there are black Americans who report still being uncomfortable eating watermelon around other white Americans. Yeah. It's just so maddening that that's still a thing. It is. And it's going to be a thing until people just say, like, this is ridiculous. And hopefully learning about the watermelon from us will help. Some people say this is ridiculous and stupid. And it's always been. Because one other thing about it too, Chuck, is that at the time, those same racist southerners and white people across the country who are associating enjoying watermelon with black people were enjoying it themselves. They liked it just as much. It was just because they could grow and sell watermelons and it represented free black independence and that threatened them that they used watermelons as a trope and just very juvenile started equating it with all sorts of just dumb stuff. It's just I'm so hooked on this stuff. I know. All right, well, let's take a break and I'm going to give you a little shoulder rub through the computer. Thank you. It will be fantastic. It'll settle you down. And we're going to talk about the great Charleston Gray right after this. Okay. I mentioned Charleston Gray, if you're like. Who's Charleston Gray. And why do I care? The Gray Hotel check in name. Yeah, that is pretty good. That's the kind that they comp free breakfast too. You know what I'm saying? That's that kind of name. Well, Mr. Gray, dr. Grey, do you ever put any weird prefix when you're checking into stuff and signing up for stuff? Sometimes. Esquire. Alright, I'll do. Esquire. Doctor. Usually it's always fun. I don't know, reverend occasionally, even though technically I am a reverend now, I would not want to be cornered on that one. So I never shied away. But yeah, you can be like, I've got the bona fide so Charleston Gray is the name of not a human being, but it's the name of a watermelon. The human's name was Charles Andres of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service the Ars and the vegetable breeding laboratory there. And he created the Charleston Gray watermelon in why do you care? It's because 95% of the watermelons grown all over the world now have a lineage tied to the Charleston Gray. Yeah. And so remember we said that all of the watermelons that you would ever come across or eat that you buy at a store, that's all just one species of watermelon. They're just different varieties. Yeah. 95% of those are related to the same variety. And that means that they came upon one that tastes really good, ships really well. That was a big one. It's also resistant to some diseases and pests, but it also makes it extremely vulnerable. If there's ever a pest or a disease that can attack the Charleston Gray, it's going to wipe out all the watermelons because they're all very genetically similar. That's right. And that's why the Ars, not the aneurysm section. We're going to have us champagne. All right, here we go. Ars is still looking into how to make watermelons more hearty, and they're looking at wild watermelon species in Africa. They're looking at all kinds of varieties around the world and looking how to breed them with less pesticides. So the big watermelon apocalypse never happens. So, yeah, one thing they're doing well, the reason that they're really looking at is there's something called, I think, methyl bromide, which was like a fog, pesticide and maybe fungicide. It killed a bunch of stuff that Charleston Gray's are vulnerable to, but it also burns a hole in the ozone layer. So it got banned in Europe ten years ago and it was recently banned here in the United States. And so they're really trying to figure this out. So they look to Europe and said, hey, Europe, what you do when you couldn't use methyl bromide? And Europe said, we started using different roots stock. So they'll take the rooty part of the plant from squash plants apparently are really useful for this. And they graft a watermelon plant onto the top of it, the top part of the watermelon plant, stems and seeds and all that. And it grows together to create this super plant that has it produces great watermelons, but it's also resistant to these diseases and pests, which goes back to the Native Americans being great at growing watermelons. Because squash is one of the Three Sisters. Exactly. And they have a good experience. It's really cool. I love that stuff. Maybe we should do a short stuff on the Three Sisters. That'd be cool. You know, it factored heavily into 1491. It pops up a bunch of them. Of course. Yeah. So we mentioned seedlessness because if you have eaten a watermelon in the past 30 something years, it probably doesn't have seeds like they did when you were a kid. If you're an old timer like us, at least not those big mature black seeds that were great for spitting and flicking. They have those little undeveloped white seeds a little bit. But the seedless watermelon was another invention by another Japanese geneticist. I think the other one was an artist in horticulturalist, but this is geneticist Hitoshi Kihara and in 1939 invented this seedless watermelon that started being available in the 1950s. And what's remarkable about this is that it's basically a manual operation that's required to make seedless watermelons. Yeah, you use something called coltscine, which takes a regular diploid watermelon with two pairs of chromosomes, two copies of the chromosome, and turns it into a tetraploid so that there's four copies of each chromosome. And you take the diploid and the tetraploid and you pollinate them, you cross fertilize them. And what you produce is called, I think, a triploid and a triploid plant because it doesn't have an even number of copies of chromosomes. It's sterile, so it doesn't produce seeds. So that's how you get your seedless watermelon. And it's a real B word to raise seed less watermelons because part of your crop has to be deployed, regular seeded watermelons to use to fertilize them. At first, I guess farmers are kind of like, I'm not doing all that. Who wants a seedless watermelon anyway? And there was a guy named Ore Eggsty, great name. And in 10 00 19 54, he was like, people are going to love this, and this guy just work away at it and kept perfecting the seedless watermelon. But it wasn't until the late 80s that he finally managed to get it to take off. He partnered with a company called Sunworld International. Right? Yeah. His first company was American Seedless Watermelon Corp. And it took partnering with the giant, like a giant in the industry, a big agribusiness company, to really have it take off. And it did. But, you know, like I said, it's amazing. I think a lot of people think it's the commodification, and that is not true. It's actually a manual process that, like you said, is a real pain in the butt to farmers. And they had to get on board with this because the way they have to grow them and keep them separated. And it's really a lot of work. But I guess Orie was right on the money because people do love the seed less water. I kind of miss the seeds, but I have to admit the seed lists are easier to work with. Yes, I think 90% are seedless. And if you walk into a grocery store today, Chuck, and you ask for a watermelon with seeds, you're going to be hard pressed to find one because they're just seedless are so prevalent and it's so crazy to me. I realize that my niece Mila, who stars as J in the 20th Century Fox movie no Exit, was born into a world where there's never really been a seated watermelon. She's never seen a seated watermelon in her life. Yeah, like, she wouldn't walk into a grocery store and say, can I have a square seated pizza berry? And they would say, hey, wait a minute. Aren't you the star of the Hulu hit motion picture? No way. Star is such a relative term, isn't it? Where did they shoot that? Was that Atlanta? New Zealand. Oh, jeez, man. So she's really getting to live the life. They shot it in New Zealand at the height of the Pandemic when New Zealand had, like, zero cases. Yeah, that's where you want to be. Yes, it was pretty neat. But they had to quarantine and everything for 14 days on either side. It was really something. But, yeah, it was a real shoot. All right. So eating watermelons, you think it's such an American thing. We surely lead the world in watermelon consumption. And we eat a lot. We eat about \u00a315 per person per year here in America to the tune of about \u00a35 billion of watermelon a year. But, Jack, that ain't nothing compared to China. In 2018, Chinese residents ate more than \u00a3150,000,000,000 of watermelon. Yeah, that's 50 capita. So we in the US. \u00a315 per person a year. They eat \u00a3110 of watermelon per person per year. I had no idea it was so big in China. Well, yeah. And again, it's been there for over 1000 years. So they've had a long time to really come to appreciate the watermelon. And, buddy, do they ever. Well, we grow about two thirds of our own watermelon here in the US. The rest generally comes from Mexico. You probably are eating Florida watermelon. Maybe Georgia is number two, followed by Texas and California. But Ford is great for growing those watermelons because of the weather, because watermelons don't do well in the cold. So you can kind of grow them year round in Florida. Yeah. There's really nothing better than Florida weather this time of year in particular. So one of the things about the watermelons is that their growing season takes a little while, I think 100 days. Right, yeah. So you're not going to grow them up north, probably, unless you start them indoors. Yeah. I mean, you can grow them anywhere. Like, one of the things, they spread so far and wide among Native Americans that the Hurons of the Great Lakes in Canada were growing them. So you can grow them anywhere. It's just you can grow them all year round in Florida. You can grow them for a very limited window around the Great Lakes. But again, they'll grow just about anywhere. But one of the things about them, too, Chuck, is that they need a lot of space. I saw on a University of Florida website, which I apologize for using that, but I did. It's become so much more normalized to me since moving to Florida, like dealing and seeing University of florida stuff doesn't trigger me at all anymore. Really? Yeah, not at all. Well, normal Georgia's national champions in Florida, right? So who cares? So watermelon needs 18 to 24 sq ft per plant to grow. That's a lot of space. Yeah. We thought about growing watermelons here again, like squash, they tend to really take over. So grow your watermelon, but make sure you get the room. And you don't mind being annoyed by how much they spread. Yeah. Which really are you going to be annoyed by some great watermelons growing in your bedroom? Of course not. They also can rot, so you want to grow them on something that's going to keep them from rotting because they're going to connect with the ground. You can grow them on a trellis if your trellis is basically a steel crane. Right. It's kind of what it takes. And I saw that it's tough to figure out when they're ripe. Some varieties will have the stripe darkened, the contrasting greens, but I also saw in a few different places if you pick up a watermelon, there's a bald spot on the bottom where it rested on the ground. If that bald spot is white or pale green, it's not ripe. If it's cream or yellowy, it's ripe. That's the best way to tell a watermelon is ripe. And my mom would always thump them in the store. I've read that doesn't actually tell you anything and that it might actually tell you that they're overripe. Yeah, I could see that being just sort of a thing that you do that you see other people do. Have you ever smelled a cantaloupe? No. That's an amazing smell and that's a good way to tell whether a cantaloupe is right. It should be rather pungent, but of course the cantaloupe from the outside, that rhine. Yes. It's a really good way to tell it's. Right. Give a cantaloupe a good smell and you'll smell it right through that. My deal is I don't like other melons that much. I love watermelon, but cantaloupe has always been a little too bitter for me. Okay. And what's the green one? Honeydew. Honey melon. It's okay. I'm a watermelon guy, though I am not a melon guy of any kind. Really. Oh, not even watermelon, huh? No, I've got no problems with any of it. I'm not like you gross. But I also don't really crave it and like that fruit salad that you'll get with different kinds of melon and breakfast, I don't live for that or anything. What's your ideal fruit mileage? Describe it. Fruit mileage is probably pretty pedestrian. What fruits would I maybe strawberries and blueberries together. Just eating them by the handful. Okay, so you don't do it like a fruit mix? No. All right, what's yours? Well, we'll have big weekends at the lake with lots of families and stuff. And that's always a really good thing to put out for breakfast. If you don't want to cook a big breakfast. Sure. Put out a bunch of pastries and things like that, and then mix together a big fruit. Milan. I'll throw everything in there. Strawberries, blueberries, cut up pineapple, grapes. Any kind of melon is always good to add. Raspberries don't hold up that well. You know, they're pretty soft. So I try to put in things. Chop up a banana, put that in there. I think all that stuff is really good mixed together. I don't know. Mixing the banana in there could get mushy real quick. Yeah, they can get a little mushy. And when a banana becomes discolored by other fruit juices, it's not as appealing looking. It's not as appealing. I generally thought that was funny. I've got one for you, Chuck. Have you ever had a Waldorf salad? Sure. Mayo and grapes and apples? Yeah. And walnuts, maybe. Yeah, apples good to put in there too. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm fine with all those that I would basically eat them all individually. Like, cheap bastard can get us some real breakfast and just be mad for the rest of the morning. Could you fry me up some bacon or make some scratch? Yeah. Would it kill you to make some cinnamon rolls? I do that too. All right, should we take another break? All right, we'll take another break, and we'll finish up with whether or not watermelons are even good for you after all right. After this. Okay, chuck, chemistry and nutrition time, are they good for you? Sure. I don't think they're particularly bad for you. Olivia says that a cup of watermelons has 46 calories, most of them coming from sugar. That's not great. A lot of water. But unfortunately, they also seem to have diuretic properties, which means that it would cause you to expel more water than you took in from it. It does have a little vitamin A, vitamin B, six vitamin C, some amino acids. I don't think it's bad for you. I don't know if it's a health food, necessarily, although unless you cook it and you unleash the power of lycopene, right? Yes. Lycopene is that pigment that makes tomatoes red, sort of related to betacarotene with the orange of the carrots. But watermelon, it actually has more lycopene than tomatoes do. And some people say, hey, a lot of antioxidants in there, so that's got to be good for you. But like you said, you have to cook the watermelon, which you can do. You can grill watermelon. It does very well on the grill, actually. You've done that before? I've never done that. I mean, I like it raw, but you can grill it up. So it says that it causes the meat of the watermelon to be chewy. Does that happen? I haven't experienced super chewy, but I may not have left it on as long as you need to to reach that point, because I don't like chewy things generally. So what about watermelon? Ryan pickles. I've always been. Interested in eating this, and I don't think I've been in too many places where they were there, and I guess when I was, I was in the mood for them. So have you ever had a pickled watermelon rhine? No, because I'm not into pickled things generally. Oh, that's right. Well, I'm going to try them for the both of us. Okay. All right. I did use to salt my watermelon a little bit when I was a kid. Don't do that anymore. Not for any real reason other than I just like the taste as is. But some people put a little chipotle pepper, a little hot spice on there. Sometimes you can juice them. You can make them in alcoholic beverages. Drop a little watermelon ball in there. Yeah. You can also it's kind of akin to salting them, but it goes really well with salty and non sweet tastes. Like you and I had a watermelon salad years back at a place called Harry's Pizza in Miami. Okay. It's very simple, but it was just an explosion of flavor. You had chunks of watermelon, mint, a little snipped up, fresh thyme. Yeah, mint is good with watermelon. Yes. It's amazing stretchatella, which is like a very much waterier mozzarella, like a looser mozzarella and then some chopped up kind of just pecans and all of this in minor amounts. You're not like making the Campbell's chunky super version of this. It's all just kind of sparse because it doesn't take much. Little bit of olive oil. Maybe you throw a couple of grains of salt on there. But you probably are getting enough from the stretch tele to do and everything just works really, really well together. And it's really easy to make. Like you can get all of those ingredients at any grocery store anywhere. And it's an amazing little treat. I strongly recommend that. That sounds delicious. Yeah. Maybe you'd have trouble finding the stretch to tell it. Just use, like a buffalo mozzarella. Just some mozzarella that comes in like a water of some sort. Just use that. Yeah. And don't say musado, no CUDA grass, the whole thing with watermelon. And like you'll see at a party, sometimes someone will bore a hole in a watermelon and turn up a full bottle of vodka and stick it in there. Yeah, good idea. That's the thing. I've never tried it, but Libya points out there's a food writer for The Washington Post that said that's a myth. There's so much liquid in there, the vodka has nowhere to go. Yeah, just pulled it does. Where does the vodka go, though? It goes somewhere. Right. It's not like the idea is it doesn't infuse all the watermelons. Right. I think it will come dribbling out after a while because the watermelon is 92% or 96% water, right? Yeah. So some of it will get sucked in before it's not going to do what you want it to do, allegedly. Right. I've never tried it either. Yeah, but yes, I haven't either. So apparently the same food writer says you should scoop the watermelon out and then marinate it. And I guess being exposed to air, it will dry out some and suck in whatever alcoholic marinade you're marinating it in. Okay, well, that makes sense. But that also brings up the idea of watermelon flavored things like watermelon Jolly Ranchers or chewing gum. I think it's got a better track record than banana. I've come to appreciate banana in my older age. Yeah, but it never tastes like banana. It tastes like whatever they do. I see your point. Yes, totally. But watermelon kind of has that same wrap, which is like, there's nothing that truly tastes like watermelon, no kind of candy. And apparently there's a reason for that. It is because that flavor is probably a product of an organic compound called an aldehyde. Specifically, I don't even know how you would read this. Z compound aldehyde. Sure. Okay. You enjoyed that, didn't you? Yeah, I did. But the flavor of that specific organic compound is green cucumber, melanie, fatty and rindy with a hint of meat fat. I love it. But apparently that breaks down so fast that in the lab, they can't convert that flavor into something they can replicate very easily because they break down so quickly. Right. I just give them a break, basically, is the upshot of all that they're trying. Yes. Now that you say that about banana flavor, I wonder how much of banana flavor seeming like, oh, it's banana flavor. The candy is from the yellow that's always associated with it. So, like, if you handed somebody just, like, a non colored gray piece of candy that had that same banana flavor and didn't tell them what it was supposed to be, what chance would they have of actually identifying it as banana? You should start a line of gray candy. Right. It's called who cares? Josh is famous gray candy, parentheses who cares? Yeah. No, in fact, I think there's enough for a short stuff there. There's actually a lot of information about banana flavoring. Okay, cool. Let's do it. Yeah, maybe we should. But apparently not one on a watermelon flavored short stuff. No, I don't think so. What else, Chuck? You got anything else about watermelon? Not really. I mean, there are watermelon festivals and stuff like that all over the country, if you're into that kind of thing. Sure. It's sort of like anytime a town has a prized fruit or vegetable and it's in the sticks in the United States, they're probably going to have a parade about it. That's right. Which can be a lot of fun. I'm sure. Why not? There's probably lots of watermelon, and everybody loves watermelon, so it can't be all that bad, right? Right. Okay, well, that's it for watermelon, everybody. If you want to know more about watermelon, go check out your local store and get started eating watermelon. And also shout out to a really great episode of Gastropod. They covered the watermelons social and natural history, and that's worth checking out, too. And since I said that's worth checking out, too, that means it's time for listener mail. I've been waiting to read this for an episode that was a little shorter because this is a little baggy, but it's worth reading. And here we are with this email from Ian Bowers. Hey, guys, been listening for the better part of a decade. Well, it might be the bane of some listeners existence. I love the off the wall tangents that you guys fall into. You never know what's going to trigger a memory. Remind you of something that happened the other day. And at the beginning of 2021, I decided to keep a running tally of the best tangents went on throughout the year. Did you see this? No, I didn't. It's fantastic. I noticed many of them tend to be movie or music related, but here are a few of my favorites and what episode they were from. You ready for this? I'm ready. This is great. So in the episode Space Weather, what's that? We had a tangent on John Mayer and the Grateful Dead. Apparently, in the hydro power episode we had a tangent on Butlers Chaps, John Belushi and Stephen Stills. Okay, is the free radical theory of aging wrong? We had a tangent on Justin Timberlake's attempt to revive MySpace. Yeah, I remember that. It sounds like you in space, junk. Ahoy. We had a tangent on lighting parts. Yeah, I remember that one, too. That took me by surprise. Yeah, in Havana Syndrome. We had one on Will Ferrell as Glenn Fray on SNL. Glenn Fry, plus two more Eagle stories and hair loss. The pits, colon the pits. We had one on the smell of Pizza Hut, reminding Josh of Solid Gold how corporate taxes work. Hubba versus bubblegum versus bubblicious. This is like a trip down memory lane. It really is about memory lanes. Put in our live show on Cocoa the Gorilla. I didn't know. Of course, you have tangents there, too. Sure. Huey Lewis is showing his wiener in a movie. Sounds like me. I'm always talking about Huey Lewis wiener. I don't remember that one. Yeah, he showed his penis and shortcuts the Robert Altman movie. Oh, that's right. Just taking a leak into a river. Okay. How reverse osmosis will save the world. Cypress Hill still stands up. It's the quote. And then another short Cypress Hill tangent shows up during heat waves. It's got them twice. Okay, on short stuff, colon Chameleons, both of your favorite scenes in Beetlejuice. Yes. There's a couple of more. Here the creepy legacy of the Cecil Hotel, mysterious bag of crystal bean chuck in the middle of the night. And then a crystal food discussion. Yeah. And then finally yours. Somebody buying the Silence of the Lands house and turning it to an airbnb. Yeah, that's right. So Ian says keep up the great work. I think these things really let both of your personality shine, and I think that's why most dedicated listeners continue to tune in after all the episodes you've released. I'm not going to keep track of Tangents in 2022, but I happily welcome them. Ian, come on, buddy, keep it up. Once a year, keep up with them. We should release Ian from his obligations. This is Ian's cross to bear. Ian can do it or not. Okay. All right. No one else? Yeah, there you go. I think that's fair. If he wants to, cool. If he doesn't, we won't think any less of him. That's right. What's his last name? Tangent Guy. Ian Tangent. Ian Bauer. Are you sure? Okay. Ian Tangent Guy bowers. Tangent Guy is definitely his new nickname. For sure. Well, thanks a lot, Ian. That was very nice of you to do that. And yeah, if you want to do it again, we'll definitely read it next year. And if you want to get in touch with us and try to start an annual thing, take your best shot. You can try it via email at stuffpodcast at 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." | |
Are there undiscovered people? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/are-there-undiscovered-people | In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss whether there are any truly "undiscovered" groups of people left on the planet, the definition of undiscovered -- and why groups might want to avoid modern civilization. | In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss whether there are any truly "undiscovered" groups of people left on the planet, the definition of undiscovered -- and why groups might want to avoid modern civilization. | Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:57:59 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=18, tm_min=57, tm_sec=59, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=28, tm_isdst=0) | 23789064 | 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. Sharks, the most famous and majestic apex predators on Earth. Introducing Shark Week. The podcast. I'm Luke Tipple, the marine biologist and shark expert with over 20 years experience in the field. I'm going to take you on a dive. With me, you are going to learn a lot about sharks, and you'll also hear exclusive interviews with the stars of Shark Week to get a behind the scenes look. Listen to Shark Week, the podcast on Apple podcasts spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Bryant. I'm always there for you, Josh. Yes. As always, yes. How's it going? I'm contractually obligated to do it. I know. So, Chuck, you doing all right? Yeah, dude, how are you? I'm doing pretty good. It's Thursday. It's not Friday, but it's a little gray out for my taste. Yeah. Sprinkling, by the way. I thought it was like pouring rain. Is it not sprinkling? It's sprinkling. That's good. So, Chuck, do you remember if we go back a year or so, may 2008, how many years after Ghostbusters? Let's see. Hold on. Was it 84? 86. 84. And yes, we do know that there is a 24 year sequel coming, by the way. Yes. Ghostbusters Three. That's going to be awesome. Should be the entire original cast. I believe so. Except for Sigourney Weaver, which that's okay. Yeah. Ghostbusters Three coming out. Right. Where are we? So we're 24 years after Ghostbusters, right. May 2008. And the news cycle had this kind of strange occurrence where a bunch of undiscovered human beings were splashed across the front pages of newspapers everywhere. Yeah, sort of. Yeah. So there's several photos of these people living in primitive huts, actually, primitive long houses is what it looks like. Yeah. And it's an aerial photo taken from a low flying helicopter, and they are pissed, aiming their bows and arrows at the camera. I see. The picture is pretty cool. Yeah, it's awesome. Get out of here. Right. And so, yeah, this whole thing made the news cycle. And, Chuck, I imagine I take from what you said before we started recording, that you have a tad bit of disdain for the journalism that was applied to this. Yeah. Well, first of all, should we go ahead and refute it? Why not? Because they were not, in fact, undiscovered people. No. And there's actually a huge distinction between undiscovered people and uncontacted or isolated people. Right, right. But you would not know that by reading The Independent from London, which I'm disappointed because I like that paper. No, I'm sorry. I could care less about the independence. The Guardian I like. Yeah, you like the guardian. Yeah. Not the Daily Mail. The Independent. Right. Here's how the article opens up. Beneath the picture of the clearly savage loincloths and everything with the arrow pointing at the helicopter. Right. Three near naked figures are visible in the forest clearing. Two of them are men, their bodies dowed with a red dye, and they are aiming their bows at the sky. A third figure appears to be a woman, her body blackened, and only her pale hands and face betraying her natural color. This remarkable photograph is the first proof of existence of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes. So they do say uncontacted. That's good. But not everybody did that. Sure. It's a little overblown. That was a fine dramatic reading there, Chuck. I think the funniest thing that would have happened is that he would have shot that arrow and it would have somehow disrupted the propeller of the helicopter and it would have landed safely on the beach for them to be eaten. Yeah, that would have been a nice ending. There are tons of rumors of cannibalism about undiscovered people. Right. In this specific case, there's a guy named Carlos Dosres Morales. My Spanish is a little rusty, but I think that's about right. Not bad. And he is an Indian expert, made air quotes. And these photos were taken in Brazil. Right. This guy led the search for this tribe, and I guess he kind of watched with horror, hopefully, as they were described as undiscovered and no one had ever found them before. He came out and was like, Wait, now I've been following these people for the last 20 years. Right. They're not undiscovered. See, I thought that was part of deploy for him. Was he taken aback by that, you think? I thought maybe that's how he got the funding to get the research team, by saying they could go either way. We'll find out. Well, let's talk about it. Is it even possible to be undiscovered? Well, that's what this podcast is about, buddy. And you know what? It's kind of impossible these days. Yeah. We have things like GPS. We have things like heat sensors that can be attached to airplanes. Sure. Which body heat sensors? Yeah. There is almost complete and total encroachment and harness meant of any square parcel of land on the planet. Most everywhere. Most. But that doesn't mean that there aren't people who live outside, I guess the French who live primitively and remain in a, I guess, primitive state. These are the uncontacted people. Yeah. Isolation, basically, first they call them undiscovered, then they say uncontacted, and then they finally settle on isolated. Right. Which means more than anything is they don't want any part of us. Yeah. We don't want a part of them because we're always interested. We are. And usually with intense, murderous results. Right. These people have learned the hard way. And some of these uncontacted tribes also, we should say, we have no idea what they call themselves. Right. So there's a group actually called Survival International, and they are dedicated to preserving indigenous ways of lives, like these tribes, for uncontacted tribes who have rejected modernization. Right, indeed. Because that's the thing, you think about it when it's undiscovered or they're uncontacted, you kind of pointed out. We just tend to think like, oh, they don't know about civilization or these poor fools, they don't know about television or running Theft Auto Six. And it would clearly be better off if we gave them TV or made them Christians or did whatever made them slaves. Yeah. Which we have a fine tradition of doing. And who's this kid who wrote this? Patrick Kygar. I never heard of him. I hadn't either, but he's pretty good. Yeah. He does say that it goes back to Columbus. It goes well back before that. The Portuguese in particular, love to enslave Africans. And actually, African tribes used to enslave one another. They had a completely different method and system of slavery. Slaves were treated much better among African tribes, especially West African tribes, to where they would eat at the same table as the people that own them. And of course, the Roman Jewish slaves. The Jews spend a good portion of their history as slaves to the Egyptians. Sure. So, I mean, whenever we come upon new people or subjugate them, we have a history of enslaving them. Yeah. We tend to conquer. Like Chris Columbus met the very friendly Arrow Act people, and instead of saying, well, we can learn from them, he thought they would make really good servants. Right. How hard working they are. And they don't even speak English, so who cares? Right, exactly. Well, they were also looked upon as savages are less than human, which definitely aided the subjugation of their, I don't know, blood. Right. Do you know why? Because back before everything was discovered and there was still a lot of undiscovered land and they were making maps, the map makers would often chart these undiscovered lands as being filled with mutant human beings and scary beasts for some reason. Right. Like here there'd be monsters, because we haven't gotten around to mapping this area yet. So just assume that there's some sort of water serpent that's going to eat your boat. Yeah, I guess. I don't know why. They tended to strike fear into people, into explorers. Instead of saying there might be very friendly people, maybe caution, fear of the unknown. You think so? Sure. But Josh, these days, virtually every corner of the earth has been explored, except for, obviously, parts of Antarctica and Amapa, which I'd never heard of in Brazil. And they said that 70% of this territory in northern Brazil is still unexplored forest. Right. So it's possible there are undiscovered people out there, maybe. Right. If there are undiscovered people out there, they are in big trouble, because if the uncontacted or isolated people are any indication in their plight, then, yeah, any undiscovered people are really kind of screwed. 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. We talked about Chris Columbus and Subjugating people, and actually, Columbus is quite the little genocidal maniac. He was. We covered that in one of the other podcasts we did, because not only did he enslave them, he killed them. Had them killed. Entire groups of people are assumed to have been wiped out by European colonization, and not just through brute force, but this type of genocide, especially if you look at a genocide, by its definition that it's the systematic wiping out of a group like people or a population, then it still continues today. As recently as the in Brazil, are you talking about the microbes or are you talking about outright violence? Violence. Okay. Specifically against the accum zoo. Yes, Josh. The Acuonzu, who seemed like a friendly tribe that grew corn and hunted in remote Brazil for thousands of years until they were discovered. And it was discovered that their land could be used for soy cultivation and cattle. Right. And logging, actually. Right. Yeah. So the companies put in logging roads into this virgin territory where the Yakunsu live, and they actually came upon them. And it's part of Brazil's constitution that the moment you meet an uncontacted tribes person or an undiscovered person, all work stops. So what the logging companies and the soybean farming concerns and the cattle ranchers did was hire assassins like death squads when they did meet the acoustics and sent them in and actually masked them with guns. These people use bows and arrows and these guys came in with machine guns and killed all but seven of the entire tribe. Yes. Sadly, they fled. And just last year a newspaper reported that there were only five living acoustic in the world. Right. And that was 1992 or 300 Ad. Very shameful. Yeah. But they are not Josh, the most isolated tribe according to Survival International, are they? Right. No, that would be the Sentinelese. Have you ever heard of these guys? No, I hadn't. And I saw that video you sent me. There's a clip on YouTube. Yeah, I think did you just search Sentinelese and came up? Yes, there was a couple of clips. I think Nat Geo went down there and they did the same thing. They came out of the jungle onto the beach and what it looked like in the video, their interpretation was they were making friendly gestures. I did see another one where they had the bow and arrow out. Yeah. And I was laughing, though. I was watching it earlier. Part of me expected, like, Hippie Rob to come out as their leader. He's like the god. He's like Brando and Apocalypse Now. Exactly. In the Sentinel and Josh, where they are believed to be descended from the very first humans in Africa, and technically we all are. But these people are directly descended from the first group that migrated out about 60,000 years ago, right? Yes. They live on the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. And did you notice how clear that water was and how white those beaches were? I wouldn't leave either. Dude, it's gorgeous in each TV and Xbox when you've got that. Right, so these people will come out of the jungle if you throw coconuts into the water at the beach, right. That's what they were doing, right? Was it? Yeah, this group of people were sitting there throwing coconuts into the water and the Sentinelese came out and we're like, thanks for the coconuts. Well, they probably thought it's raining coconuts from the giant monster. Yeah. But they are actually not primitive stone Age folks, from what they say. Survival International says they actually do make tools and weapons from recovered metal from shipwrecks. Right. Pretty cool. They are actually not threatened. They're very isolated and relatively uncontacted. Right, but they're not threatened. They live on an island that no one really has any interest in. Right? Yeah, exactly. As we saw with the Acunzu, though, if there is money to be made off of the indigenous land, you're in trouble. Soy oil. Survival International actually named all of those oil farming, cattle and logging as the dominant threat to uncontacted tribes. So sad. There's supposedly an estimated 100 uncontacted tribes in the world. Yeah, I was kind of surprised that's a lot. And it's sad that these people are around for 60,000 years doing their thing, doing their thing long before us. And we just come in and say, hey, this would make a great soy farm, so I'm going to massacre you heard about the Bailout and they're like, Right, we're staying here. Not for us. There are five regions that are under the greatest threat right now, and they're in Brazil, Paraguay and Peru. And actually there's tons of evidence. There's groups dedicated like Survival International and other NGOs, and then there's actually government ministries set up in Brazil, in Peru, and I think Paraguay that are in charge of keeping track of these uncontacted tribes, which is really difficult to do. Sure. And a lot of times these uncontacted tribes are slivers offshoots of other tribes that have had their land disturbed by logging or mining oil companies. They would join up with another tribe and no, they just take off into the forest and start a new tribe. No one would know how many there were, that kind of thing. But yeah, they would be living primitively, but they're getting pushed further and further out or being massacred, or they're coming into contact with disease. Right, yeah, that's what I was talking about with the microbes. Violence is obviously a big threat, but they say that a bigger threat are these people that these tribes that lack immunity to these awful diseases that 20th century man has. 21st century man. Excuse me. Sure. It's the future. I'm living in the past. Yeah. There's actually that favorite book of mine, 1491. Charles C. Mann talked about how there is an estimated 100 million people living in the Americas in 114 thousand, 91, and then I think 90% were wiped out by smallpox. Thank you. Like, within a few decades. And Josh, it didn't just happen way back then, like you said. In the 80s, some Christian missionaries made contact with the Zoe tribe in Brazil. And in pretty short form, 45 members of that tribe died from the flu, malaria, and respiratory diseases just like that. And more recently, in 1096, half of the Maroon Hua tribe, I think in Brazil, they were contacted by illegal loggers and half of the drive was wiped out from respiratory illnesses, I think. Awful. So it's not like to bring up one of our favorite movies again. It's not like bringing orange soda to the Waponi wu. Joe versus the volcano. Oh, yeah. It's not like that in real life. I thought you were talking about The Gods Must be crazy. No, another good one, though. But it's not like the Joe versus volcano, it's not all happy go lucky. They usually make contact with them. And even in the case of the Christian missionaries, they were trying to do good, I guess, and ended up killing a lot of them. And the Brazilian government stepped in and actually kicked them out, the religious group, and said, no, you got to get out of here. Yeah. And apparently, even when the thing is, when contact is made as safely as possible, and there's a medical contingency plan in place. It's expected that a lot of the tribes people will die. Right. But if they're made through illegal loggers or a Christian missionary group that doesn't know what they're doing, then, yeah, a lot of people die, if not the entire group. Right. That tribe did recover, though, we should note. Yes. Which is good news. Get out of here, Christian missionary, so we can live peacefully and helpfully. 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. So, Chuck, is it good to even contact these people? Well, it can be good and bad, because obviously, if you make contact and you know a little bit about their way of life, you can protect them. But it's also, like this newspaper article, it also opens them up to being invaded or watched or in this case, what was the tourism trip? Tell him about that. That's awful. Savage tourism. Yeah. Actually, the guy who was responsible for leading the expedition that produced those photographs that made the paper in 2008 was apparently approached by travel agents who wanted him to set up a savage tourism trip. Awful. Which can't you just see a bunch of fat, white Germans and Americans, like, I want to touch you right now. Your whole tribe is wiped out. And now let's get back on the cruise ship and look at the ice sculpture. Like I said, Brazil, it mentions uncontacted and undiscovered people in its constitution, in large part because of that 70% of unexplored forests in just that one territory. They have a real you don't have that in America. We don't have to worry about how to treat undiscovered tribes. We figured out how to treat the ones we're familiar with badly enough. So Brazil apparently recognizes that, like, hey, this is your land, right? And you legally own it. If you're an uncontacted or isolated tribe, nobody can touch it, but then has a really terrible history of following through on stopping people from going in and logging in oil. Peru's history is even worse. They have some uncontacted tribes, some threatened uncontacted tribes, and Peru's president is like I'm not even sure they exist. And by the way, the French oil company that's working in this area where they supposedly exist, I've now just decreed that their work is a national necessity. So when you're an uncontacted tribe and you're butting heads with an oil company, you're going to lose. Yeah, I would say so. But I will say Paraguay. Hats off the Paraguay because they actually the environmental next. Chuck just took his head off too. The environmental Ministry revoked the license of a ranching concern that was just decimating. And I don't mean in the literal like removing 10% term. Right. I mean like decimating all your Latin speakers out there. This land that technically belongs to the indigenous unkind tested tribes there. So they booted them out or they just took away their permits. They took away their permits, which is pretty much tantamount to booting them out. Awesome. Yeah. It's just so sad that when such a modernist point of view to see these undiscovered or uncontacted people and think that they're savages and that their way of life is savage and primitive. It's just they were here first. Well, I mean, we were all here first. We were all here at the same time. But it's just a complete lack of recognition of other people's choices. Yeah. And a respect for other cultures and ways of life. I didn't fly around here. There's no grand theft auto in the jungle. No, there's not. No, there's no auto. If you want to learn more about people, undiscovered or otherwise, you should try typing in people in the handystarpart houseofworks.com. It brings up a hidden sub channel. Really? Yes. And I guess since I said hidden sub channel, that means it's time for what? Chuck listener mail. Yes, Josh, it is. And before we do that, we want to send a thank you to Dan of the pottery Dan Made. He has a little Etsy website. Danmade etsy.com. And he makes pottery and he sent us some really awesome coffee mugs. Yes, dan made very cool mugs. And actually it's my work mug now, is what he is. I notice. Cool detail. You got an octopus on yours with a pipe smoking a pipe. I can't tell what mine is. It's some little dude, but it's just got cool details. It's got swirls in the bottom and little indentions. And only some parts of it are glazed and others raw. Dan Made knows what he's doing. So thanks, Dan. And you know what? You want to bring up people who have been sending us little gifts and it's just really nice to come into work and have someone what was her name that sent us the homemade twinkie, the kid shirts? I don't remember her name. It's like Kaya or something like that. Kyla, I believe. Okay. She should write in because I told her that I would mention her little website, too. Okay. Yeah, we got twinkie the kid Tshirts. Because remember we talked about how badly we wanted something? So with that, listen to her, ma'am. All right, I'm going to call this organ donation details from someone who knows. Hi, Josh. And Chuckers and Jerry. I'm an anesthesiologist who specializes in organ transplantation, specifically livers and kidneys. In fact, we performed a liver transplant just last night, and I'm home resting after what is always an exhausting procedure. He thought we might want a few more details about organ donation. So he says that they do not get to meet the donor and the recipient until after a period of time, usually a year, and only after both agree to meet. But we also had people that wrote in and said they met like, weeks later, so it might vary by hospital or state. Yeah, I'm not sure. Or maybe there's just an agreement you go into, but he says they can trade letters and get very basic, unidentifiable information about each other, but it all gets censored by the organ procurement organization. This is because if the recipient does not live or the organ fails, the recipient or donor won't blame the donor and their families. Also, if the organ works, they don't want the parties involved feeling unduly indebted to the donor. After all, it's supposed to be a free gift with no strings attached. After they have both had time to adjust to their new lives and agreed and prepared to meet, they can meet. That being said, people can still find each other if they are looking and turn to the same websites specifically designed to link donor to recipient, although it is strongly discouraged. So maybe that was the deal. They did it. Somebody came up with the website to make money off of people who want to meet the people who donated a kidney to them. What a great world we live in. I thought your listeners would want to know this, and I hope it encourages would be donors that they don't have to meet the recipient if they think it would be too difficult. Regards, Todd. Thanks. Todd. The anesthesiologist? Yeah. And didn't he say that you die very easily if you're over anesthetize during a liver? Yeah, he PS has a here. If you want to know why anesthesiologist would need to specialize in liver transplantation, ask yourself if you would like to wake up during a procedure where patients don't tolerate anesthetics very well and if you would like your new liver to have something to cleanse. That's what he says. Very mysterious, Todd. Yeah, I just asked myself that, and I have no answer. I don't either. So if you bring people to the brink of death and you want to tell us about it, or if you make money off of genuine humankindness. We want to hear your ploy. Sure, you can write it in an email and send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Want more Housetuffworks? Check out our blog on the Houseofworks.com Homepage, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-12-05-sysk-cake-final.mp3 | Cake: So Great. So, So Great | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/cake-so-great-so-so-great | Cake has been around for a long time, but mostly less than great forms. It took the Industrial Revolution, the advent of plentiful sugar, and some good old American know-how to come together to make the cake we know and love today. | Cake has been around for a long time, but mostly less than great forms. It took the Industrial Revolution, the advent of plentiful sugar, and some good old American know-how to come together to make the cake we know and love today. | Thu, 30 Nov 2017 16:59:21 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=16, tm_min=59, tm_sec=21, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=334, tm_isdst=0) | 67656804 | 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 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@ibmcom. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstepworkscom hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. Three of us are together, which means it's time for stuff you should know about. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake. Cake. This made me just frankly want to put my face in a cake. I know. Sheet caking. Oh, man. I know we had a discussion about cake or pie quite a while ago. I don't remember exactly where you landed on that. I'm surprised you can only think of one one time we've done that. Yeah. Cake or pie? Both. Yeah, same here. Why choose between two wonderful things that you don't have to choose between? Agreed. As a matter of fact, every once in a while, you'll hit, like, the birthday party jackpot, where they'll have, like, cake amp pie, and you're like, Looks like I'm in heaven. But today, Chuck, we're not talking about pie, although we can't talk about one pie in particular because we're talking about cake. It turns out I saw this somewhere that Boston cream pie is actually a cake. Oh, really? Yeah. Surprise. Boston. Sorry to ruin your day. They're probably the ones that are, like, that are saying that. Oh, yeah, probably. Maybe. I don't know. The article on it was written in a thick Boston accent. Yeah, it is a cake. I'm not sure why, but I just know it's a cake now. And I want to give a hat tip here. I mean, we both worked off of the Houseworks article, but I also found a lot of good stuff on a site called What's Cooking America? Did you run across them? I did. They are good, man. Clearly, their niche is cooking, baking, all things like culinary. But they've got some really well researched articles on their site about the history of cakes and things like that. Yeah, that's good stuff. Kudos to you. You remember Kudos, the granola bar? These are great. Oh, yeah. Are those not around anymore? No, those are gone and then rip. Also, Bonkers candy. So Kudo went the way of the dodo. I never heard of Bonkers. They were like a fruit chew, but really had some chew to it not like starburst, it just disintegrates. They were chewy. They were good. They're about as good as it gets, really, candy wise. Yeah, I know you've noticed they need to chill out here with the suites at work. Oh, dude. Like, they have Little Debbie star Crunches and Swiss cake rolls and stuff all over the place. I know. We don't need that in here. There's like three or four people who are, like, walking around toothless now, just rotten right out of their heads. Well, and also not you. My toothlessness is for different reasons. Yours is from a Christine. And I've also noticed, though, there's this weird mix in our office now because they try to get super healthy, so there will be, like, Swiss cake rolls next to a bag of Clam chips or something. What chips? Clam chips sound kind of good. Seaweed strips. Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. Or like, just figs. Yeah, it's like a Fig Newton without the good tasting part. We take figs and we mash them up. Then we wrap them in cellophane and you eat them for $5 a piece. And your child spits them out because they know better, right? Yes, I'm with you. I do think it's gotten a little out of hand. It's basically just a huge test of willpower at the office, like, every moment. Yeah, I don't indulge. I'm not getting into those Swiss cake rolls. But it is tough to walk by the miniature candy bar section, right, and not be like, well, just one of those little guys. Look how tiny it is. Right. And then the next thing you know, you get like, ten rappers laying around your desk thinking, like, what have I done? I know post Halloween stuff, too, so maybe it'll die down. I don't think that's going to happen. But yeah. Again, though, today, I guess if you replaced all of those candy bars with cakes that were just sitting around, you get zero complaints for me. Well, and at my house at Halloween, we gave away two things. We gave away whole slices of pound cake and just figs. It was the worst house in the block. Are you a pound cake fan? Not typically. Like, I would never order a pound cake or say, hey, can someone bake me one for my birthday? You wouldn't say, like, Clark me a pound cake? No, I would never ask someone to Clark me a pound cake. But occasionally, like, in my life, someone has had pound cake and said, would you like some pound cake? And it's good. Good sugary and dense stuff. Yeah, I like it because you can just eat it with your hand. Sure. Just pick it up and eat it yeah, it's like cake on the go. Yeah. I am not a fan of lemon cakes. Oh, really? It's like a lemon pound cake. I'm not into well, okay, let's just get it out there. What's your favorite cake of all time? Oh, jeez. I'm going to toss it up between a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. It's Bill Clinton's favorite. Well, you know, as Bill goes, chuck, which is not true. That was a good COO. The carrot cake with cream cheese frosting or like, a red velvet cake. Really? Yeah. Well, that's the Southern butter cream cake or cream cheese frosting. Yeah. You can go either way. Yeah. Emily's favorite of all time, hands down, is the Waldorf Astoria red velvet cake, which is red velvet cake with a frosting that is basically only, like, shortening, vanilla, and sugar. That sounds nice. It's not a cream cheese thing. What's your favorite favorite of all time? Well, everybody knows that cake perfection was achieved sometime in the 20th century when public grocery stores started selling their yellow cake with buttercream frosting. Oh, yeah. There's no better cake on the planet like a yellow sheet cake. It's simple, but it's tasty. It doesn't need any dressing up, but if it does, we'll just add some more frosting in the shape of balloons on top. Right. It's just perfection. It's the perfect cake. I love it. I can eat it morning, noon, and night. I can eat stale stuff I found in the dumpster behind publix. I can eat the fresh stuff right out of the oven so hot that it burns my mouth. I would eat it anyway that it was given to me. I'm a big frosting and icing guy, too, so a corner piece of sheet cake is pretty much heaven. Yeah, that is the tops. What is Yumi's favorite cake? Yumi's is actually the same as mine. We both are junkie for public's cake, to tell you the truth. I have to say, she introduced me to the wonder of Japanese cakes, and there's this little known fact about Japan. It loves to take I shouldn't say it's probably a lot of people know this, but it loves to take things that other cultures came up with and then improve them 10,000%. And one of the things that they've done that with is the French bakery. So if you go to Japan, you'll see all these cute little kind of Provence style French bakeries everywhere. That's still the best baked goods you've ever had in your life. Right. Better than Paris. Yes. Oh, by far. By far. That's very controversial. It is. But I'm telling you, you would just be like, Josh was right. This is better. I'm not kidding. They've improved on it, and they're very deferential, so they're like, oh, this is crap compared to what the French are making. However, you would say that in Japanese, but they're actually wrong. It actually is better. But one of the things that they make that's just top notch is what they call cheesecake. It is not what you or I would call cheesecake at all. It's more like a yellow spongy cake. I don't know where the cheese thing comes in. Maybe there's a little cream cheese in there. I'm not quite sure. But you and I would call it like kind of a dense yellow sponge cake. But it is very tasty. And that's kind of a Japanese tradition that I would guess Yummy would say is one of her favorites. Okay. And just a little shout out. There's a place in Toronto Next time we're there, I'm going to take you there. All right. Actually, that's not true. I brought you a cake from there, from Uncle Tetsu's. Oh, yeah. Cheesecake bakery. Yeah. That's a Japanese cheesecake. Oh, that was good. Yeah, they're the bomb. All I know is get out of my face with any coconut or any pineapple. I'll take that. I'll just slide that over to your desk then. Yes. Not into it. Keep them coming. I don't even like German chocolate cake. Really? I love German chocolate. Alright. Have you ever heard the German chocolate cake and red velvet cake are the same? It's actually not true. I haven't heard that. I had heard that many times. It's not true. But that German chocolate frosting is like, man, that's good. I'm not into that. So I think that's what it is that I don't like. I like sort of a tradition. buttercreamy or just good old fashioned birthday cake icing type thing. Yeah. And surely you agree public is the pinnacle of that. I don't know if I've ever had a publix cake. Oh, I go to publix three times a week. So next time I'm just going to well, now that you say that, it might be best that you stay away because you're going to start adding they sell it by the slice, which is dangerous. Oh, they do? Because that's the only way I would want to do it. They sell it by the sliced chuck. Like, I can't bring a whole cake in my house. Be sure you look closely, because they have. Yeah, it would be they sell also the same kind with, like a cream cheese frosting. You want yellow cake with buttercream frosting? Okay. Just give it a shot and let me know what you think. All right. The funny thing is we really haven't even started yet. No. Do you want to take a break? No. Let's at least give out like three facts first. Okay, well, I think we just gave a lot of facts about what the greatest cakes in the world are. All right, how about this then? I'll start you out with the word cake. Apparently it's an old Norse word, caca, which is kind of funny because I don't know where it came from. But here in America, caca means dudu. Yes, but ka ka is where the original word supposedly came from. Right. And a lot of English words have like, Germanic or Norse origins. Do you know that? Yeah. So cake, the word cake is of English origins, so is bread. And apparently the bread and the cakes from back in the day, say, during the medieval era, they were very similar. Probably the only difference was the cake might be slightly smaller and it was definitely sweeter. So cake was like a sweeter version of bread back then? Yeah, they'd add a little honey to it, but it's not like what we think of as cake today. But that's not where the first cakes originate. They actually go way further back than that. Right. Is that true? Yeah, it's true. That may be a little too far back. Yeah, I think so. But basically around the time I believe Egypt, the Pharaonic, Egypt, they were making cakes using hot stones and honey and some sort of grain mashed up. Right. It seems like I bet the Chinese were doing it too. Didn't say in here. Right. But it seems like anytime you're talking about who did stuff first, it's like Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, pretty much, I mean, ancient civilization, but maybe not China, because it doesn't seem like a very cakey culture. No, I'm not sure about Chinese cakes. I don't think I've ever had one. I bet you someone knows, though. And I bet you there's like one of the best things in the world. It's probably a Chinese cake. You know, one of the other things, too, that I didn't realize, that I learned from this article, Chuck, was that a lot of the cakes you see around the world that you would mistake for customary or traditional cakes for that culture, they're actually relatively new. The cake that we know and love and understand is very much a 19th century American invention that came out of the Industrial Revolution. That's right. Clearly, like in Germany, like you talked about, in the 15th century, they were making cakes. They were actually even serving cakes at birthdays. And by all accounts, that's probably the first people to start the birthday cake tradition. And I think they even put candles on top. Well, no, the Greeks put candles on top, but it wasn't like happy birthday cake. It was more like, hey, this cake is round like the moon, and we're going to put candles on it to make them glow. And they're probably huge candles, now that I think about it. Yeah. The Greeks gave us the round cake and putting candles on the cake to honor Artemis, to make the cake look like the moon. And Artemis was the goddess of the moon. Right, right. So they were like, Look, Artemis, what do you think of this cake? She'd be like, It needs some frosting. That's right. And then the Germans and the 1400 started doing birthday cakes, and then the 17 hundreds were full on like it's a kid's birthday party. It's got candles, it's a cake. And we'll sing some depressing German song. Right. It makes you reflect on your own existence. That's right. And it's eventual. And so by the time people were making birthday cakes in Germany, there was a long, long tradition of cakes already, and the word cake had started to originate in medieval Britain. But there was such a thing as a cheesecake already. The Romans created that and called it placenta. Seriously? Really? Yeah. The Greeks had created something that was basically a prototype with a fruitcake placus, I believe. Yeah, they called it feces. Right. So there were all these kind of cakes and breads and things that were starting to be developed. And I think even that pound cake that you're not so hip on came before the Industrial Revolution, too. Okay. So there's stuff that you would kind of recognize as cakes, but the idea of a cake, what Americans call a cake and know and love is a cake that came out of the Industrial Revolution. The show is sponsored by cake. Eat some today. All right, so let's take a break. We definitely gave way more than three fags. Yeah. We have earned our keep. Then. We're going to come back and talk about a little chemistry 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. It's 2022. When things look different, like doctors visits, for example, sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for nonemergency situations, like a sinus, infection or allergy. And that's why teladoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video. That's right. Doctors are standing by 24/7. So you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. You can see for yourself why teledoc is ranked number one by JD Power and Telehealth satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Teleducoc is available through most major health plans and many employers. But even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use teledoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teletoc. comStuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's T-E-L-A-D-O-C comStuff. For JDPower 2021 award information, visit JDPower. comAWARDS. All right, so we're back and we promised talk of chemistry, and I think we talked about this briefly on one show. I have tried to bake I did a birthday cake for Emily a couple of years ago, red Velvet Waldorf Storia cake. And it was okay. It wasn't pretty, though. What do you mean? It was lopsided or there was a horn growing out of it. It didn't look like a cake you would buy in a store, but it tasted really good. I bet it was made with a lot of love, too. Oh, of course. But my deal is I'm not a great baker because baking requires you to be very precise with your ingredients because it is chemistry. I'm a much better cook, right. Because I'm a fly by the seat of my pants. And throw a little of this in there. Throw a little of that in there. Can you do that with no. There's much more forgiveness in general cooking than baking. Yeah. Cooking is an art. Baking is a science, for sure. Yeah, that's what they say, right? Yeah. Well, that's what I say, too. You didn't make that up, right? I think I did okay. With a cake, what you're doing is producing a chemical reaction. And I knew that, but I had no idea on this granular level that this article gets into just how much of a chemical reaction baking a cake is. Yeah. Pretty neat. The understanding of it, too, to me. So you want to start with a evening agent, right? That's right. That's how you get from batter, which is kind of flat and soupy and wet, to a nice tall cake. The reason it rises is because of a leavening agent. And way back in the day, they used to use yeast. They use yeast for everything. They would make some beer, they would make a cake, they'd make some bread. They would throw it into the eyes of their enemy. They would in a fight, a dirty fight, and then eventually, yeet, kind of fell to the wayside a little bit. They realized that there's other ways to make cake rise. One of the big ways is to actually introduce air into it. And if you, say, beat some eggs, what you're doing? You're not just breaking the eggs down into their kind of components or like a mishmash of all of their components. You're also introducing air into that mix, which will eventually, as we'll see, transfers into the cake to make it rise. Yeah. And when you're following a recipe, if you've never baked a cake before and it says cream the butter and sugar or sift the flour, you can't just say, I don't have a sifter. So I'll just throw the flour in here. Like your cake is screwed. Yeah, because it's not just like, oh, that makes a flour pretty stiffing. Flour introduces air into the whole mix, too. Yeah. This is all very important stuff. So you can't cheat any of these steps. No, you can't. You really need to follow a cake recipe pretty closely. I mean, I guess if you're a master baker and you know what you're doing, you can do something in lieu of something else. Sure. But if you're just an ordinary, non professional baker at home, just follow the recipe and do what they say. Yeah, because you couldn't say, oh, I'm going to substitute this flour for a bunch of salt. Not only would it taste radically different, like you're affecting the chemical composition of the mixture. True. Unless you're making a traditional South Georgia salt cake. Right. Which you can also use on those snowy days to clear the road, too. That's right. So you've got yeast, Asian, you've got introducing air through, like, whipping something. And I found this mention of a recipe that called for four eggs to be beaten for 2 hours. Holy cow. So you can imagine that everybody was pretty psyched when chemical leavening agents were introduced in the mid 19th century. So that was an old recipe. Yes. In other words, you couldn't just put the mixer on with your eggs and leave. No. And go get on social media. No. This is with your arm. Yeah. I imagine if the person you were working for asking for a cake, you're just like, this is a bad day. This is going to be a bad day. Did you beat for 3 hours? Right. And the whole reason, again, you're doing this is to introduce some air. Right. But if you could use something else, say like sodium bicarbonate, also known as baking soda, and you mixed it, which is a base, and you added another ingredient in there, which is like an acid, say, like buttermilk or yogurt or vinegar. Right. Yeah. Like in a vinegar cake, that sodium bicarbonate, that base and the acid are going to mix together and form a chemical reaction and release CO2. Yes. And this is how modern cakes rise. CO2 is released through this chemical reaction and it goes and bubbles up through the cake and makes the cake rise with it. That's what levening agents do. They take air and they expand it and make it the cake. Yeah. Like when you slice a piece of cake, not so much pound cake because it's way more dense, or other non flowered cakes, but your standard birthday cake, you slice it up and you see those pockets, those holes? Those are air holes. Those were where the bubbles were. And we'll get to that a little more. But that's very important stuff. That's a famous chef's apron. Baker's apron. Ask me about my air hole. Fat source. Very important. Sure. Fats improve the texture of a cake, allow it to be moist, flavorful, because we all know fat tastes great. And butter people can use shortening, which is good. Margarine is good. Cooking oil, this can all be used. But for me, just get some real butter. And I say that for all foods. I went on a butter, not a kick. No, no, no. I am on a butter kick. I went on a butter a boycott of swords for a while, like real butter. But now I'm back on butter. Yes, I know what you mean. I tend to think butter is healthier of all of them, too. Yeah. Although olive oil has a beet, it's just such a radically different taste. Yeah, sure. Especially when you're baking with it. Although, have you ever had an olive oil cake? I don't think so. I don't remember where I had it. But man, they are good. Really? Yes, they're surprisingly good. But it is definitely its own distinct thing, you know what I'm saying? Like, subbing olive oil out for butter is going to give you a weirdo recipe that no one's going to like, but they might pretend they do if they like you. Yes, but they don't really like that. Right. And all these fat sources, they can be used sometimes together or swapped out for butter. But again, you've got to know what you're doing. You can't just say, well, I'm not going to use butter, I'm going to just use the same amount of cooking oil as melted butter. Right. And one of the reasons why swapping something out for butter in particular, too. I mean, butter gives it its richness, it helps improve its moistness and texture. Right. Butter is great, but butter also has a tendency to incorporate air. When you cream butter, when you start to mash it around, that's the whole reason they're not telling you to cream the butter just to make it look good before you add it to the battery. You're actually incorporating air there. So that butter is serving both as a fat and as a leavening agent in that recipe. Correct. If you come across a recipe that calls for butter that must be creamed, there's something else going on besides just getting a buttery taste out of your cake. That's right, sweetener. I was about to say sugar instead of sweetener. Might as well, though. But let's be honest, you can use honey and stuff, you can use agave, artificial sweetener. But sugar is the best thing to use, in my opinion. It bonds best to water molecules. It's really going to help. That will help everything be nice and moist and soft. And you don't want to overdo it, though. You want to use, again, the right amount of sugar, because not only could it affect the taste, but it could make the texture, it could be too tough. Yeah. And sugar is another one, too, where if you see sugar and you sell that out for something else, it can have an impact on that chemical reaction, for sure, because it does all those things you're talking about. Like one of the things it does is the crystalline structure of sugar actually cuts through the batter to help release CO2 more easily. And like you said, it binds to water, which means it does two things. It locks it in so that it keeps moisture in, but it also sugar also robs that water from some of the proteins and the starches that give the cake its structure, which means that they're not going to be able to become tough and dense like you are saying, because sugar is already grabbed onto that water molecule. Right. And sugar in particular, you're not going to get the same thing with, like, stevia or honey. It's not going to have the same effect. It's crystalline sugar, and it doesn't have to be white, refined sugar. You'd have the same effect, I think, with, like, turbonato cane sugar, too. Yeah. And if you don't want to use sugar and you want to use honey, look up a recipe that is specific to honey, and they will help account for that in certain ways. But it's still, to me, white sugar, do it. Right. And then sugar also gives it that nice golden brown color through the mayor's reaction. Yes, that and the eggs, for sure. Yeah. Well, we're at eggs, sugar and eggs. Eggs are big. Yeah. Especially they're ostrich eggs. Eggs. I know eggs have proteins in them. Right. And there's a couple of things in there. Those proteins help give structure to the cake, I believe. Yes, absolutely. The emulsifiers and the yolk, it's also kind of serves as a binding agent. There are a lot of things, including flour, that help bind things together. But those eggs and those yolks very much do, because there are certain things in cake sometimes that don't want to mix. Yeah. Like the water. Yeah. And the egg comes together and says, can we all just kind of stick together here? Literally nice. Yes. That wasn't meant to be a pun. That meant that. And I think the two big emulsifiers are actually in the egg yolk. Cholesterol and lecithin are found in egg yolk, and they're like, hey, everybody, come on, let's hang out. That's right. And there's also fats and egg. And we already mentioned that fats are awesome and taste delicious. Plus, also, if you're using whole eggs, most of the egg white is water. The vast majority is water. And as we'll see, water and liquids play a big role in the cake, too. The idea of people figuring all this out through millennia of little contributions here or there, it's just a blessing on humanity. It is. It's a really neat accomplishment that everyone came together to figure this out over the span of time in the wonderful kitchens on cold winter days that were like, you've got, like, a nice cake baking in the oven, and you're contributing to humanity's knowledge of being great. Yeah. The carcasses of a lot of bad cakes have been left in its wake, sure to get where we are today. A lot of unhappy families and a lot of unpleasant conversations about those cakes. But still and I bet in the olden days when times were a little tougher, they probably still ate those cakes. Oh, yeah, I would guess so. You probably didn't toss it out to the mules. No, you gave them to sailors who were glad to have them. All right, that brings us to flour. Very. Important ingredient in most baked goods and flour is what is going to really be the binding agent. It's really going to hold everything together, give it a structure. Yeah, a lot of structure and strength. And when you mix these proteins with water, it's going to form gluten and gluten. I know a lot of people hate gluten, my wife being one of them, but gluten is a pretty key ingredient here, although I will say they've come a long way now with gluten free cakes they have, it doesn't make you quite as sad to eat one now. They're pretty good. Now, if you get a good gluten free cake, well, the cheesecake is gluten free, so that's okay with me. I mean, your standard substitute, flour, they've just gotten a lot better, I think. Yup. So in a standard glutinous cake, that gluten from the flour mixing with the water forms a gel, and it gives it that structure, it gives it that consistency, the texture that you're looking for. But again, the sugar is robbing the proteins and the starches from getting too much water, because the more water it gets, the tougher the cake is going to be, the more gluten. So you actually want to make sure that your sugar is taking away some of the liquids, but also the type of flour you use has a lot to do with how tough your cake is going to turn out. So there is such a thing as cake flour. Yes. That's something like seven and a half percent protein, which is going to translate into less gluten when you mix it with water, right? Yeah. So it's going to be a lighter, fluffier cake, and then there's all purpose flours. Ten and a half percent bread flour is 12%. And depending on what kind of consistency you want in your cake, you would use these different kinds of flour. And all of it comes down to the amount of gluten that's going to be produced when it interacts with the liquids. That's right. And finally, that brings us to the liquids. The liquids are obviously going to help keep things moist. They hydrate those proteins, they allow all those chemical changes to take place, but that liquid does when you actually bake the cake. When it comes time to put it in the oven, which we're going to get to here in a second, that creates a steam. Like that liquid cooks out and vaporizes, so that steam expands the air cells and that volume, and it really lends itself to the light, airy structure and texture that you're going to get. Yeah, it blows up the CO2, bubbles in it even further, which helps make the cake rise. Plus, it also chuck fosters that chemical reaction between the acids and the bases that act as leavening agents that release CO2 in the first place. The presence of liquids in the presence of water, specifically, I think, in heat, really make that CO2 go berserk all right. Well, we should talk about ovens. Yeah. I was about to say you can't bake a cake without an oven, but apparently you can. You can in Egypt. Yes, ancient Egypt. All right, so let's say we're not in ancient Egypt. Let's say we're in regular North America. And Europe in the 18th century is basically when the semiclosed oven came around. And before this, if you were baking cakes, well, you were probably a professional baker, because these ovens weren't in every household. Right. And even in the 18th century, they weren't in every household either. But they become a lot more prevalent around that time. That was a big first step towards people baking at home. Not just cakes, but anything in cake history. That was a huge, monumental moment when the enclosed oven became kind of ubiquitous among households. For sure. Because what you get there is consistency. You get a consistent, even temperature. And of course, that just got better and better over the years with advances in oven technology. And more than anything, you get a reliable temperature, ideally. Right. And if you have those things, you can make a cake after cake after cake that your family won't be mad about. The sailors will stop coming by and being like, you got any more of them terrible cakes you made? Sailors? Yeah. That's who you give the terrible cakes to, bumping sailors. Sure. All right. So with the oven in particular, I didn't realize this, but you know how the liquid and the heat and the sodium bicarbonate and the acids are mixing together to make the cake rise? Yes. That is actually a really fragile state of affairs. While the cake is baking and the structure, the proteins and the starches and the gluten are actually solidifying and making this cake. And if you mess with the oven, meaning like, you open and close the door too often or you slam it shut too hard, the change in temperature on the one hand can cool those gases and make your cake fall. And it makes a wound sound, as it does, as everyone knows, and then the air pressure from slamming the door can burst those CO2 bubbles. And again, the proteins haven't had a chance to solidify and make the cake structure, so the cake can fall from that as well. And if you'll notice, once the cake gets to a certain point, if it falls, it falls in the middle. The outside usually stays up because that part has solidified already. The stuff in the middle hasn't quite cooked through. So that would be the part that falls. And that also proves my point. That's right. You also want to put your cake in the middle. Where you place your cake in the oven can even cause problems. It's very finicky. Cakes are sure. But again, it's a science experiment. Yeah. They're basically like, do this right. Jerk. Or I might just take a nap here in the middle of the cake. Maybe it'll burn. Maybe I'll stick up your whole house. But like you said about opening the door, ideally, you know, the temperature of your oven, you know how long it takes, and maybe don't wait until literally, you think I can pull it out. Although if you're a good baker, you're not sweating it. You pull it out, and, you know, it's pretty much ready. Right. But definitely don't keep opening it. Try and lease. Wait till the end. And if you have they're not quite as in fashion now, I don't think. But ovens with a window and a light, you can obviously take a little peek that way. Sure. Those are kind of bad fashion, right? Or are they? Not that I know of. I feel like I don't see those a lot. Do you have a window in your oven? Sure, of course. What am I, a communist? Do you? Yes, with the light. Oh, man. What do you have? Just a stainless steel door. That's a dishwasher, man. Oh, that's my problem? Yeah. Like, my cakes always come out wet and soapy. Wait a minute. Do I have a window? Sure you do. I think everyone does. I literally cannot picture my kitchen right now. Jerry, he's got a window, right? I've been baking in the dishwasher, Jerry, and I say, yes, you have a window, and you're up. Yeah, that might have just said something very dumb. So it's staying in now. Well, I do know. You know what? I think I do have a window, but I don't have a working light. That's why I think I don't have a window. I need to replace the light bulb. Yes, but who wants the bottom of that? You can go to, like, any big box hardware store. Hardware store off the Internet. Sure. I don't replace light bulbs in my house. Matter of fact, I think they probably sell them at the grocery store, even. You go find yourself some golf wax, and you're probably near the refrigerator. Oven, light bulbs. All right. The heat of the oven is very important. So depending on how good your oven is, it may be a little off, maybe a little hotter or cooler. So you might want to purchase an oven thermometer just to give it a double check, because baking is science. And when you think that cake is done, take a little peek through your window that everyone has, or open it. If you really think it's done, get a little tap in the center. If it springs back, then it's probably done. If you're an experienced baker, you just know by looking at it. Or you can always do the old toothpick trick, which is sticking that toothpick, wooden toothpick in the center of the cake and pull it out. And if there's no cake on it, then it's pretty much done, right? If it's covered in goo, that means it's not done. That is correct, Chuck. But then you can also lick that goo off that toothpick. That's not bad. No, you can, but it's just never quite as good. I think it always tastes like disappointment, you know what I mean? Because you want it to come out clean. Anytime you're doing that, you're never really putting it in, expecting it to come out battery. So even though you do get to like it, that's like the one plus side of that experience. I think that's true. And if your cake is done, you're not finished baking it yet, even you need to let it cool in the pan. Yeah, that's a big one. You don't just pull the cake out and turn it upside down in your sink and eat it with your hands while it's still hot. Right. That's not the way to do it. No, no. You want to let it finish in the pan cooling because it's still doing a little bit of baking, and it's getting used to its new room in the kitchen and saying, all right, this is a different temperature in here. I think I can hang with you guys. Yeah, I'm alive. Ten or 15 minutes later, get out that wire rack, flip it over, and ideally, it comes out all in one nice thing. Yes. And the other good thing about letting it cool in the pan first, too, is when you cool it on the wire rack, it won't get those wire indentations in the cake because it's stable enough. I never thought about that. Nobody likes us. Sure, you can fill it in with a little extra frosting. Actually, now I think about it, that's great. Those indentations are just fine. The frosting grooves, in other words. Yes. Should we take a break? Yes. All right, we're going to talk, well, just about other cakey stuff right after this. 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We're going to come up with something called baking powder. And I never knew this, but this is the difference between baking soda and baking powder. Baking soda is just sodium bicarbonate. Baking powder is sodium bicarbonate and two other dry, acidic minerals that when dry, they don't do anything. You can mix them together all day long, and they just sit there like, what? But in the presence of water and heat, then they start to react chemically with one another. So you can add just a little baking powder, and you don't need an extra ingredient like yogurt or vinegar or some other acid. It's got the base and the acid that's going to produce the CO2 in there. That was a huge advancement for cakes, but it actually came kind of toward the end of cake advancement. Prior to that, just the mass production of the Industrial Revolution had a big impact on cakes, among many other things, but definitely had an impact on the spread of cake baking, especially in the United States. Yeah. And then so just leave that baking soda in your fridge to soak up the stink. Sure. That's all it's good for. Well, that you can use the baking soda for a lot of stuff. Yeah. It also gets stink out of, like, clothes, too. Oh, yeah. You can use it to well, that's it. No, like school science project. You want to make a volcano. Yeah. Vinegar and baking soda. That's right. I love your parents help. Yeah. Pre packaged cake mix was a very big deal when it came out in the 1930s, but it was a company named PDuff and Suns, and they said, we got a problem here. We got too much molasses on our hands. This is kind of how a lot of great things have been invented. They had too much of something. They say, well, what can we use this for? So they got to work. And they said, Mr. John Duff, the owner, said, you know what? The little wheat flour in there with this molasses, little shortening, some spices. We got a gingerbread mix that we can sell to the public. All you got to do is add water, dumb dumb. And you can bake yourself some gingerbread cookies. Yeah. And the public went hooray. Because, remember, they had ovens now in their houses. And the Idea that you could just get A Mix From The store and just add water was huge. It was a huge change. And what's interesting is this whole Pete Duffin sun story. They're out of Pittsburgh, by the way, from them coming up, because I think they quickly went from just gingerbread mixes to cake mixes themselves as well. But that busts Several myths, actually, some longstanding Food myths. Yeah. One Of Them is that cake mix came out of a Surplus of flour from World War II. That's where the cake mix Came from. Yeah. I mean, premade cake mixes did get way more popular after World War II, but it wasn't because there was so much flour. No. It was because that a lot Of The Food companies started Getting into pre mixed foods that You Could Make pretty easily in Your kitchen. But then the Other one, I love this one. There's this long standing myth or this story about a guy named Ernest Dictter who back in the 1950s, Ernest Dicker. He was a psychologist. I believe he came up with the term focus group. He came up with the whole idea of focus groups to help companies figure out why their new product wasn't doing so well, or how to make a product that they hadn't launched yet. Even More appealing. This guy came up with that whole idea of focus groups, right? Correct. So he's also credited with being the man who saved cake mixes. Because cake mixes came out, everybody kind of loved him. And then supposedly sales went flat. And Ernest Dickter got a focus group together and found out that women who made cakes using these cake mixes felt guilty, but they weren't contributing anything to their families. They were just adding water and making a cake and then quietly sobbing while their family ate it. Talk about the patriarchal brainwashing. Right. So dictor realized that the best thing that these cake mix companies could do is to remove the dried egg ingredients from the mix until the consumer to add her own eggs. So then that way she was contributing. Well, it was a huge success and Cake Mixes took off and became part of the American pantheon from that point on. Right. Not true. No. Yes. That is a total urban myth. Most of these premade mixes for years had said to add your own eggs because it just was better to add fresh eggs. It tastes better and perform better. So I don't know how that gets started. The Myth? Yeah. Was it? I'm not sure either. Okay. I don't know. But it is a longstanding food myth that you can find, like, some very credible sources who say, like, oh, this happened. It's just everywhere. But it turns out that's not true. But I think The Reason Why It Has Had Legs For So long is because Ernest dicker is actually rightfully credited with saving the cake mix market right through a focus group. And he did find that women were kind of they didn't feel guilty about it not contributing more to the cake mix. I think they were more bored by it. So he advised companies to figure out a way to make cake baking about way more than just baking the cake. And so companies decided that they were going to start promoting cakes as just the beginning part. That the real point of baking cakes was to make these elaborate, amazing cakes that you decorated. And it took you hours and hours to make these things. And it was like a scene of, like, Humpty Dumpty on a brick wall. But the whole thing was made out of cake. And that was fostered by the introduction of frosting. And that came from Ernest Dicker. And that actually is what saved the cake mix industry. That's right. You want to know something about my mom? Yeah. Champion cake decorator. Is that right? Not literal champion. Like you never want to contest. Yes, because it is out there. But yeah, I mean, as far as the home cake baker goes, she couldn't go on one of these shows now where they make like the giant British Bake Off. Yeah, like giant submarines and stuff out of fondant. But just for like mom making special cakes every year for the birthday. Every year she would say, what kind of cake you want this year? I'd be like, I want a Star Wars cake. I want Atlanta Falcons cake. And lo and behold, I would get my Atlanta Falcons cake. That's awesome. Very cool stuff. You know, I had an older sister who she died, actually when I was 16 in a car accident. But she used to be the equivalent of your mom at making cakes. Oh, really? But she didn't even need to ask. She just makes something up, right? Yeah. And there was this one year I'll never forget this cake. We were all big time into Howard Jones. So it must have been yeah, it must have been like my 9th or 10th birthday. Both my sisters and me were totally into Howard Jones. And Karen, my sister, my oldest sister made a Howard Jones keyboard cake. Wow. And there was a couple of sheet cakes put together, frosted, so it looked like one big thing. Like the black keys were kick cats. Like the knobs on the synthesizer were rolos. I just looked around at all my friends, like, does everyone see my cake? This is the greatest cake anyone's ever had. And no one can have any but me. No. I shared, of course. I wanted everyone to partake in the bounty. Was it a guitar or a keyboard? It was a keyboard. Okay. You never know. Yeah. Strap a guitar strap on it. You might could have held it. I would not have put a password to make it a key tar man, that is a very sweet story. Yeah. Literally and figuratively. Thank you. Jojo fans, huh? Yes. Waste his nickname. I don't think so. That makes it up. Yeah. I think that's the hotel chain. I think you're totally right. All right, well, another tip here for baking a cake, if you were looking at recipes and it says, use this kind of pan, and you think, Well, I don't have that kind of pan. I've got this kind of pan. It's aluminum and square, and they're calling for a round, dark pan. It makes a big difference. Like, it can literally ruin your cake. Yeah. You supposedly want to reduce the heat, I think. Not the heater, the cook time. One of the two. Yeah. It says a dark, nonstick pan requires 25% reduction in temperature. So you want to knock that heat down 25%. Yeah. But also Google that stuff. Don't just say Josh and Chuck said this should work. You have to have the right pan for that recipe, and they will tell you in the recipe, and if you don't have it, just look up the cheat for it, basically. Yeah. Two things you don't want to take our advice blindly on medical stuff and baking stuff. Everything else is fine. I don't know about that, but those are the two leading ways that we will mess your life up, for sure. All right, well, I guess we need to talk about the different methods. We're getting super wonky into cakes here. Well, I mean, that's what we do. All right, well, let's talk about creaming then, because that is one kind of method of making a cake, and creaming is what we talked about. You may not have known exactly what we meant, but when you combine, like, the butter and sugar and it says cream it with an electric beater, that's what you're doing. And it's really tough at first to get it going, but just hang in there because that butter will start to break apart. Mixing it with that sugar, and you've got a nice creamed starter mix of ingredients on your hand there. Right. But you don't skimp on that first step. No. And I think the creaming method, that's the one that best gets across this point, it's a chemical reaction. I know we've kind of been beating that horse, but it's really true. If you don't follow the steps correctly, the chemical reaction is not going to come out correctly. Right. And when you step back, you're like, But I'm baking a cake. That's true. But do you want your cake to be good, or do you want to just waste your time? Yeah. So in the creaming method, when it says, then mix ingredients in this order, wet and dry, do that. Right. Don't just say just throw it all in there. Right. Yes. It makes a difference. And it says that pound cakes are like a variation on the theme. Sure. I looked in the pound cakes, man. So the idea that pound cakes called for a pound of each ingredient, that's actually true. Yeah, I know, but the reason why it called for a pound of each ingredient was because a lot of the British people at the time, in the early 1700s couldn't read, so it was just an easy way to remember the recipe. Oh, interesting. Yeah. All right, I'll buy that. They'd be like, what, the kids. And also pound cakes, too. The reason why you're not going to find a pound cake with a big buttercream frosting is because that will send you into sugar shock in a second. Cake is already really dense and sugary. That's why you just have, like, a little glaze on top. Yeah, I do like that glaze, actually. I need a pound cake. I think that glaze is what's it called? Delicious something icing. Imperial icing. Oh, I don't know. I can't remember. Okay, so the next one is the no aeration method to where you're not whipping anything up. Yeah. You probably don't even have flour in this. This is probably a flourless cake. Right. So this is the kind of thing that you use to make, like, a cheesecake or a flourless chocolate cake. Yes. This can be very good. Sure. And you are probably going to need to add some sort of moisture because cakes like this tend to crack while they're baking, which is why a lot of them cheesecakes in particular, you cook in a water bath in the oven, because that water vaporizes and steams around it and helps keep that moisture in. Yeah. I never knew that the reason for the water bath. I didn't know that you used a water bath. That was news to me. Yeah, I've never made a cheesecake. Yeah, they can be quite good. Oh, I love cheesecake. I don't think I've ever had any bad cheesecake. That's always good. That's another thing, too. Public's cheesecake is incredible, and they need to sponsor us, and they sell it by the double slice. For those, like, you get two slices, and they have a key lime one, too. Chuck, that's just oh, man. Although if you don't like lemon stuff, you might not like that. Oh, no, I love key lime. Okay, try their key lime cheesecake. Yeah, they really should send us some stuff, frankly. At Isle of Palms, for my vacation that I've spoken about, they had one of the I can't remember which one, but one of the seafood joints where I would get all the fresh seafood had a homemade key lime pie. And I bought and ate one of them with my friends that week, and I bought two to go home with. Did they make it home? Huh? Did they make it all the way home? No. Yeah, I stopped at the border. I just put my face in it. No, they made it home. I think there's still one in the freezer, actually. And then one of them was consumed. Nice. Yeah. Good key lime pie. And finally, with the non aeration method, you are not doing the beating, you're not creaming that stuff, you're folding the batter. And we could describe it here, but if you don't know what folding is in baking, just look it up on the YouTube for a proper folding technique. Right. Generally done with a rubber spatula. Yes. There's a foaming method, too, where you are basically using just egg whites usually, and you're aerating it by whipping them up, which makes a meringue. You can just stop there and incorporate sugar and you've got meringue, which would make a pavlova cake, which apparently Australia and New Zealand have been fighting over the origin of for close to 100 years now. But doesn't New Zealand win? Supposedly, although I saw another article from some researchers who said no, it came even earlier, a decade earlier, out of America via Germany, so who knows? But yes, out of Australia. New Zealand. New Zealand apparently won that fight. But that's meringue and pavlova cake is like a meringue cake with fruit in the middle of it. No. And then a listener send us pavlova once we made it. It was pretty good. It is pretty good, yeah. And then you can also take that egg foam and turn it into it like a sponge cake, like an angel food cake or something like that. Not me. You don't like those either? No, not big into angel food cake. Although you can use sponge cake for strawberry shortcake that I will have. Okay, so those spongy cake that uses the egg foaming method, but if you're making a true strawberry shortcake, you're going to use an actual shortcake. Yeah, those are really good. And the reason they're called shortcake or shortbread is called shortbread is short is apparently a British term for crumbly. Okay. So that's where that came from. Has nothing to do with the size. Yeah. Emily makes a really good gluten free shortbread. She's kind of gotten into baking a bit in the last five or six years and gotten pretty good at it. So she makes a good gluten free shortbread that we've had a shortcake with homemade whip topping and good fresh strawberries. Those are good. But my one complaint with her baking is it literally looks like she came in there and just started throwing ingredients everywhere with her bare hands, like a three year old, and then baked and then said, I'm done. Yeah, good night. It is a mess, a big mess. And she always just said, Get out of here. I'll clean it up afterward, don't worry about it. Yeah, it's funny, the kitchen can be a place of real tension sometimes. Oh, for sure, yeah. Especially if both of you do different things in the kitchen. Right. Like, one hovering, like, Are you going to clean that up? Well, I'm the kitchen cleaner, so that's why she's just like, Just stay out of here. Dude. Right. Just wait until the end. Yeah. And you show up. You're like, It's March's. Time to shine. Well, I'll do this, and this is such a passive aggressive move for me, which is my style. Not endorsing that. I'm just saying it's one of my downfalls I need to work on. But I will just go in there and just, like, groan or something, and she'll just say, no, out. Right. Again. That's life at the Bryant house. That's pretty nice, Chuck. It's always with love, though. Yeah, it always comes out. There's always a cake on the other end, right? Yeah. I mean, it's not like we get serious fights over the kitchen stuff, right? Yeah. So what's the last thing here? Something called the all in one method. Yeah, that's just like a cake mix. You put it all together at once. Yeah. Well, we should talk a little bit about frosting and icing. The earliest versions of frosting was just sort of an almond and sugar paste. Not so big on that, but really, it can be. Okay, but almond croissants are, like, one of my great joys in life. Yeah, they're so good. I suppose that's kind of what a bear claw is, too, right? Yeah. All right. Yeah. But the sweet almond paste inside is man. No, it is good, but don't put that on top of a cake for me. Sure. Understood. Stuff it in a pastry. A French chef, though, is the first person they think that created the first legit iced layer cake in the 15th century. And then about the middle of the 17th century is when the first frosting recipes started spreading around on the Internet. Right. And fondant is gross. Yeah. I'm not into it. No, I mean, you can make a neat looking cake, but it's gross tasting, I think. Yeah, I'm not into it. Buttercream or cream cheese or even Emily's Waldorf Astoria frosting, believe it or not, it has a bit of a mouth feel because of the shortening, but like a residue on the pallet on the roof of your mouth. Yes, but it's still good. Well, let's talk about cakes. Well, no specific cakes. Like the red velvet cake. Right? Yeah, delicious. Do you know why it's red? Well, food coloring. They use that to make it a little richer, but it actually naturally turns red. It's a chemical reaction between the cocoa, the vinegar in it, and the buttermilk, I believe. Really? Yes, it turns it red. All right. I don't know about that. No, it's true. Okay. I read it on what's cooking, America? I'll try it because I'm making Emily her birthday is in a couple of weeks, and I'm taking another stab at it. Go find an original recipe. Well, I mean what do you mean? If you see one that actually uses buttermilk? Okay, this one this is one of the ones I'm going to try. No, I have to use the recipe. She tells me to use. Oh, I got you. Which is the gluten free Waldorf Astoria version I got you. I see. But you have cocoa. Does it have, like, vinegar and buttermilk in it? I can't remember. It's been a couple of years since I tried it. Okay, well, it should turn red on its own, but I don't think there's any harm in adding some more synthetic chemical red dye. Well, the thing is, to a lot of people that don't try red velvet cake don't try it because they think it doesn't like it tastes like chocolate cake. Pretty much, yeah. It just is red. It tastes red. No, that'd be weird. It's not ketchup cake. Yeah. That's Canadian, isn't it? There's a hummingbird cake. Well, what do you mean by the hummingbird? What is it? Hummingbird cake has some nuts and some fruit in it, lots of frosting. I think it's a Southern cake. Yeah. My grandmother Bryant called one of the great all time Southern cooks and bakers like banana nut bread. She called that hummingbird. And I don't know if that was specific to her or if they are interchangeable. I don't know. I'm not actually a Southern native, so I would not say one way or the other. All my experience with hummingbird cake is it's more like a carrot cake with, say, like, pineapple in it and some other fruits in it and a thick layer of frosting. And supposedly the reason it's called a hummingbird cake is because it's so sweet. It could attract hummingbirds. See, maybe. I mean, that's sort of like banana nut bread. I don't know if they're interchangeable or for variation, but give me some banana nut bread, which is not a cake, but it sort of is. And slice it up and put some butter on it. Toast it in the oven. No, I'm with you. Our freezer is always chock full of black bananas blackened with age. Oh, sure. Because Yummy makes a killer banana nut bread from scratch. I mean, you just can't look at the bananas when she's incorporating them. Yeah. What does that do? Why is that the key? Do you know? They just are supposed to be mushy. Okay, got you. The best way to make bananas mushy is to let them age. Let them age. Freeze age them. All right, let's talk about Indian pound cake. Apparently, that's the thing that has cornmeal in it, and I can't imagine that taste, but I'd like to try it. Well, yeah, and that was one of the earliest cakes in the US. And I think what the author Leo Hoy is pointing out is that cakes came from all over the place through time and geography, and that the mass immigration tore into America over, say, like, the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, and 20th, too. All these people from all these different lands brought their ideas or ingredients of cake, and they kind of went through this Americanized grinder to where eggs were added. Butter was added and you've got these ingredients, so it bears a resemblance to its original one. But it's been, like, kick off in the American way. And that started basically right as European settlers got to North America. Yeah. Apparently the good old fashioned chocolate layer cake came out of Boston because there were chocolate companies there. Even the German chocolate cake is not German. It's American. It's named after a man whose last name was German. Oh, interesting. Well, that means he's German. German American. It could be. Maybe they should call it the German American Chocolate Cake. Or just German Chocolate Cake. But it's really American. Everybody is. What the real title should be. Strawberry shortcake that you mentioned that does come from the old World. I'm not much of a jingo list either, I think you might say. Of course. But I've never felt more national pride than in talking about cakes. Yeah. This is where cakes were born. Really? The pineapple upside down cake. Heaven help you if you eat that stuff. I love it. Do you really? Man, it's so good. Yes. I just don't like fruit anywhere near my cake. Yes. Unless the strawberry shortcake. You definitely wouldn't like a hummingbird cake, then, even. Yeah, maybe that's the difference between the hummingbird and the banana bread. Right. Although bananas in there. Right. That's not a fruit cake to me. No, you just don't like the juicy fruits in your cake, it sounds like. No. Or coconut, which isn't the German chocolate cake in the coconut. I don't want coconut anywhere near my cakes. But that pineapple upside down cake. Apparently that stuff sort of sprang out of a contest. Dole had the Dole company in the mid 1920s. They said, hey, bake some cakes with fruit. And so thousands of Pineapple Upside down cakes came out. So I don't think they were invented for that, but maybe that's just what made them so popular. I don't know. Got you. And then again, there are cakes around the world that looked like cakes, kind of like Tiamisu Yum is a quintessential Italian cake, but it was invented in the 1960s. Black Forest cake actually is from Germany. It was invented in 1915. So what happened was, again, cake explosion happened here in the good old US of A, and it spread back out to the world. There was an influx of cake ideas into America. America perfected the cake and it went back out to the world. That's right. That's what happened. What else? What about tresleches? It's great, too, these kinds of milk, evaporated, condensed and whole. It's tough to go wrong with that. Yeah. Talk about moist. And I've had good and bad trace lake chase, but I've never had an actual trace Lake Chase. I was like, this is so bad, I'm not going to finish it. Right. Have you? No. And then there's Dota Yaki, which is like, have you ever had this? I don't think so. One of the big things that people in Japan love is like sweetened red bean paste. Okay? You can find it here, there, and, like, sweets. But this doriaki in particular is, like, between two pancakes. It's like a filling. Sometimes it's not even two pancakes. It's like a hole with, like, a red bean paste inside. It's like this light, kind of fluffy, cake like thing with red bean paste inside. It's good. They're best, like, hot off of the street from somebody who just made it. That's when it's absolutely best. But it's like the kind of thing you can also find in a 711 or something, too, like in cellophane. Wow. Yeah, it's good. It's no cheesecake. No Japanese cheesecake, I'll tell you that. No, but it's still pretty good. Man, that was a good one, I think. Cakes. All right, are you done? I'm done. Okay. If you want to know more about cakes, go eat some. You're going to love them. There's a cake out there for you. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this a special one man administrative details. Shout. Oh, wow. Because we got a box today from a man named Nick Pagan from San Jose Bay Area, and he sent us just a blotted stuff, like good stuff. It wasn't a box full of garbage. Not that anyone ever has sent us a box full of garbage. He sent us framed things, sent me a framed pavement poster, which is great, very nice. And sent us CDs of music. He sent bottles of liquid stuff, most notably wine for Jerry and then bourbon and Scotch for us. And he is a whiskey enthusiast that lives in the Bay Area, like, big time. Yes. And just a good dude. And beyond that, he added this. He's a list maker, an amateur list maker. Right. And he sent us a list. And, Nick, if you're listening, please send us the Word document digital version of this printout that you sent, because he said every time you said we should do a podcast on that, he made a list alphabetically of that stuff. Nice work, Nick. And the list is so comprehensive and awesome that we need it to work from. Yes, he made a list of films that each of us said we need to see, which is pretty good. And then finally, he sent us a list and encouraged us to play a little game here, which we'll do very quickly. See if Josh can guess how many times we've done the following things. You ready? Why me? Well, because I have the list in my hands and you're sitting across from me and you can't do this paper. I don't think so. How many COAS? And for people that don't know, it means cover our butts. How many COAS have we issued? Over 1000 shows? I'm going to say 27. 75. Wow. We are really good at that. How many times have we admitted on the error that it is a take. Two. Oh, man. You're not going to get anything. Or maybe you might. It will be total luck if I do. Eight, seven. Oh, so close. Rare listener. Male shout outs. Oh, I don't know what that means. Like where we say, hey, can you say hello to my boyfriend? Oh, yeah. Three. No, 62. What? That's pretty rare, though. I have 1000. Yeah, but still, it seems like I thought it was even rarer than that. We used to do it more than we do now. I think so. I think that's what it was. We're a little more generous in our earlier days. Trips in the wayback machine. Oh, there's a lot of those. I'm going to say out of 1000 episodes, 320. He says 59. So I don't know about this, Nick. I think he missed a few. Nick, you're just making up numbers, aren't you? How many scotch at home and making up numbers? How many paper lists have you eaten? Me? Yeah. One that I know of. Yes. You nailed it. I remember the episode, too. It was, how geniuses worker, what makes a genius? And I said that if this list of geniuses, if the number one genius was Einstein, I would eat the list. And it turned out it was Einstein. How many Glen, Danzig or Misfits references? Those would be all you. 17. Four. Need to step it up. How many times have I done this? Wow. I think it's literally countless. If he came up with a number, it's a lie. He says 288. That's got to be more than that. Simpsons references. I'll just go ahead and tell you. 197. Apparently we have high five. Does that include the two episodes on the Simpsons? No. Okay. Apparently we have high fived once. Okay. I'm surprised we even did that. Sure. Number of times Josh has done this a lot. I don't know. I think a lot just works for that. 426 times. Almost half of our episodes, right? Yeah. And then bonus name, olive. Josh's nicknames for Chuck. I'll just go ahead and read those. You have called me Chuckers. You've called me beautiful. I don't remember that one. The famous Chuck. Tran, cheech, rusty, zonkers and the flash. Nick is my new favorite listener. This is all gold. Plus, thanks for buttering us up with the care package, too, Nick. That was nice of you. Yeah. So, Nick Pagan, you are now on the guest list for the San Francisco sketchfest show. Just hit me up with an email, send that list of shows that we need to do via digital document and you are in like Flynn. Cool. Thanks a lot, Nick. Well, if you want to be like Nick, you can tweet to us at joshua mclark or S-Y-S kpodcast hang out on facebook. Comstnowcharleswchuk bryant. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athousepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyourheanow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.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. 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How Auto-Tune Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-auto-tune-works | What began as a challenge to an oil engineer to make a terrible singer into a pitch-perfect one, Auto-Tune has become a ubiquitous (and, to many, obnoxious) part of the musical soundscape. | What began as a challenge to an oil engineer to make a terrible singer into a pitch-perfect one, Auto-Tune has become a ubiquitous (and, to many, obnoxious) part of the musical soundscape. | Tue, 11 Aug 2015 15:06:09 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=15, tm_min=6, tm_sec=9, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=223, tm_isdst=0) | 50958908 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Ay. Chuck Bryant. Yep. There's Jerry. Yep. And this is stuff you should you should know. That was great. Thanks, man. Do I sound like Cher? Do. You sound like TPain. T Josh. Poor Snoop Dogg. Does he do auto, too? He factors into this big time later on. Oh, wow. I don't even know about that. I've got something on my sleeve. This is kind of fun. I don't know how much we're going to do that because people are probably like, stop it right now. Oh, Chuck. I think we should do it a lot. Are you done? Yeah, I'm done. We could have just auto tuned this whole thing. Yeah, maybe we should. Maybe we should. Maybe from this moment forward, we should just auto tune the rest of the episode. Yeah. Starting now. Let's sabotage our careers. You got an intro for this? Fancy intro. I think we just did it, buddy. Okay, well, let's get in the way back machine then, my friend. Okay. We don't have to go back that far because I know where we're going. It's going to be a short trip. Let's go back to summer of 1998. Boom. You and I are in the club. We're hanging out, we're drinking the rum and coke you can find us in the club and we're dancing. We're getting down and grooving to share's latest jam believe it's a hot jam a hot jam that's released in the summer it's summertime as you can tell because it's hot in the club. Yeah. And I've got all my short pants. I'm dressed like I'm out for a night at a rocksparent. That's right. I'm wearing a see through mesh shirt. So I noticed, actually. How did you not? Well, yeah, the third nipple really stands out. So we're in the club, we're jamming, and Cher's song is on, and something happens at about 35 seconds into the song, and you and I are just like, whoa, daddy, did you just hear that? It changed everything. It changed the whole tone of the club. The club was like, okay. And now it's banging. Yeah. The hook, because of a little something called autotune, what sounded like a little electronic glitch was very purposeful, and it was the first time the autotune had been used in this way. So what? Josh is autotuned. That is quite a set up. Yeah. Can we do the rest of the episode in the club? Yes, why not? Okay. Just keep those rumbling coats coming. Okay, that's cool. So, Chuck, let me stop you for a second, right? Okay. Because the way you described it, you made it sound like everybody was like, oh, sure. Just used autotune. No, everybody said, what was that? That was awesome. Although some people were like, what was that? Don't ever do that again. Sure. But most people were like, wow, Sharon just released her biggest hit of her entire career. And it was a pretty long career. She just came back. That just established her comeback with this track, and it actually became one of the greatest, best selling singles of all time. Yeah, it would have been probably a big song anyway, but I think most definitely Autotune kicked it into the Stratosphere. David just that extra something. It became part of the talk if everyone was talking about it. So everybody went to her producer and said, dude, how did you do that? We want to know how to do that. And he's like, Volcoder. Yeah, he lied. He lied. He lied big time. He lied in person to other producers. He lied in interviews. He lied about how he made that track because he wanted to keep it to himself because it was so huge. And it became so huge, Chuck, that at first, Autotune was called the Share Effect. Yeah. Even the company that produced Autotune and Terry's, which we'll talk about in a minute, called it in their instructional book, the Share Effect. They probably still do, don't they? They don't mention it any longer. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay, so it was a huge deal, and this guy lied and kept it under wraps and for many years. It was very mysterious. Yeah. Actually, if you live under a rock. Let's go ahead and play that clip of the very 1st, 35 seconds into that song where Cher says, I can't break through. Yeah. Right there. Boom. Right there. Music changed from that point forward. Okay, so what this guy what her producer was saying was Vocoder. Vocoder is something that's been around for a very long time. If you've ever listened to any Pete Frank, Peter Frampton, anything, do you feel like we do? Yeah. That whole long guitar solo or whatever, he's breathing into a tube connected to his guitar, which is electrifying his voice. Vocoder has been around for a very long time. Yeah, but there's different ways of doing it. That was definitely the tube effect through the guitar, but you can also just use it to make your voice robotic, like Beck, sure. Two turntables and a microphone or Mr. Roboto with sticks, but all different ways to use it. This thing just sounded different. The Share Effect. It was a little different. Sure. And I wonder how this guy talked his way out of the lie. Yeah, I mean, if a producer is like, okay, well, show me how you did it on Vocoder. If he was, like, over here and then just, like, ran out of the room, I don't think he talked us out of it. I think he's just another line music producer. And he was just like, oh, okay, well, busted. Okay, so apparently along the way, people figured out here and there what this guy did in 1998 with Believe, and they started using it themselves, but very sparsely. All right, so, Josh, what is autotune? All right, I'll answer your question? Because I'm going to keep asking it. All right. So Autotune is a plugin originally released in 1997 for the audio editing software Pro Tools. Yeah. It's a software piece that allows you and the original intent and how it's still mostly used is to pitch correct. A singer's voice. Right. So when you or I go into the studio to record those albums that will never release, but we just record for fun, we hit flat notes here. There no, not me. I have perfect pitch. I hit flat notes here, there I don't perfect pitch. And everybody does. It's a normal thing. Sure. For most of eternity, music producers would say, blue Eyes chairman, I need another take. That was a great take, but you had a couple of flight notes. Give me another take. Just like that one. And Frank would finish a Scotch, put out a cigarette and say, you get one more Shinehead. Oh, you didn't even see Spinal Tap, did you? Yeah. You finally saw it. Finally. Okay. But I don't remember any Frank Sinatra jokes. Yeah. That was when Bruno Kirby is the limo driver. He talks about Sammy Davis's book yes, I Can and he says what they should have called it is yes, I can. As long as Frank says it's okay because Frank called the shots for all those guys. I do remember that. Yeah. So Frank would sing one more take. And this could be like take twelve or 15 or 20. Oh, yeah. Depending on how much the person was feeling it. The singer was feeling it at the time and would be happy to hang around the studio. Whatever was keeping the singer there at the studio, as long as that was around, the singer was happy to give it one more try. One more try. Right. Like drugs, maybe. Okay. Or if they had, like, a really good candy bowl. Sure. Who knows? I got to stay for the skittles. So the editor then, or the music producer, would then take all of these different tracks and would go through and I can't imagine how awful this would be. Take the best part of this track and edit it together with the best part of that track. And we're talking like, pre digital air. So they're splicing together tape. Sure. From what I understand. Yeah. Right. To get the best possible complete take piece together from maybe different take. Yeah. Right. So that's what they did. All of a sudden, in 1997, there's this new software that just runs through a take and says, oh, well, I see what note or what key the singer is singing in, but this particular note is just a little out, so I'm going to nudge it into the key that the singer was going for. And now, all of a sudden, one take is all it takes. Yes. I mean, what it did was it cut down on studio time, which is super expensive, which is very appealing because now you could churn out songs at a more rapid rate and a cheaper rate. And it was a little sort of a secret tool that they didn't intend to get out to the public. I don't think they wanted everyone to know this stuff. No, it was meant for professionals. Yeah. And basically, it was the musical audio equivalent of cosmetics. Yeah. It was invented by Doctor Harold Andy Hildebrand, and he likened it to make up, and The New Yorker likened it to getting rid of a red eye and a photograph. Exactly. You use it just enough so that you can't tell it's there, but it makes for a more pleasant overall composition. Right. Yeah. What Share had done, or what Shares producers have done, is take this thing and used it to the Nth degree. Yeah. Supposedly, it was just a joke, and Cher was like, I love that, but I don't know if that's an urban legend or if that's fact. Well, from what I read, that her producer, she had heard some telephone effect that she was interested in using. She wanted something okay. And I guess the producer had stumbled upon that and played it for her, but was like, you're not going to like this, but listen to this weirdness. And she's like, I want that. Nice. That's what I read. If it's due to her giving it the green light, then that was truly like foresight, like a masterful move by Share. Right. Well, Share has a lot of foresight. They say, don't doubt Share, and Share has a lot of foresight. Never bet against Share. Yeah. So when she did make that decision, like you said, it changed everything. And we can't talk enough about this, but we're going to take a break and then come back and talk more about it right after this. All right, Josh. What I found most interesting about this while researching was what Andy Hildebrand did before he did this. He was a musician. He played flute professionally since he was a young teenager. Even went to University of Illinois fighting alinai on a music scholarship. Yet he chose to work for ExxonMobil for 17 years looking for oil. Yeah. Crazy. The two weren't too terribly far apart. Right. Well, as we will find out so he's a professional flutist, classically trained flat. It's a good one, from what I understand. Flout and is flute. Yes. And he went to college to get an electrical engineering degree, I think. And basically when he went to work for the oil companies, it was an oil exploration, and he figured out a program where he designed a software that when you set off an explosive charge underground, it measured the pitch of stuff, of the sound waves that were created. Right. So as they travel through rock, different types of rock, adjust the pitch, basically. And the software, like, analyzed the pitch that was coming through and could create a subsurface map of the rock below. And oil companies have long known that this type of rock is associated with oil and this type of rock is not. Maybe you'll find natural gas in this type of rock. So with this guy creating an audio visual map of the subsurface area, oil companies no longer had to just drill and drill and hope that they found oil. He would say, this is a pretty great place to drill because this kind of rock is there. That's right. It's called auto correlation. And it saved Exxon a lot of money. And he somehow made a lot of money. I thought it was going to be one of those things where like Exxon was just like thanks, you work for us. Here's your $45,000 a year. But apparently he earned enough money to retire by the age of 40 thanks to this innovation. And in the early 1990s he got out of the oil business and founded it's. Like it's just a popularity contest. Yeah. He founded in Terrace Audio Technologies and kind of near Silicon Valley in Scottsdale, California. And I think still they only have about ten employees. I think it's a pretty small operation. It's all centered around him and his ideas. And he is the main inventor. One of the first things he invented was something called Infinity, which is a program where you could loop samples over seamlessly. Apparently that was a necessary thing. I didn't know that. Oh yeah. Think about it. We're talking like early ninety s. That was like the 808 acid house revolution. Yeah, but I just didn't realize I guess he made it easier. Probably is my guess. Yes. I think he enabled it. He enabled techno, is the impression I have. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting looping samples together seamlessly. Well, but you can already do that. What I'm saying is he clearly found a way to do it better and more efficiently. Right. He didn't invent looping. No, he made it better. Yeah, exactly. Another thing he did was invented the microphone modeler. Modeling is a big thing in music. You can get guitar amplifiers. That model basically means imitate other amps. Right. I have a modeling amp which I don't use anymore because it's not very good. But there's like twelve different classic amps. It models supposedly. Oh, no. But he invented the modeling microphone, which means you could mimic classic microphones or like a harmonica mic and vintage mics. Like the Elvis Presley. That cool looking Michael that was on there. Oh, is that the silver kind of rounded rectangular one? No, it's got one on his desk. Yeah. That's associated with Elvis Presley? Well, I mean, just the music of that time. I got you. But I always picture Elvis, you know what I mean? I can see that. Yeah. Have you ever seen his grandson, by the way? Quick Sidebar? No. His name is Quick Sidebar. Yeah, Quick Sidebar presk it's weird name, but you know, Lisa Marie was his mom. Oh, yeah. That was very funny, by the way. Just look him up. I think what's his name? I can't remember his name. His last name is the father's name. Lisa Marie's first husband is who she had him with. Okay. Yeah. Just look at Elvis Presley's grandson. It is creepy. Dude looks exactly like Elvis at that age. Like scary. Scary. Eerily similar. Can he sing that? I don't know. Does he use Auto Tune? That I do know. If he sings, he probably uses Autotune. Probably. Because 90% of singers apparently use Autotune. I've seen even higher than that. Really? Yeah. How about that? 90%. Admit it. Yeah. There's the thing about Autotune where you deny that you use it even though you're totally aware that everyone uses it. I read an article where apparently this one producer said that he's worked with two artists that haven't used it. Everyone else has. And it was Nico case and Nelly for Tattoo. And then apparently later, after that, nellie Fortado released a single that had tons of autotune on it. Nico Cases remain solid. She may be the only artist in the world who hasn't used autotune, either subtly or to the nth degree. Well, that's certainly not true. I think there are plenty of indie artists. But if you're talking, you should read this Verge article. It basically lays it out like, no, everyone uses this. Apparently producers don't even necessarily tell the band that it's being used right then because there's a live function so that the monitors or the headphones that the band is hearing is being run through Autotune. So what they're hearing is already corrected. So they think they just did a perfect take. Yeah, I'm just wary of anytime someone says out of 20 million singers, one person doesn't. That's just very dubious claim. I don't know. We're talking music industry here. Especially when a lot of people are making their own music in their own homes. Well, that's another thing. They're not part of the pop machine. Right. They don't have stats on that. Yeah, I'm just saying. That sounds like a load of garbage to me. Okay. I'm sure more than one person doesn't use Auto. It's just one. So Autotune came about. Apparently this is the tale. Because of the dinner that Hildebrand was at. He was having lunch with a sales rep and the wife said something funny like, hey, Andy, why don't you invent something to make me sing and tune? And he went, Great idea. That's a great hill for you. We should have Auto tuned that. Maybe we could. Maybe it was maybe it just happened. And so he said, you know what? If I can tell Jed Clamp it where the oil is, then I can make you sing in tune. And he did. He created Autotune. And we've kind of mentioned how it works, basically, of a singer's song. It takes the vocals of the song and you select what key you're singing in. And then Auto tune goes through and makes this map of the audio of the vocal track. And it goes through and says, this one's a little flat, this one's a little low, or whatever. And it just nudges these things into tune, into the key that it's supposed to be in. So all of the notes that the singer hits in that take are within the correct key, meaning that they all sound great. It's a perfect take, right? Well, yes. And the key there is it's in the original tone and inflection of the artist. So you can't tell it's happening. No. And there's actually, if you look at the Autotune product demo videos, it's amazing. So there's an automatic version where you select the key and let autotune do its thing. And it does a pretty great job. One of the ways that it does this is it adds, like, millisecond pauses in between notes. There's little spaces between notes, which gives it a natural feel. There's other selections that you can make, like throat length. You can select gross, how long the singer's throat is, and you can do that note by note. So you can make the whole thing even more natural until basically what you've done is taught Autotune how to simulate a particular singer's singing style and voice so that when it adjusts that note, it does it within the same exact range that the singer would have done had they hit it correctly. It's pretty amazing and advanced stuff. Oh, totally. When normal people think of autotune like you and me, who are not in the music biz, we think of this thing that's called the zero function. Yes. And you know what? Let's take a break and we will explain what the zero function is right after this. All right? The suspense is you're going to get us killed. All right. Zero function. That was essentially what the share effect was. That right. Yes. Go ahead. No, go ahead. No, go ahead. You just sat up in your chair like you were about to arm wrestling. I know. Go ahead. You talk about it, buddy. Well, what Autotune does in terms of the zero function is it gets rid of all of that space. And when shares voice changes, it's immediate. Yes. All of those notes go right up against each other and it creates this robotic sounding voice. Yeah. There's no, like, rise what's the word I'm looking for? It's not like a normal vibrato that you would get right. Because in a normal vibrato, there's pauses, there's space in between the notes. Yeah. With this, it's note all pressed up against each other in a compressed way. And that zero function is what it takes any spaces out between the notes and creates that robot sound. Yeah, because I think Autotune has a range of numbers to make it flow more seamlessly. And when they took it all the way down to zero, which means there's nothing there, it created that weird effect that they were like, Sharer, listen to this. It's weird. Yeah. And she was like, I like, weird. It's great, baby. I hear number one hit in my future. No, you got it wrong. It's great, baby. Is there any season? No, that was jack from Will and Grace. Do you remember when he thought he was talking to a Share impersonator? Oh, yeah. And he's like, no, if I could turn back. Turn he was teaching her how to say it, how to sing it correctly. I thoroughly enjoyed Will and Grace. Oh, it's great show. Good stuff. The great stuff. Really well. Agreed. All right, where are we? Well, you were talking about the Share Effect, right? Yeah. And that's what it was called again. Antari has called this zero function the Share Effect for many years. And over time remember her producer just kept lying and lying and lying. Yeah. Over time, other producers independently figured out what he had done that he had used the zero function, which is a really obscure tool on a software suite that not everybody knew about. Right. So it took some brain power and some experimentation, but little by little, some producers figured it out. This one producer did a remix of a J Lo song and used it, and he, I think, was the second person to use it publicly. And for a brief time it became known as the JLo Effect. Of course, anybody who used this without fessing up to it at first, in the early two thousand s, it was called the Whatever Effect. Yeah. And there's this producer rapper down in Florida named TPaine. Oh, boy. And TPain. JLo Effect. He loved it. He went on a mission to figure out what this was, and he finally, apparently took him years to figure it out. He finally figured out that it was this zero effect on this Pro Tools plug in, and he started using it and just went crazy with it. Up to this point, it was used to Tweak, or it would maybe make a track of just a little weird over here or something like that. He used it as often as he possibly could. Yeah. He basically said the zero function and TPain are one and the same. Yeah. And it became known as the TPain Effect. Really? Yeah. Because when people asked him how he did it, guess what he said? Vocoder. Did he really? Yes. No. Yes, he did. And for years he managed to make a mint because the whole thing was in hip hop or in pop. If you wanted this TPain effect, TPain needed to consult at least if not, produce your record. That was like ten years after the Share Effect. I know. People not know that. He managed to pull it off for years and years and years. Good for TPain is what I say. Yes. Yeah. He apparently was like, I guess on a plane ride, usher was on the same plane and asked to speak to him. And Usher was like, I've got to get something off my chest. You really screwed up music, like, big time. Well, I made a bunch of money doing this and people seem to like it, so I'm not going to stop. Hildebrand has been vilified by many, and he said, you know what? I just make the car. I don't drive it down the wrong side of the road. It's a great quote. Yes. Because a lot of people hate autotune and think it's the worst thing that happened to music. A lot of people like it and say, when you use it for what it's supposed to be used for, it can really help out because it's not like everyone uses it all the time. I'm sure some people need it way more than others. Well, even if you're using it as a light cosmetic touch, like Kill, the brand originally designed it for, a lot of people say, no, we shouldn't even be doing that. Because if you go back and listen to things like Bob Dylan or the beach for us, or just a lot of these original artists that didn't use these kind of effects on their voice when they sang and their recordings made it through the studio, there were still flat notes here. There. Yeah, but it was their music, it was their voice, it was their vocals in these tracks, and everyone came to know and love them. But now, because everything is autotuned perfectly, even the stuff that you can't hear, it's autotuned because they're not using the zero function, but just the fact that it's been run through the Auto Tune. This stuff sounds really rough by comparison. So a lot of people are like, auto Tune has ruined music. It ruined music that people love for decades. Because now, by comparison, it seems rough. Well, but it also like a good ear can tell if something's autotuned. It has this weird tinny quality that it doesn't sound natural. So I think there will be blowback and a reversion back to older methods. Okay. I bet you Jack White hasn't auto tuned that's the most purest of pure guys. No. He uses all sorts of weird vocal effects on his stuff. No, but as far as, like I bet he has ask him. He wouldn't have been it. Apparently that's par for the course. Yeah. So, TPain. If we can get back to the history of this buy you a drink? So TPain right? He's huge. Everything he drops is just blowing up all over the place. He's getting invited to consult and produce on Kanye's album, which ultimately had a lot of autotune. Every track had autotune on it by the time TPain got done with it. Right? Yes. Have you heard his queen Bohemian Rhapsody live? No. Dude, is it good? Oh, no. Oh, no. There's a video that someone spliced of him. Freddie Mercury. It's one of the worst things I've ever heard on a stage. Oh, I've got to check it out. It's terrible. Okay. All right. I got to see that. Yeah, it's good. So the TPain effect. Yeah. And if you wanted this effect, you had to have TPain. Well, Snoop Dogg says that's enough of that. Oh, finally. And he releases something called Sensual Seduction, and it's one of the better rap videos you've ever seen. It's pretty good. Yeah. There's a star wipe in it, so you know I love it. So Snoop releases this using the TPain effect to great degree, but he didn't consult with TPain. TPain had nothing to do with this record. So Snoop kind of opened the floodgates, saying, if you guys want to use this, go use it. But what's interesting, if you watch that video, when Snoop is doing, like, the T pain effect or the Autotune stuff, he's actually got a tube going to a synthesizer to make it look like he's using a vocoder. Oh, interesting. Isn't that weird? Yeah, that is weird. Like in his video. Yeah. But anyway, are you sure that wasn't a marijuana smoking device? It may have been. It may have been. Now I think about it. But Snoop changed everything in that he took TPain out of the equation and really opened the floodgates for anybody and everybody to use this stuff simultaneously. Jay Z was trying to close those floodgates and push all of it back in. Yeah, I think JayZ clearly jumped the shark at a certain point. You know when major ad brands are making ads using the latest and greatest that it's years late, first of all. And that means that it's definitely jumped the shark. And in 2009, Wendy's had a Frosty Posse commercial where a gang of office workers built it out auto tuned rhymes while searching for frosty. I don't remember that ad, do you? I know, but I went and watched it. Of course. How is it? Pretty great. It's what you think it is pretty great. It's awesome. Okay, now it's terrible. And JayZ apparently saw this and was enraged, and so he wrote a song called DOA Death of Autotune. I know we're facing a recession but the music you all making is going to make it the Great Depression. Get back to rap. You tpaining too much. That's calling someone out. Yeah. Hard. Yeah. But other autotune, the news was a big YouTube hit. Oh, yeah, man. That Ben Intruder song. Yeah. Let's play a clip from that from 2010. It was a local news footage from Huntsville, Alabama, of Antoine Dodson delivering is an awesome Human being. Yeah. About a neighborhood intruder and someone auto tune that the Gregory Brothers did. That's right. Let's hear that real quick. Have you listened that recently? No. It's pretty great. Yeah. But again, that was in 2010, and I think that even kind of had a pretty short shelf life. Right. Unless they're still doing it on as. Well, would you say the Gregory Brothers, the Brooklyn Soul Band? Yeah. They started out doing autotune the news. And they would take the news and just autotune it and turn it and just produce it, overproduce it. And they did that with the Ben Intruder song. And that actually became the number one video on YouTube of all of 2010. I looked. The original video has 128,000,000 views right now. Yeah, it's pretty impressive stuff. At the same point, like, now Autotune has become a parody of itself. Yes. It's being used in ads. So here's the progression. Something starts out, someone uses it artistically, someone comes along and overuses it. Then everybody starts to overuse it. Then Wendy's makes a commercial using it. Newsweek finally gets around to writing an article about it. And then years after, we recorded a podcast on it, and then the thing finally dies. Yeah. And then 15 or 20 years after that, it becomes hypocrite. Yes. That's the progression. So the point that we're at, though, now, Chuck, it's not so cut and dry, man. It's not as cut and dry as JayZ would like to have. You think? No, because he came out with this Death of Autotune track in 2009. Autotune is still around very much. And now it's getting to the point where if like The Verge and I can't remember the other article I read. They're both on this podcast page. If they are to be believed, they're credible sources, and they certainly seem like it from these articles. There's this growing question of, is Autotune here to stay? Yeah. People are starting to compare it to the initial reaction that people had to the electric guitar. Sure. It was a lot different from the original guitar. And people it took a lot of getting used to it. Like when Bob Dylan went electric, a lot of people didn't like that. Newport but then look at what happened now with the electric guitar. A lot of people try different stuff with it and it became a standard. Some people are wondering if Autotune is going to fulfill the same destiny. I think most people are hoping that it does not. Yeah. Well, I mean, sweetening vocals is nothing new. Like, reverb is a tried and true thing for years and embraced does it sweeten vocals? I thought that was always used to make it weird. No, it sort of like, gives it an echoey. Like you're singing in a big, empty church hall or something. But it sweetens. It it doesn't correct anything. But when I say sweetens it, it just makes it sound a little better. I got you. Reverb is a great tool. Right. The point is it's artificial. Yeah. It's not natural. Yeah. They tried to replicate, like, singing in a big, empty echoey hallway with an effect, and it worked. Right. And another argument in favor of Autotune that I've seen is simply taking a human voice and recording it automatically makes it artificial. Like if they're not there in the room with you singing to you at that moment, anything else is artificial. True. So what's the problem? So, just to let people know, I put out two texts during the episode. Two musician friends. Jack White. No. I texted Lucy Wainwright, our buddy. Yes, he is. Jerry from our TV show. She's not answered. Okay. Which means she's used autotune. Kidding. And our buddy Joey Sierra from the Henry Clay people. Formerly of Henry Clay people, now with Bakers. And he said I think there were a few harmonized O's and Oz on one of our old records where we did some pitch correcting, but that's it. I think maybe definitely. He's probably going to be mad that I said that. Thank you for being forthright, Joey. Good guy. Sure. You got anything else about auto? Yeah, just really quick. This is from a great website. Ten artists that are essentially computer programs, they just have the most autotuned people. They have TPain Kesha, Chris Brown, Maroon Five, Black Eyed Peas, Daft Punk, paris Hilton, who, I forgot actually had a song. The cast of Glee. Katy Perry. And number one was Owl City, who I don't even know what that is. There is a huge outcry, apparently, among Glee fans, for Glee to stop using so much autotune. I think the deal is they're like, well, these are actors, and there's a big scandal with UK's Got talent or something weird like that, where they were using a lot of autotune for the auditions. Oh, well, anyway, that's not a very surprising list. So this has been grumpy old men. I don't feel like we've been grumpy. We haven't condemned it outright. No, nico case, she's my lady. She condemned it out, right? Yeah. Emily and I have an agreement about Nico case, but we could both marry her if she was ever available to us. She's right behind you. Oh, my God. So we have a very well to finish up your deal. Sorry, I just jumped the gun. Okay. Thank you. You don't have anything else about auto team? No, I was just teasing. We have a special listener mail with guests. Well, hold on. Let me finish first. Okay. Okay. Well, since Chuck doesn't have anything, it's the end. And if you want to know more about autotune, you can type those words into the search bar athousoforks.com this article. I have to say, by the way, was the most definitive article about autotune on the Internet. How about that? It's a good one. So you can go look that up. And since I said definitive, it's time for listener mail, and it's a special one, like Chuck said. That's right. Today we got a joint listener mail to ourselves and to Holly and Tracy from stuff you missed in history class. Yes. So we're going to bring them in, right? Yeah. We're going to read the email, and we're going to talk about its implications. Let's start now. So without further ado, we actually have Holly and Tracy of stuff you miss in history class with us. No. Hi. And Tracy, we have actually not with us. She's with us in spirit and voice from Boston. I know it's pretty interesting when it comes in through your headphones, but the other person somewhere else. It's kind of awesome. Yes. And this is how you guys do the show now, right? Yes. We also have, like an online we have a Google Hangout where we both are so we can see each other as well. Well, that's neat. We should have done that. Tracy in here with her little video image or like a hologram of her. That'd be pretty cool, too. That's true. All right, so I think the first thing I should do is you have a picture of me, like our old boss. Oh, well, I do have a picture of you. I have the wallet size that you gave out. So I'll just look at that. I think the first thing we should do is just read I'll read the email here and then we will discuss like adults. How about that? What? So, like I said, I already set it up that we both got an email from a listener and she says the following. And this is from Amanda Lyons. Hey, guys and gals. She didn't say that, of course. I just did. Well, you should read it vertically. Josh, Chuckers, Holly and Tracy And of course, hello to Jerry and Noel. Yeah, I'm a social worker from Portland, Oregon, with a passion for human equity and respect, one of the original members of the SYSK Army and a more recent listener to Missed in History. Yeah, I binged for about five months before I got all caught up, so how about that? I'm concerned about something I've heard a few times on the history podcast, and I was wondering if you guys would be willing to get together we are. And look into something to fulfill my curiosity. When Josh and Chuck receive corrections, they thank people for being nice and frequently ask people not to be jerks when correcting them. When Holly and Tracy talk about corrections they receive, they ask people to be nice and have referred to corrections on several occasions as hate male. My concern is that listeners may be more disrespectful to Holly and Tracy because they are women, and even if listeners are rude to Josh and Chuck, they may rein it in when making corrections because they are men. It could be completely off base. But if I'm right, I feel like the discrepancy should be addressed on the podcast to raise awareness about how people treat men and women differently and even to address people's tendency to feel protected by the anonymity of the Internet and say things online they wouldn't say to someone's face. Amanda, we did talk about it via email, and now we're going to talk about it like regular human folks. And Tracy really has the wealth of information because of her job and what she's been responsible for in the past. Oh, yeah, that sounds serious. Yeah. I was part of the management team of the website for several years before I started actually being on a podcast. And for a chunk of that time, most of the podcasters reported to me. So even though I wasn't managing the podcast program, I was sort of keeping tabs on the itunes reviews for everybody. And there was a definite trend in that. The podcast that had women on them got disproportionately more vicious comments about what their voices sounded like versus the podcast with men on them, which got less of that. So this is news to me. Misogyny on the Internet. I wasn't aware that that was a thing. The most beautiful blind spot of all time. No, I can imagine. And I know, Tracy, you've pointed some of these out before. For us, it's like, yeah, we'll get hate mail every once in a while, but it's kind of easy to dismiss because even if it is directed at us, it's not necessarily directed at our gender or whatever. It's not personal. Or even if it is personal, it's dumb. It's just dumb stuff. It's easy to not take personally even when it's meant to be personal. Sure. But that's me speaking is like a white male age 18 to 49. Yeah. So I can imagine that when someone attacks you just based on your gender, or even worse, if they're coming after you and they don't even realize that they're being driven by this disdain for your gender, that has to make it a lot harder to just dismiss. Yeah, well, you can go I was going to say, for me, I am lucky in that I really give very few dams about what most people think, unless you're sitting in my lap or paying my paycheck. It's great if you like me, but if you don't, that's cool, too. Everybody do your thing. But eventually the landslide builds up. And it's not so much that I'm like heartbroken or traumatized, but it just wears you down after a while where you're like, why am I doing this? Just to get more of this crap. Yeah, well, and we definitely have we have been called slurs based on our gender before. We have been called the C word over the pilot. Are you serious? Right. Yes. Unbelievable. Yeah, well, and then I told you about that when we were discussing the email in our email conversation, I told you about the person who wrote to us and said they didn't understand how I could be in the same room with Holly without strangling her. Like, that's the kind of stuff that people will write to us and be really awful. But we do get a whole lot of them that I don't think people are consciously being misogynistic, but they're talking to us and about us. In a very gendered way. So people tell us that we sound shrill or that we sound bossy, and those aren't words that people would use to describe men most of the time. Well, no, because men are assertive. They're not bossy. Right. And all of the articles that had come out lately about especially vocal fry and other things that people criticize about women's voices that they don't generally criticize about men's voices every single time I read it, and I'm like, I could have written that about my job and my experience being a woman talking on the Internet. So which one hits home the most? Like, one that's just a direct personal attack, or the ones that or the person is just being unconsciously misogynistic, which to me would seem more entrenched. Yeah, to me, the second one is worse. And it's especially worse because a lot of the implicitly gendered criticism that we get is also from women. Oh, yeah. That's the hardest part for me to deal with. Yeah. When they're real specific. For example, like, the person who wants me to be strangled at the end of the day, I'm like, he's working through his own stuff. I really have very little to do with this. I may have been the trigger that caused this little outrage bomb, but really, it has very little to do with me. I think almost 100% of the time that is the case. These are people who have their own gripes in life and are probably angry, unhappy people. Yes. But then, as Tracy said, when you get those ones that are like, they're not even conscious of how it's playing out, you realize how much it is a bigger sort of systemic social problem. Yeah. Because most of those people are not evil. They don't intend to be misogynistic. They're not conscious that they're separating the two genders and judging them differently on different criteria. Yeah. Those are, as Tracy said, a little more disturbing because you realize that it's kind of like the silent creep that underlays everything. Absolutely. Well, we do get a lot of emails that are great from people who are great, and the majority of the email that we get is great. I don't want to make it sound like every person who writes to us is awful. And we talk about corrections on the episode a lot of times from people who write it, and everything is fine, and everything's very respectful. So to me, a correction is you said this person died in 19 to 18, but really it was 1927. That's a correction, and that's fine. But then we'll also get ones that are like, I can't believe you didn't even bother to look this up. You completely butchered it. I don't know why you don't even put more thought into what you're doing, because it's really important that you represent yourself well. And that's why I'm like that's hate mail. Yeah, we get a lot of those, but I never feel like those have anything to do with my gender in those cases. Absolutely. I mean, we get the same exact emails where it's just like, you guys are total idiots. Like, how could you drop the ball this badly? And it's like we basically said exactly what you're saying. We just said it slightly differently. It definitely doesn't warrant this kind of reaction. Yeah. Why do you think there is a gender bias? Or why is it worse for you guys being women? Do you think? Not just in comment history of the world, how long do you have? But I mean, even beyond comments like why is the internet so geared toward hating women? What's the deal with that? Is there a general understanding or idea behind it? Lonely, angry men is my guess. Well, I think it's super complex. Right. There's no one simple answer. Like some of it is that we have reached an age where the disparity in terms of gender equality has shrunk at the same time that a lot of people have this outlet readily available to them. So there's progress being made, but there are also the people who are still kicking and screaming as they get dragged into a future they're not comfortable with. But then there's also just a thing that, again, I don't think people are even conscious of it, where it is new for many people and even people that are younger and have maybe grown up in a more kind of old school traditional environment, be it household or community, where they're not even conscious of why they're more upset at women. There's just something about women sharing knowledge or being assertive or being confident that just rankles them. They don't even register that it's because it's a woman. They just know there's something about that person I hate and it's something they're just not used to and they haven't kind of made the mental a customization to oh, sometimes people that aren't dudes have stuff to say as well. Right. Do you think that same experience is extrapolating the under race as well as gender? Sure. Well, I mean, I know it is, but is it almost like step by step, do you think? I think it's probably pretty similar models, yeah. Well. Speaking like as a white person in a room of white people who are on the phone right now. The worst days I have ever had managing our Facebook page are days when we talk about something that has to do with systemic racism and we'll get a flood of similarly implicitly racist comments from people who really don't know that the view that they just put out there is racist. That's sort of the same thing. A lot of people do things that are misogynist, not really consciously being misogynist. It comes out and they're not consciously aware of it. And we see the same thing on our Facebook posts and subjects that are related to race really pretty often so at the end of the day, when you guys get a bunch of these, say on just a particularly bad day, what do you do? Do you battle this? Do you just brush it off and be like, these guys are idiots, and whether they like it or not, they are going to be dragged into the future against their will? Do you do a combination of both or do you look at your status as a perennial top 20 podcast and say, clearly, who cares what they say? Because we're really good at what we do because we're very successful. I do a combination of things. I have kind of a library of links about vocal fry, and whenever anyone writes directly to us to complain about vocal fry, I kind of send them, hey, why don't you listen to this American Life segment all about vocal fry, in which IRA Glass has vocal fry the entire segment but nobody complains at him about it. I specifically will address that. I will specifically address things that people say on our Facebook page in public because I feel like our role as a podcast about history does not include allowing people free reign to be racist in public and have that not be challenged. But when it comes to the email that Holly and I got that was so bad pretty recently, that was the person who was basically advocating me murdering Holly. I was actually traveling. I went down to the hotel bar and had a drink. There you go. I read a book and I tried to chill out about it. There's the answer. Booze. Yes. Cocktail fixes everything. Well, thank you both for addressing this. Yeah, I'm sorry we didn't solve this problem here in this listener mail segment. Thank you for having us on the show. Of course, if anyone out there and stuff you should Know land has not checked out stuff you missed in history class. You definitely should because it is super awesome and as are both of you. And I don't want to strangle you, but I want to hug your necks now. She don't move no more. No. But thanks for coming in and we should do this more often. We should have a whole show where we just get together and do roundtable stuff. We can have yappy. POW wow. Party time. That would be fun. Well, if you have something to say about all this, we're sure you will. We want to hear from you. You can tweet to us at syscast. You can tweet the stuff you missed in history class at at missinghistory. You can join us on Facebook.com. Stuffytoknow. You can join Stuffymistinghistory class at missedinhistory. Facebook.com missedinhistory makeakin easy. What about email? How do they get in touch with you? Historypodcast athousofworks.com. And you can hit us up at stuffpodcast athousofworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyshennow.com and missedinhistory.com for more on this and thousands of other topics visit housetofworks.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 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 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." | ||
How 3D Printing Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-3d-printing-works | With 3D printing you can print not just pictures and words, but actual objects from files. And as costs come down, the list of things you can print expand: from food, to organs, to guns. | With 3D printing you can print not just pictures and words, but actual objects from files. And as costs come down, the list of things you can print expand: from food, to organs, to guns. | Tue, 01 Apr 2014 14:48:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=14, tm_min=48, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=91, tm_isdst=0) | 44953255 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and this is kind of unusual. With me is Ben Bowden. Say hi to hi, everybody. Ben hey, everybody. Ben, you are here because we have some pretty big news. Yes. Well, because we can't really say exactly why, but Chuck was called away and is not going to be with us any longer, unfortunately. It's a very sad day for all of us here. Chuck was part of this almost from the beginning. Ben yeah. Chuck started in July of 2008. Yeah. Nice homework. Yeah, he did. I always said that's when the fireworks happen, that first Chuck episode is amazing. Not to set you up for anything, obviously, but there's some big shoes to fill and Chuck will be missed. And I know you love him and everybody out there loves them, but we've got to keep going on. Yeah. Chuck is doing what he has to do and it falls to us. I want to be respectful. Well, yeah. A long time fan, first time co host. Hopefully that will translate to this, that you have an enthusiasm for not just the topics, but for stuff you should know in general. I'm sure people will appreciate that. I know this is a little odd. It was quick, it was sudden, it's out of the blue. But hats off to you, man, for stepping in like you're braver soul than I am. Yeah. I'll be honest with you, I'm a little scared. You're doing good. What Aaron Cooper is going to think, everybody else is going to do. But I think Aaron Cooper is the least of your worries. Probably. The show has to go on. Right? Well, with that, let's go on with the show. We're talking today about 3D printers. Are you pretty familiar with 3D printers? Yes. So I am as well. Kind of mostly just from keeping up with the big news stories. Sure. But the ins and outs, the details of a 3D printer, the machine itself, how it operates, I didn't really know a lot about until I read this article. Were you familiar with the intricacies of it? Yes. Didn't you guys have one in the video department? I don't know if everybody knows this or not, but you originally started out you're a video guy and then you made the leap over to editorial. Now here you are on Stuff you should know, too. But wasn't there a 3D printer in the video department for a while? Yes. And you guys made some pretty good use of that, right? Yeah. The 3D printer that we had is one of the early models, so it has some advantages. It can print some really cool stuff, but as pretty small production capacity, it takes a while to get to it. It's cool. We only have one kind of plastic, so everything is really bright green. Yes, I remember seeing that. It's the kind that gives you a headache. Yeah. And that is probably the bulk of the tons when it gets to that. But I think that 3D printing is a fantastic and exciting thing. And a lot of people don't know this, but not all 3D printing is created equally. There are a couple of different types. So what we were hoping to talk about in today's episode is that 3D printing isn't just for cute little chest pieces or car parts. Right, right. You could do all sorts of things. As a matter of fact, mentioning news stories, we recently were talking off air in my head. I was imagining that we were talking off air, rather about printing human tissue with a 3D printer. Some guys at Harvard, which is college wake up. Wake up. Dude, what do you do? Oh, man, you got eye boogers. Yeah, sorry about that. It's so weird. Like, I came in here, jerry is all set up and you're asleep in your chair. I think she put something in my coffee, like roof. You knock out pills or something. Well, you look like, I don't know, you're restless. Yeah, it was weird. I just had the worst dream. Like you had gone somewhere, some vague place no one knew or we weren't saying. And Ben from stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, Ben was like in your place and he was doing like a really good job. You mean Ben? I left work and Ben took my job. Yeah, I mean, he was giving your job. He was stepping up, trying to fill your shoes kind of thing. He's doing good. So it didn't look like a nightmare. I got to say. I mean, it was nightmarish in that I didn't like what I was wearing, but Ben was doing great. So it was a dream of all dreams? It was a pretty pedestrian, mundane dream. Yeah, I guess it was like April Fool's dream of some sort. Is that what this is? I guess because it was a dream today. Today is April Fool's Day. It all makes sense. Which would make it an April Fool's dream. Wow, man. All right, well, you got a little drool on your lipstick, but otherwise I'm ready to go with it. I have to say it was nightmare. So I'll just fess up the idea of doing stuff you should know without you you could have led with that. I wanted to keep you in suspense. All right, well, I'm just going to go have been killed very quickly. And then we probably should because ask anybody who was hearing my dream, he was good. My seat is warm. Yeah, he did do that a few times. All right, well, here's the weird thing. In my dream, we were about to talk about 3D printing. What topic are we about to cover now? 3d printing. What? Yes. This is the craziest dream I've ever had in my life. All right. Am I dreaming now? No, this is for real. In fact, I have somewhere to be, so I'd like to get on with it. Oh, okay. Well, let's do that then. Let's put you back to bed afterwards. And you can dream about me being dead all you want. Yeah, because I still am kind of groggy. All right. So, Chuck? Yeah. You ready to wrap about 3D printing? Yeah. It bugs me already that they call it printing. Why? Because it's not printing. Okay. I see where they get the name, but to me, it's a little bit of a confusing thing. So you're an additive manufacturing guy? Yeah. Is that what you're into? Yeah. Because that's the other term for I mean, there's a couple of other terms. Some are kind of old timey, like stereo lithography. That sounds old timey, but additive manufacturing is the umbrella term for what 3D printing is, or 3D layering. I like that. Yeah. Which is a little more accurate than printing. Yeah. Although the reason that they call it printing, as we will see, is because it does tails well with traditional two dimensional inkjet printers. It uses a lot of the same form and function. Yeah, I get what they say. But you mentioned additive manufacturing. Now, that's the key, is that it's not a computer numerical controlled machining, which is when you start with a block of something and carve it down. This is actually starting from nothing and adding to it, which is really neat. It's the reverse of that. Yeah. And with 3D printing, I'm just going to call it that. I'm sorry. No, that's what we're going to call it. Okay. Or three DP is what we want to call back. Three DP. Okay. Then he'd say it with, like, a smile. And his teeth are he's got great breath. He does. It's pretty pleasant. Let's just get past the spending. I'm sorry about my dream. Okay. It's okay. So, anyway, with 3D printing, the whole basis of it is you print a three dimensional object, or you manufacture a three dimensional object layer by layer by layer by layer. Layers can be a micron up to a millimeter or so thick, and as each layer is deposited on top of the next, you have a 3D object that's built. That's the sum total of it. Yeah. Everything from I think Ben even mentioned chess pieces, to, like, whatever you can think of, you can 3D print virtually, including guns and potentially, one day, bodily organs and things like that. Like an artificial heart being 3D printed. They're working on it. Yeah. Like you say, anything you can come up with, somebody is trying to 3D print or already have, it's the latest and greatest. It is. And in fact, Chuck, a lot of people think it's going to be the next industrial revolution, honestly. And there's a lot of reason to put some money behind that. Because if it does take off, and it's becoming increasingly possible that it does, as costs come down for materials and the actual printers themselves. Sure. The more and more barriers are coming down, and if it becomes widespread man, so long manufacturing and transportation sectors as we know them. Yeah. And say hello to custom everything. Yeah. Broke your spatula in your kitchen and it's like one in the morning, and you're one of those weirdos. Each dinner at one in the morning, you get a broken spatula and you can't go to Bed, Bath and beyond, or else you'd have to break in. Yeah. No, all you do is go to your office computer at home. Sure. Say, hey, Amazon, I need a new spatula. It sends the designs to your 3D printer, printed out a new spatula, wait till it cools down, and then you go finish cooking spaghetti. Yeah. I think the trick is cost. Like, with any kind of early technology like this, like cost and size, that's got to come down, and it already is. And you can buy these things for like, $800 now. You can get unassembled ones for, like, 200. Really? You can get assembled for three or four. $500? Yeah. All right. You should totally have one in the office. We do. Was that real? Was what real? Were you controlling my dream? I was. I knew it. I knew you were controlling my dreams. That's why I was wearing that that outfit. Yeah. Didn't like it. Yeah, there is one somewhere, and it really works like we have used it. Yeah. Remember? Have you not seen the little green, like, chess pieces that he was talking about? No. Unless I saw them and didn't realize that they are some awful neon green. But yeah, as far as I know, it's still here. Cool. But you're saying that this is kind of early on. It's a nascent technology. Yeah. But going fast. Yes. And it's nascent, really, as far as entering people's homes are concerned, as far as industry is concerned. It's been around for decades now. As a matter of fact, the mid 80s was when additive manufacturing, the prototypical 3D manufacturing or 3D printing, was really introduced to the industry sector and said, hey, guys, you know, you're prototyping process. Well, prepare to cut it by like seven, eight yeah. And speed wise, speed wise, materials wise, CO2, output wise in every way, it's called rapid prototyping. And like you said in the early 90s is when they said, you have some ideas for maybe a car park or something? How would you like to and you know what prototyping is? When you build something to test out basically as a manufacturer. Right. Your prototype. But they said, how would you like to work with that prototype tomorrow instead of a month from now? Manufactured. And then coming up with the design, sending them overseas, having the prototype built, shipped back to you, finding out that it didn't quite fit, recalculating, sending it back like this was the prototyping process until the rapid prototyping was introduced. Yeah. And I think in many cases with technology, we have MIT to thank. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They were definitely one of them. But it seems like there was several different people or companies or institutions that were coming up with this at about the same time. I think car companies had a lot of the early they definitely bought a lot of the early ones, for sure. So in the mid eighty s, a guy named Charles Hall came up with this technique that's still in use today, where you use a laser to turn some sort of plasticy dust, a polymer dust, into something solid. It's called, like, alchemy, pretty much photo polymerization. And it was one of the earliest types of 3D printing. And like I said, it's still in use today. And Hole went on to create a company called 3D Systems that's still around today. One of the leaders in 3D printing. He's loaded. Yeah, he's still the CTO of the company. Well, I guess we should talk about the two main processes on direct and binder printing. Right. Direct printing, that's the one that looks and behaves most like your regular ink jet printer. When you see it moving along, it's the little metal bars. It looks a lot like that. Right. It's got a little nozzle. And instead of dispensing ink, though, it dispenses either a plastic polymer or a waxy substance. Something that's heated up and melted, sprayed in a pattern that it's supposed to be onto the surface, and then it cools and hardens. Yeah. And that's the key, is it has to come out really hot and it has to cool really fast. And if you've seen these nozzles, you can think of it kind of like a hot glue gun. That's sort of what the tip looks like, except much finer, obviously. And it'll even leave, like if you're printing like a yoda head, which people love to print on 3D printers. And you have to come from the head to the ear that sticks out. There's a gap there. There'll be even like little hot glue strings left behind, stuff you got to go and clean up later. Right. Which is part of the process here. So that's direct 3D printing. There's another type that's similar called binder 3D printing. And it's called binder because you use your base substance, is a powder polymer something, but it's in powdered form, and that's sprayed or laid down in the arrangement that it's supposed to be for that layer. And then a binder of like, glue or some sort of liquid that holds it in place and seals it together is sprayed over it. Yeah. So it's two passes, powder pass, and then the liquid pass. Right. And even though there are two passes, it's actually faster because you don't have all these different nozzles having to add all these different stuff. It's just like there's your powder, there's your binder. Yeah. And that's where you can use metals and ceramics and things like that. Right. It really opens up your world material wise. And then there's multi jet modeling, which is pretty cool. That's when you have well, you have many of those jets. And if you see these things at work, it's like really cool just all operating at the same time, building something right in front of your eyes, moving like little robots. Spraying plastic all over the place. Pretty much, but in very precise places. Yeah, like you said, microns at times. And then there's another one we want to give a shout out to called fuse deposition, I think. Yes, fuel fuse. Wow, I'm really having trouble with this one. Fused deposition modeling, which is basically you're using even smaller nozzles, that are actually they're not spraying, they're injecting things which gives you an incredibly intricate amount of detail, or amount of intricate detail. You get direct and binder. And those are kind of common, right? Yes, very common. And then there's kind of subsets of those. Basically, if we did this episode, five years from now, you'd be like, here's how 3D printing works. And it'd be one of these. That's why I had a feeling that as time goes on, then some of these will fall away. Definitely. Any technology, they're all right now they're competing to be basically the 3D printing technology that becomes the standard for all. Like inkjet. Yeah, inkjet printers were invented in the 60s, but there was dot matrix, all these others, and then it just became clear that inkjet printing was the way to go. I think that's what's going on with 3D printing right now. Whichever one is most viable for the consumer is the one that will usually went out. Exactly. Because that's the one that companies will put all their money into and then that's where all the breakthroughs will come from. And maybe on the manufacturing side, they might still have their own super expensive ways of doing things. But if you want one at your house, they're going to have to scale it down. Exactly. So you've got binder printing, you've got direct 3D printing, and then you have different ways that these can be used. So for example, remember I mentioned Charles Hole in his photo polymerization? Yes. You can use that for binding. Right. So that's the laser one. Yeah. So you would use some sort of powder. Right. And then you would use a UV laser that exposed that powder and turned it into a solid. Right. Just boo. Yeah, I think it makes that sound. That's why people love that 3D printer. So you're using technically a 3D binder printing method, but you're using photo polymerization as the technique to actually bind the stuff together. Right. And then depending on your material, you might want to use a different kind of technique, like selective laser centering is really good for metals. 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Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Yeah. And that's a laser as well. And it actually melts this plastic powder and then solidifies it after that. Or it can melt metal powder. So if you're creating, like, something that normally would have to be like, die cast or machined or something like that right. You're creating a structure that's just as sturdy. But this is one of the reasons why 3D printing could lead to a revolution in manufacturing. When you are creating something using a 3D printer, you're creating a cross section of it layer by layer. But it's just as sturdy as something solid, right? Yeah. Like the insides of these. It's neither hollow nor solid. It's got like a Lattice support system, right, if that's what it calls for. Right? Yeah. So you can do honeycomb, you could do Lattice. You can subtract a lot of what has to be in something that's diecast just because the human hand or the machines we have aren't capable of making something so intricate. So you have a lot of waste in manufacturing. There's a lot of extra metal in a widget that doesn't have to be there. Sure. With 3D printing, you use just the amount of material you need, and you can make the thing as lightweight as its structural soundness can call for. Yeah. So if you want to make a diecast Civil War soldier six inches tall, it can be hollow and use 80% less material. Right. If you want detail in his laces, you use a 3D printer for that. If you want just clumpy, homer, Simpsons shoes, you can make it diecast. But to use it even more to the point, real world example, if you are making airplane parts and you are making a hinge, and the hinge made it using diecast techniques is blocky and clunky. And the one with 3D printing is like Lattice, like you said, right? The Lattice one is going to be more lightweight. Sure. If you have 1000 hinges on a plane, all the extra weight adds up in the diecast one. It's not there with the 3D printed one, which means the plane weighs less, which means it uses less fuel, which means it puts out less CO2 or it could carry more even. Right, exactly. And it's possibly even more sound structurally because this thing has been so intricately created. Yes. Why, it's really almost endless applications for this in the future. Oh yeah. Spatulas to airplane hinges. Just Simpson Civil War figures. Right. Well, I guess we should talk a little bit about the process because this is where it and you should look at a video, if you haven't yet, of a 3D printer in action. It's pretty neat. It is, but also it's very tough to describe and it's just so much easier to just see it. Yeah, there's a good Ted Talk from, I think, 2011. I can't remember the woman's name, but she does a good job of just step by step. Here is the basis of 3D printing and here's some video footage that you're just like, okay, I totally get it now, but here's a clumsy it's something to explain. Well, they all use a similar approach. Step one is CAD computer aided design. This is what you have to start with. It's a software that it's the same as when you do like 3D graphics for a motion picture. What you're doing is just creating a three dimensional structure on your computer screen that's basically your Blueprint. It's what you're going to end up making. It's CAD software. It's the same stuff that architects or engineers use because not only can you design it in three dimensions, you can also test its soundness. Sure you can model it. Yeah. Like a big warning light goes on. The bridge you've modeled is going to hold cars number two. And this is some kind of technical geeky stuff, but it's all part of the process. You have to convert that to something called the STL Format Standard Tessellation language. And that's basically just a file format developed in the 80s that allows the machine to read the CAD software. Right. It translates it from the CAD language to the printer's language. It's just a very geeky step in the process. Right. And the STL format, that was a Charles Hole invention, too. I wonder if eliminating some of these steps at some point is going to be the deal to where you can draw something on your computer and plug it into your 3D printer. Yeah, I think that's kind of already there. But you just have to have CAD and then you can probably in CAD, I would imagine, just export to STL Format, like changing a Word document to a PDF or something like that. I think it's that simple. So it's not that big of a deal. Yeah. And then you're going to transfer that to your machine. And there is a computer that is attached to your 3D printer, obviously. So now it has the blueprint, it is converted to the proper language and it's ready to go. And you press the green button and you sit back and pour yourself a scotch and you watch the magic happen. Yes. Or you go to bed and you wake up the next day and you're like, wow, that didn't turn out how it was supposed to. Yeah, it does take a while. It can at least there's a tumblr called Epic 3D Printing Fail. Of course there is. You should check it out. These things go wrong. Like when they go wrong, they really go wrong. Yeah. And it's fun to go to YouTube and see some of the people that are doing this at home. And it's a process to learn how to do it right. You're probably not going to get a great result right out of the gate. Yeah. And if you could, it's just pure luck. You're going to waste a lot of consumables. Sure. Start and work your way up would be my advice. Sure. But you do have to set up your machine, which means, just like you would with your printer, you got to make sure it's full of whatever polymer or binder you're going to use. Generally the inkjets, they move left and right and you're going to have a base underneath it, moves it up and down. Right. They exist, the inkjet, the printer jets or whatever. Yeah. They move left and right, like you say, up, forward and backwards. And then yeah, the platform goes up and down to add that third dimension. Right. So apparently with the platforms, they nickel and dime you because they're not reusable. What? Or if they are reusable. I think because they're heated, they're supposed to say heated. So I think if you look at like a package for a 3D printer, you buy like, replacement trade. I didn't know that. How much are they? They're not that much. But still, it's like, it's like another expense just to print your spatula. You end up paying like $100 for your stupid spatula. So, like I said, you're going to let the machine do its thing and then afterwards you're going to take it out. You might want to check on it occasionally to make sure your yoda is an all cockeyed. Did you think that was hilarious? So, Step Six removal. Remove your 3D printed object from the machine. You try to put the pot of spaghetti on your machine and use the spatula like that. Actually take the spatula out of the machine. That's like an unnecessary step. And that's even apparently from a book. What additive manufacturing Technologies calling rapid prototyping to direct digital manufacturing. Step Six removal. Well, I think maybe they included removal because they do indicate that just to be careful and you might need to wear gloves and stuff like that. Yeah, because apparently don't forget what you're doing is you're spraying or your machine is spraying hot melted plastic in an enclosed location in an enclosed room, probably. So, yeah, there's a lot of toxic chemicals involved. You may want to wear gloves. You may want to wear, like, a respirator sure, whatever. A yoda mask made with your printer earlier. And then afterwards, like I said, you may need to clean it up. There may be little hairs. There may need to be things. You need to brush off some powder, and then, dude, you're ready. Well, some of them use supports that are water soluble, too. So, like these things that keep Yoda's ears up? Yeah, you can just drop the whole thing in water after it cures, and then the supports will go away because they dissolve in water like they never happened. All right, so we need to talk about some of the applications now and in the future right after this message. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so the future the future the present and the future of 3D printing. Its applications are really piling up, like, daily, it seems like. Yeah. Yoda figurine. That's right. One reason is the article points out is because there's a couple of fronts going on. You have industrial manufacturing, and then you have artists, I guess there's three. And then you have just your regular dope at home that just has like, $800 laying around. And industrial manufacturing is obviously going to speed things up, like plane wings and artificial limbs. And I saw a really cool did you see the 3D printed cast? No, it was not solid. It was like a honeycomb. So bye bye to the days of heavy ants. Yes. And not be able to hit your arm or whatever. I can't sign those. That's a good point. You can't really find the fiberglass ones anyway, though. Oh, really? Well, back in the old days, it was. Just plaster. Right. That was the heyday of Cat signing. And then when they went to not fiberglass what is it they use the I don't even know. I haven't broken up titanium limb. No, it's not titanium. It's more like the fabric bandage that ends up hardening. You can't write on it. Okay. I can't do anything with it. No one asked me to sign their cast anyway, so I don't keep up with the cast. Does anyone even do that anymore, or is that a totally integrated thing? I'm sure they do. Yeah. No, I didn't see the cast, to answer your question. Okay. But that's industrial manufacturing. They're tackling the big things like organs and car parts and plane parts, and that's actually the second sea change that additive manufacturing has created for the industrial sector, because first of all, they revolutionized prototyping, and then these 3D printers got so good that they're like, well, we can actually produce the actual thing, like, not just the prototype of the model anymore. We can produce the actual end result. Yeah. So that's the second revolution, and it's very much here now, like, hey, you're a surgeon, and Josh was in a horrible accident and his face was disfigured, and you want to put them back together. We can print out your old, lovely face and show that surgeon shove it under the skin. Just show it up. Yeah, we can't do that, obviously. But it just serves as the model for the surgeon, though, instead of looking at it on a computer screen. Right. And there's apparently MRIs or fMRIs are going to be pretty much delivering the CAD file to a 3D printer pretty soon. Yeah. To create stuff that you need, all you do is just get an MRI scan, and then, bam, here's your implant. Apparently, it's all the rage and dental implants. Yeah, I got my fake tooth, which took a long time to manufacture because they weren't using 3D printers. No, but they could whip out a tooth for me tomorrow. 10 seconds. Artists are way into it. If you've been to an art show in the past couple of years, you've probably seen some sort of 3D printed object, which I feel like at this point, a lot of the art that's being 3D printed, it's more like it's made by 3D printers. The big thing, it's not, wow, that's really amazing. And it was made by it's more like this is made by a 3D printer. Yeah. But for me, I guess it's impressive, but I'd still rather see a sculpture by hand, something that's 3D printed. Sure. I mean, that seems to be a lot more difficult. Call me old school. There's also, like, a lot of this kind of dovetails in with art. You can buy a piece of art now that someone sculpted using CAD and printed out at your house, and then you have a piece by that artist. It's kind of changing art as well. That's also kind of being revolutionized in commerce as well. So I guess going back to the medical thing, there's a company called Bespoke Prosthetics where they can kind of measure your stuff and create a model for it and then print out your prosthetic that's super tailored. Wow. Or going back to that spatula example, you can ultimately have some design sent to your 3D printer and then you print out your specialist. So you're paying for the design that only has to be designed once and then it's on the person who is buying it. It's up to you to manufacture it. Right. So that kind of takes a lot of the costs away too. It's really just you don't even have to build that first one. You just come up with a good design and you can sell the design over and over again without ever actually manufacturing anything. Right. Or if you just think of some cool little thing you want build maybe your own prototype of something you don't even have to buy all this stuff. There are companies now that will make your little prototype for you. Yeah. Which is I think far more prevalent these days. Like if you do order something off the internet, they send the file to a company that actually prints it out for you and there's a professional job unless you want it yourself. That's pretty cool for like the home inventory. And they want to try out their new widget that they just made. Speaking of home inventors, we would be very remiss it's not in this article but there is yet another revolution. If you haven't gotten the idea that 3D printing is revolutionary just rewind this and start over. Yeah, there's a 3D printer called a Rep wrap which is a DIY from scratch 3D printer that you build. You can get the parts at just about anywhere for a couple of you put it together and you download the open source software. All this is free, all open source. And the first thing the printer does is it prints out the remaining parts that it needs. Shut up. Swear to God. Wow. It's in its second incarnation now. Second generation represent is called the Mendel, dr. Gregor Mendel of course. And once you have this thing up and running there's like a whole world of open source 3D printing projects that you can download and print. You can upload your own stuff. And the great part about it, since it's open source, if somebody's like this would be so much better if we just replaced this latter structure with a honeycomb structure here and then all of a sudden now it's indestructible and then bam. That things just got improved for everybody to come. Yes. This sounds like something that's like early internet stuff that at some point some government being will squash all this free trading of great ideas and things. Exactly. One of the things is the people who are open source fanatics are like, dude, you want to solve poverty? You want to solve poor health care in these areas? Give a town a 3D printer or two, or teach them how to set up a mendel and then they can print out their lab parts, they can print out replacement parts, they can print out whatever, and all of a sudden they can take care of themselves and give deliver good health care. And they're not relying on aid or donors or whatever. They're handling it themselves because now they're not off of the supply line. They're totally tapped in just because they have an internet connection and a 3D printer. Well, and you sent me an article about a gentleman who is working on 3D printing food and don't think of it as like, I'm going to go print a hamburger. You have to kind of change your conception of what food is, but it's essentially going to be a mix of water and proteins and oils and whatever makes up the components of a food. And then you print it out as a little cube or a little four leaf clover and eat it. Yeah, I don't know about I mean, it's way early in the stages, but he's talking about solving world hunger with 3D printing. Yeah, and he totally could because if you have the macronutrients, right, like you have a protein cartridge, a carbohydrate cartridge, a fat cartridge, and you're using binder printing. So you're just putting them together and adding water or something like that. Instant food. Right. So his first proof of concept, I think, was chocolate. But the one he's working on now is pizza, which is perfect because it's in the layers anyway. Sure. So remember the platform that goes up and down as he did often, the guy who created that, he used that characteristic to bake the dough as the pieces being built. So you've got the carb layer and then the tomato layer and then a protein layer. And the proteins come from insects or whatever, right. Which as you're eating it, if it tastes right, you don't care where it comes from. No, of course not. Unless you pay attention to that kind of thing. Right. But yeah, he could very easily revolutionize food. And as we get closer to things like being able to 3D print living tissue, which apparently we're at right there, but the problem that everybody keeps running up against is blood vessels generating blood vessels just beyond our technology right now. Once we start being able to do that, then you will be able to print a nice juicy hamburger in your home. Some of the downsides of 3D printing is, as of now, I think a lot of this stuff, like with anything, the technology is going to get better. We're going to refine it and make it more environmentally friendly. But right now, they burn a lot of energy, about 50 to 100 times more electrical energy than injection molding for something that's similar in size, so that's no good. 100 times more electricity is traditional casting or machining. So right now they're recommending it. It's not up to like large scale manufacturing or anything like that, right, like assembly line stuff? No, just because it's just burning too much is wasting too much. The emissions aren't very healthy. Obviously, if you have one of these in your home, like you said, you're in enclosed space, you're burning plastic, there's going to be some emissions given off from that in your house. Right. So I don't know what kind of they probably have venting systems already, don't they? I don't know. In an industrial one, I'm sure. They say you should probably put this in a vintage room. But now if you're just a dude with a MakerBot on your desktop, it's in here. It's in your room. Yeah. Your room is as vented as it normally is, I would guess. Wow. Plastics is something we're trying to get away from as a planet. And plastic filament is kind of the main game right now. Yeah, for now. As metals and ceramics are more and more introduced, I think plastics will kind of fall away. Or they could, but yeah, for sure. Like, all 3D printers use plastics right now. Yeah. This one I never considered. I thought it was pretty interesting is the piracy licensing deals of like, if you want to go make your own Hobbit figurine instead of paying what's the dude's name? Peter Jackson. Peter Jackson his cut. Right. Or George Lucas his cut. You can make your own little Star Wars figures. Yeah. Or print a bunch of them and go sell them in the subway. Exactly. Little kids who don't know any different who ride the subway. Yeah. Or set up on your own online shop or whatever. Yeah. You can make the argument like, yeah, that's a problem. But that's something that would have to be dealt with. Just like everyone lived with the piracy from music and movies and all that, those industries haven't collapsed. It's true. People are still making music, people are still making movies. People will still make figurines. Yeah, that's a good point. And then the whole gun thing is definitely a touchy issue. Yeah. This guy, Cody Wilson, 26 years old, a couple of years ago. Yeah. Or was it last year? No, it was like within the last two years, I think, made his own 3D printed gun that shot a bullet. And they have now even another company has manufactured a metal gun that shoots bullets. And that means if you can sell that software, then people could just skirt gun laws and print a gun at home. Yes. Apparently they already are, I guess Cody Wilson put it up and the Justice Department took it down, but not before it was already downloaded 100,000 times at least. And that's the magic number. That means it's out there forever. Yes. And apparently Congress has already got laws regarding this as far as having guns that are not made of metal, like I. E. One that you could sneak onto a plane. Yes. But there's a small loophole in that some of these gun plans have like the tiniest little piece of metal that maybe not picked up by a metal detector, but it is technically metal. Right. The liberator does have that. Is that what it's called? Piece? Yeah. Wow. It does have that piece of metal piece. But apparently if you have the plans, you can very easily go in and exit that part out. And you have an all plastic gun. Right. Apparently this Israeli television group printed out their own version of it and wanted to see how far they could get with one. And basically we're standing right next to Benjamin Netanyahu with this plastic gun on them. They were able to smuggle it all the way into Parliament on the news, man. It's a plastic gun that you could take through a metal detector, which is a great thing to unleash on the world and this guy's. What about the bullets? I don't know. Yeah, I don't understand why it wouldn't be picked up or whatever. Or maybe they could make plastic bullets. Yeah. But then you're just shooting somebody with plastic bullets. Yeah. They already make those and they sell them at Toys R US. Yeah. I read this Guardian article and it was like this kid, he's very much like Ross Ulbricht. He was libertarian anarchist, kind of. Yeah. And he was like, well, it's not my responsibility. I unleashed this on the world. Who cares? Right. You can't govern this kind of thing. The Internet is supposed to be free. And it's like, that is a can of worms that I don't think exists in black and white. Yeah. Or who's responsible legally for some of this stuff one day? Like the manufacturer of the software. But even beyond legally, who's responsible morally? Yeah, sure you are, my friend. Not me. Not you, but the individual. Oh, okay. You're not going to print a gun. No. You'll just print out a little figurines of bin. Man, that dreams. You got anything else right now? I got nothing else. I think it's a good overview. Yeah, it is. We'll revisit in five years and talk about which \u20a91 out. Yeah. This article is hilariously out of date. The lowest price it quotes is like 20. $14,900. Yeah. It doesn't even mention the rep rap. The rep rap. It's a big deal. Okay. So if you want to learn more about 3D printing, you should go read this hilariously out of date article on how stuff works, which, by the way, is being updated. Just put in an update request, so it should be nice and fancy soon. Yes. And since I said search bar, I think I did it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this wildparrots. Remember when we talked about the wild parrots? Confirmed. Hey, guys really enjoyed hanging out with you during the tattoo podcast, by the way. It is called a tattoo machine, not a tattoo gun. Apparently they don't like that. They don't like that. And we heard about it. Tattoo people, Burning Man people, and who else? Seems like there's been one more subset of people that you wouldn't think would just be so angry. Yeah, I can't think of anybody, any other group that has responded en masse so angrily. Yeah. Burning man and tattoo. So when Josh heard that parrots like to hang together when free, I wanted to burst into the podcast room and tell you about the Wild Parrots of San Francisco, my hometown. I'm not going to get into it, except to say that over the course of my life, the parrots were sort of a living legend that one would occasionally get the privilege of spotting now and then. However, about three years ago, I moved in with my aunt in the little San Francisco suburb of Brisbane, and apparently the famous flock of parrots were also making their home there. Since it was warmer and less windy than most of San Francisco, they were often hanging out right outside my bedroom window, which is pretty amusing, but also somewhat annoying, especially since my first son was just a little guy. And they are loud. I can vouch for that. Yeah, they're super loud. Also, guys, I'm sending you the link to watch the documentary from 2003, the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. So she's recommended we watch that. Anyway, have we got that documentary yet? No, I think yeah, it was just a link. It's online. Okay. So keep it up. Seriously, if you stop making podcasts, I'd be one majorly bummed mama chow bellow. Amy. Thanks, Amy. And San Francisco via Italy. Yeah, that was weird. It was good. I didn't doubt you, I want to say. Oh, no, I didn't think so. Okay. That would just be such a bizarre thing to make up. Yes, sure. But yeah. Thanks, Amy, for supporting Chuck. Chuck loves to be supported and proven right. Don't we all? Yeah. If you want to hang out with us, we've got a bunch of ways you can. You can hang out with us on Pinterest, look for s y Skodcast, Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram. Yeah, we've got a couple of new social platforms, instagram and Pinterest, and it's pretty cool. I'm excited. Yeah. Everything's different, man. Like, you very rarely see one thing that's on everything. Yeah. If you keep up with us on, like, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, you're going to get a bunch of different awesome information. Yeah, it's pretty neat. Cool stuff. So thanks for that. Yeah. And then, like I said, Facebook.com stuff you shouldn't. And you can always send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and hang out with us at our home on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.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 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." | ||
Were U.S. citizens in Japanese internment camps? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/were-u-s-citizens-in-japanese-internment-camps | During World War II, the U.S. interned more than 100,000 Japanese and Japanese-American citizens. In this episode, Chuck and Josh recount the events that led to these internments, along with the long-term consequences of these events. | During World War II, the U.S. interned more than 100,000 Japanese and Japanese-American citizens. In this episode, Chuck and Josh recount the events that led to these internments, along with the long-term consequences of these events. | Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:30:26 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=18, tm_min=30, tm_sec=26, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=60, tm_isdst=0) | 29250555 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopforcecom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles w chuckle Bryant. And that makes this stuff you should know. He's paranoid or something. I just looked over my shoulder for Chuck Bryant. No guys coming after me. The real Chuck Bryant. Don't worry about him, okay? Yeah, he's taken care of. Yeah. Good. I can go back to being armed in the area. Supposedly. That was the worst one ever. That's what Matt granny said. I think he told me first episode. You told me once that Matt Granny was asked if there was one Simpsons that he could just take a mulligan on and really not exist. You told me. I don't think I did, because I've never heard of that. That's disappointing, because I love that episode. That's the episode that I based my episode on. Yes. We've had this conversation. Oh, you know me. All right. Well, you just make up Matt graining quotes, right? I guess so. Chuck? Yes? Speaking of TV, did you ever see the season three episode of Magnum Pi. Called 40 years from Sand Island. Yes. No, you haven't? I've seen them all, dude. Tell me what it was about and I'll verify that. But you said yes. Well, I mean, I saw every magnum, so I assume I've seen it. Well, this one starts out in a Japanese internment camp in Oahu called Sand Island, and there's a murder. A guard. One of the guards murders this interne. I guess that means she worked at the camp for free college credit. Although there are some similarities between internment camps and internment. But the Internet is murdered by this camp guard, and Higgins is writing a book 40 years later about this incident, and some mysterious things start to happen. Somebody's out to whack him. So Magnum's got to solve the case. Who was Higgins? The guy who killed the person? Did it haunt him years later? No. I don't remember how he learned about it. Like, maybe from hearsay or something like that. And he was doing research on it. I don't know why he was writing a book on it. I don't remember the episode. 40 years from Sand Island. Season three. It was a good one. Like, they'd really hit their stride by then. But the crazy thing is, Sand Island really existed. Okay? Really? It was a Japanese internment camp, and it didn't make this list, strangely enough. Where was it? Hawaii? Yeah. That wasn't in here, was it? No, but it was the main internment camp where Japanese and Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. Because something that I think probably especially a lot of our younger listeners haven't found out yet, the United States interned a number of its citizens unconstitutionally during World War II. Yeah. You know that one, Simpsons, where it's the soccer one? Give me more. Well, they go to see their professional soccer team or whatever and they're in the soccer stadium. Marge looks around and goes, I can't believe this used to be an internment camp. True. That's good stuff. Yeah. There are a lot of shelters, temporary places set up and a lot of people were moved through them. There's a lot of misery and heartache. Let's talk about it. Two symptoms and a Magnum in the first 6 minutes. That is stellar. Yes. All right, let's talk about it. All right, Josh. On December 7, 1941, very awful thing happened. The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor by surprise, didn't know it was coming. And Michael Bay ultimately made a pretty bad movie about it. I actually went to see that and left after the attack just because that's what I was there for. I didn't need to see the love story attached. Yeah. Alright, moving on. President FDR at the time said we're going to relocate about 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, put them in what he called concentration camps. Yeah. You wouldn't use that term today for these. No. They're associated with Nazis. Exactly. And Jane McGrath, who wrote this, went to a lot of lengths to differentiate. It a little unnecessarily. I mean, I don't think anyone thought of them as the same thing. It was a fine article, James. It was. But that was not how it started, is it, Josh? He started out a little slower and it sort of grew from there. Yeah. Well, there was apparently intelligence that even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, on the Pacific Coast, especially in areas like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, there were Spirings of Japanese and Japanese Americans being set up. So right after the attack, they rounded up about 1500 aliens that they suspected of possibly being engaged in espionage. And not just Japanese, but also like, Italians, Italian Americans, Germans and German Americans, the people who brought us liberty cabbage and stuff like that. So he reviews these people, finds out what they're all about. He hasn't paraded in front of his desk, his eyes and he's like, that guy looks okay. Not that one. Well, that's sort of what happened. And some of the aliens were released and some were sent to temporary detention camps. Canada, if you think you're off the hook, you're not. Yes, because you did the same thing. Yeah. 20,000 people. And I wonder how much of that had to do with Canada bowing to pressure from the US. I wonder. Which makes it even more shameful on us, on both parties. So a couple of months after Pearl Harbor and this was, I guess after the review of the 1500, right? Yes. That's when he issued the Executive Order 9066, which gave the military the power to create zones. And what it says here is zones in which any or all persons may be excluded. So that means they did it really indirectly. Okay. Yeah, that's what I thought. They basically said, you can't live here. You can't own property here. At the very least, you can't be here right now. But you happen to live here. Right. The military has designated this as an exclusionary zone, but we have this free housing over here that you can come take advantage of. And I think that's how it was kind of sold at first, but it became very obvious that the Japanese didn't have a choice in moving to these camps. That's the impression I have. That's the impression I have, too. So let's talk about them. They set up first assembly areas, which were temporary camps from February until the summer, right? Yeah. First generation and second generation Japanese Americans. Nise, which is first generation, and Nisei, which is second generation. Yeah. And they actually got folks from both coasts. Although it was largely west coast. Yeah, it was mostly West Coast because it's much closer to Japan than the East Coast. Yeah, of course. And that's what the intel supposedly said, that they were living anyway. And they were also I saw a government propaganda film from when they started this. These camps were being built so it would have been made in 1942. And basically they were saying, like, there's just too many Japanese. And these large populations, they're not spread out because they left people alone in Atlanta and Dallas and New York generally because they were defused. One of the reasons they went after the West Coast, because there were huge concentrations of Japanese Americans, japanese that they were just worried about them coming up with problems. Sure, that's what the propaganda film said. They said problems. They didn't say problems. Okay? That was what they're conveying. One of the problems here with how this went down was they only got a couple of weeks notice at most. They had to leave their homes with whatever they could carry and go to these assembly centers. Can I tell you one more thing from the propaganda film? So when they show them putting up signs that might as well say like, you didn't get out, right. It was basically like if you are Japanese or second generation Japanese, you can't be here. You have to go meet here at this time and we'll process you. And basically processing meant here are some government enlisted lawyers and they're going to help you basically sell your home in business and whatever for a loss in most cases. Right. You don't have a choice. Now, did they force all that or strongly encourage them as far as selling their they forced it. But this propaganda film, which I recommend anybody seeing, I can't remember what it's called, but it's only like 10 minutes long. But man, they pack a lot into it, really. They say, like, the Japanese and Japanese Americans are happy to help out. They're happy to prove their loyalty. They're in their possession, basically. They're doing their part by getting off of the West Coast. That's how this begins. Made it seem very interesting. But yeah, a lot of them were forced to sell their stuff, often less than market value. Right. So they're starting off on a bad note to begin with. Yes. And this is just with the temporary housing. Then in late summer 1942, they had finally set up ten of these internment camps ready, open for business. The WRA. The War Relocation Authority put up places in California, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Arkansas and, I guess, Hawaii. In Hawaii. Yeah. Even though that did make this list. Sand Island Island. And they were guarded, they were barbed wired, they had hospitals, they had basically everything you need to live schools, little forms of government. Yeah. Basically, they put them in the camps, guarded them, so they weren't allowed to leave or come in and out freely. Yeah. But inside the camps, it was up to the Japanese to form their own democratic self government. And they did kind of like block captains and things like that. So part conditions. Yeah, definitely. Even the WRA said that at the time. Kind of like army barracks. One family per room. You got your cot, you got your mattress, you got a stove and a light, you got some blankets. Right. The problem was, or one of the problems, was that these barracks, let's say there were five apartments in the barracks, they were separated by four walls, and the walls didn't go all the way to the ceiling. So there was, like, no privacy in a very private culture. Oh, yeah, sure. So they started wrecking their cultural heritage right off the bat, basically. Pretty much public laundry, public bathroom facilities, miss hall. So they got a small allowance of money, foreclose, personal expenditures and the like. Right. But it was pretty dang low. And so if they wanted a more comfortable life in there, they would dip into your personal savings. Right. So that started wrecking them on the financial front as well. Yeah. And the low wages also had a strange indirect effect, Chuck, in that the parents and the kids who were old enough to work were making the same amount of money. Yeah. One of the ways parents exert control over their children is like, I make more than you. We make the exact same amount of money. So that wrecked the family home front a little bit more. It definitely eroded authority among parents. Sure. And I mentioned that they could dip into their savings. Not the case with first generation Japanese, because their assets are actually frozen. So they didn't have the option to spend their own money that you say that they earned and put in the bank. Right. Okay. So like you said, they tried their best to do normal things set up like baseball leagues. Evidently the Japanese love baseball. Yeah. I saw an art exhibit at the Smithsonian Renwick Gallery in DC. It was called Garmin, the art of the internment camps. Really? And a couple of things they had were some, like, handmade baseball jerseys for the leagues that they set up there. Wow. Yeah. That's pretty cool. It was very cool. There's a lot of really interesting stuff there. Yeah, I bet. Is that still on display right now? It just ended january 30. I looked it up. I was going to tell everybody to go. Everyone in DC. At least. Well, I bet it will set up somewhere else, so keep an eye out for it. Fingers crossed. One of the other ways that sort of wrecked the cultural family front was that Japanese traditionally ate together as a family family time, meal time. And now that the little boys and girls were living close to their friends, they were really hot to go over and eat dinner with their friends. Sure. So that fractured the family even more. Yeah. Plus, also, if you didn't want people to know you were arguing with your wife, you better not do it in the barracks, because, again, the walls didn't go all the way to the top. That's right. There is just a lot more insight into your neighbor's private life than the Japanese were ever comfortable with. I don't think any culture would be fully comfortable with those conditions. Right, I agree. So let's move forward to when the WRA says, you know what? Maybe we should let some of these folks out to go to school and work, and let's make a questionnaire and base their release on the results of this. So you have that questionnaire? Well, there's a lot of personal information, like, where were you born? Can you give five character references, five work references? There are some other kind of odd questions, like, name some newspapers that you subscribe to or regularly read. What are your hobbies and interests? Would you volunteer for the Army Nurse Corps? Would you denounce the Emperor of Japan? What are some other hobbies of your interest to you? They just slip that denouncing Emperor of Japan in there. Yes. And a lot of people hopped at this opportunity. They saw what it was, and they said, sure, totally. I'm an American citizen anyway, so yeah, that's fine. I'll Denounce, the Emperor of Japan. One thing I don't think we really touched on, Chuck, there was 112,000 people who were relocated to these internment camp. 7000 of them were, no doubt about it, American citizens. Yeah. So, yeah, there were a lot of people who were happy to sign this Pledge of Allegiance, basically a Pledge of Loyalty. And those who did were released. There are a lot of people who took it the opposite way. Well, they were released just to go to work in school at the time. Right. They weren't released released, were they? Yeah. I think that they gained them early release or released before other people. Okay. Yeah. Well, I think they're allowed to leave for work or school, but they weren't released released at that time, at least okay. There were some other people who took great offense to these questionnaires and refused to sign them. And there was actually a big protest at Tool Lake. Even if they were citizens, American citizens refused to yes. There were actually people who renounced their citizenship in the face of being forced to sign this loyalty oath on top of already being a citizen. Right, sure. So they actually verbally renounce their citizenship. At Tul Lake, there was a mass protest, and there was a guy named Jimmy Miracatani who had a pretty cool documentary made about him. The Cats of Miracatani. He was at Two Lake. He denounced his citizenship. He was finally released from the camps when they were closed and basically went to be homeless. And he didn't realize that his citizenship had been restored in 1959. And as recently as, like, 2002, he still thought he was like an illegal alien living on the streets, almost like a Japanese straggler, kind of. Yeah, that's exactly what he was like. He was a Japanese straggler of the camps, basically. Wow. It's really interesting. It's worth seeing. You love it. He stayed in the United States, though. In New York. He was a master artist. Really? He's really good. Yeah. You should check it out. I will. But yeah. Most, if not all the people who are in this protest at Tul Lake and renounced their citizenship, there was this one lawyer who went back and said they did this under duress. It shouldn't have been they canceled in the first place. Let's restore their citizenship. And I think most, it's not all had their citizenship restored years later. Yeah. Wow. All right, Josh, let's go to 1944, December. This finally comes to an end. After a lot of public outcry, they were allowed to leave, but they couldn't exactly just jump back into their regular life, in many cases because a lot of times their business or property was taken over or neglected in shambles at this point. Yeah. An alarming amount of money. Yes. $400 million in financial losses by the Japanese internees in 2009. That's about 5.2 billion. Yeah, but I think lower now because I looked up a different calculator and it said 4.8. So maybe it went down since 2009. Deflation. Good. So what's the problem here? Why is this a big deal? Why should I care? Is this constitutional? Well, yeah, it is extremely unconstitutional, a panel later found out. Right. And of course, I was being facetious with that, by the way. Of course. There was this girl named Mitsuy Endo who is a 22 year old. She was born and raised in Sacramento, had never been to Japan. I don't think she could speak or read Japanese. And she was interned at one of these camps. Unbelievable. And she basically appealed. She appealed for a writ of habeas corpus, which we've talked about before. Smart lady. It got denied. She started appealing up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court got a hold of it and was like, this woman should be granted Unconditional release immediately. And that opened the floodgates for every other US. Citizen who was interned there. And then eventually that coupled with the popular outcry against it, because people, even while it was going on, everyday Americans were saying, this is horribly wrong. Yeah, it was pretty controversial. And so finally, even before the war ended, the camps were shut down, but this wasn't before some people died. Well, are you talking about on the island? That's different. Okay, we can talk about that. Well, let's talk about both. At the art exhibit I was telling you about at the Renwick Gallery, there was this guy named Shura Obada, and he did some really cool ink illustrations, but one of the ones he did was an old man doubled over, and there's a dog nearby, and there's the fence and then the mountains in the background. And if you read the caption beneath the explanation, it's of an actual event that took place. An old man who is deaf was chasing a stray dog, trying to catch it, and apparently a guard was shouting at him to get away from the fence. Old man's Death didn't hear it. The guard shot him to death. This is in one of the camps? Yeah. And I mean, like, if this is unconstitutional, it never should have happened. Then just that alone makes it horrific. Yeah. Murder. But then there are a lot of other people who died of just deplorable conditions in the Alucin Islands, right? Yeah. I mean, it wasn't just rounded up in the United States, as we found out when we read this. Apparently we got word that Japan was going to attack the Lucian Islands, kiska and Atu before they did. So we said, let's get in there and round up, I guess was it locals? Yeah, the Unana. Wait, hold on. The Uninggax. Ungaix Unanache? Yeah. What I don't understand is why they weren't Japanese American. They weren't American. Why did we round them up? For their own protection, supposedly? Well, I think not even supposedly. I think that was the whole thing that we were pretty sure the Japanese were going to capture this island, which they did, so we evacuated them from their home. Okay, well, sadly, what happened though, was 881 of these Unangocs were rounded up, and they saw US. Servicemen burning their houses in their villages down. So the Japanese couldn't use them. So the Japanese couldn't use them. And that was just when they were setting sale for their new home. We're like, you can't stay here and we're going to take you someplace where a lot of you are going to die. Okay? So they took them further into Alaska and basically used an old fish cannery, an old fish salting place, herring, saltyy. And then an old mine of some sort. Yeah. Gold mine camp. It was like riding out. These were the temporary quarters for these people. And out of 881 Chuck, 54 people died of things like consumption, the damp, TB, which are all, I think, the same thing. Well, they didn't have plumbing, they didn't have electricity, they had no toilets, they didn't have the food was poor, they didn't have winter clothes, and the water was tainted. And this is where they sent them. Yeah. Unbelievable. So the innings basically said, okay, well, we're just going to take matters into our own hands. They built themselves their own quarters. They raised a church there. It was pretty inspiring. And again, this one wasn't like internment against I guess it was against their will, but it was supposedly for their own safety. Well, that's what they said about the Japanese Americans, too, we should point out. Right. Let's talk about that panel in 1988 that found that that was not the case at all. Yeah. Well, before we move on, though, we should say that the Ungax 25 of the men actually joined the American Armed Forces. Despite the fact that they were rounded up and put in these camps and some of them died, they still supported America to the extent that they would fight and die for the country. Pretty amazing. It is very amazing. All right, so now we flash forward once again do our little time machine to when redress payments were basically on the table. Right. In 1980, Congress created the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. And they came to their decision in 1988. Right. And their decision or their judgment on whether or not it was constitutional or what was the motivation behind it was that it was racism, pure and simple. Racism and wartime hysteria. Right. Yeah. And basically they said yes, there was evidence that there was espionage networks on the West Coast among Japanese and Japanese Americans, but the people who were calling the shots of an internment didn't know that at the time. So we owe these people a lot of money, is what they came up with. Right. How much was it in reparation? So I got some stats for you. Okay. 82,210 people got paid $20,000 apiece. Now, remember when I said that the financial losses let's go back to 1988 at least, because that's when they were paid. 1988, that would have been $2.6 billion lost, 1.2 billion was paid out. So less than half of what they lost they ended up getting back. So in other words, the 20 grand didn't cover squat. And 92, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was put into effect. They released another $400,000 for payments. And part of the deal then was, and I think this was the first Bush sign, this one the ten internment sites were made, historical landmarks. Yeah. And in 1988, the official apology that was part of the deal was the money. An official apology. And then funds for an educational foundation. This is what they wanted. They got it. Woohoo. Yeah. Well, I wish I could say it was a happy ending. I think probably the better legacy of it, though, is that we very sadly learned a really hard lesson, and that is that we can't get swept up in racial hysteria and profiling among our citizens in the midst of an emergency. And I think that I wonder if that helped calm people, keep heads cooler following 911. I know one thing, though, is that they never found any Japanese American guilty of espionage in World War Two. Yeah, there you have it. There you have it. Japanese internment camps. Probably one located near you, especially if you live in the Western states or Arkansas or on Sand Island in Oahu. Right. Or if you've ever been to Santa Anita Racetrack. I have. That was an assembly camp. Was it really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I want some money on some ponies there. One time there were Japanese people who kept there against their will. If you want to learn more about Japanese internment camps, type in internment I-N-T-E-R-N-M-E-N-T in the search bar. Howstopworks.com that means it's time for a listener mail. All right, Josh, we're going to catch people up on our Sergeant John Walker. Oh, yeah, because we did all this on Facebook, but we didn't really do it on the show. So many people might not know that Staff Sergeant Walker was shot in the line of duty in Afghanistan pretty severely. It was not a flesh wound, as they say, and I won't get into the details of how that went down. We'll pick up afterward with this email. Guys. The first couple of days after I was in my own coma from shell shock and a concussion, doctors put me on heavy meds due to surgeries and the pain. When they went to test my brain functions on the wonder machine due to the meds, it basically showed me his brain dead as my body was not reacting to the stimuli. Don't worry, folks. He's clearly writing his email. So things turned out okay, which we're getting to. After I was out of the coma, I was in too much pain, so they put me in a medically induced coma, which basically meant just more meds. Afterwards, they tested the MRI again, showed some problems, but they said it was only temporary. Through this all, my brother in law sent me to your Facebook page, and if you remember, I posted this. Lots of people logged on, and regardless of political affiliation and how they feel about the war, they were very concerned about Walker, which is pretty cool. I was not able to finish reading the comments on the post you guys made. I kept tearing up from all the heartwarming comments from the strangers who didn't even know me. It's really nice of you guys to do this, plus really nice of everyone who posted. I found it very kind that people posted outside of that post and kept asking for updates. So moving on. He's in the States now, recovering pretty well. He has just been promoted again from Staff Sergeant all the way to Sergeant Major. And he says he will be promoted to second lieutenant and will receive the Purple heart. The Army Distinguished Service Cross the Soldier's Medal army Commendation Medal army Achievement Medal army and Air Force presidential Unit Citation army Good Conduct Medal army Service Ribbon army Overseas Service Ribbon national Defense Service Medal He's getting loaded up on his chest here for being shot. This has been so DA. Exactly. I've been placed on medical leave. My family wants me to discharge. This is my fourth stint, but I will not do it. There's danger out there and people need protection. I will be providing protection. I plan on one more tour and then after the Army, I plan to join law enforcement. So he's doing awesome. He's on the Facebook page a lot. If you remember from many months ago. He was the one who was teaching English to the kids who spoke farsi through our podcast. And he said a lot of these children from the school came and visited him in the hospital and made him cards and stuff and so pretty cool story. That is a great story. So we just want to catch everyone else out there who's not on the Facebook page up. He's all over the place, too. He's on Twitter as well. Yeah. And he started actually, a stuff you should know. Army page on Facebook as well. Yes, he's poaching our peeps. He's a good guy. Yes, he is a very good guy. Thank you for keeping us up to date, Sergeant Walker, and we're glad you pulled through, Sergeant Major. Thank you for keeping us up to date, Sergeant Major Walker. And we're glad you pulled through. We were worried there for a little while, weren't we? It's pretty scary. It was like right around Christmas or New Year now. It was after and his brother in law was emailing me this stuff saying like, we don't know if he's going to make it at one point. Yeah, it was scary. Well, we're glad he's fine, right? We're covering. Yes. It's pretty bleak outside still these days, Chuck, so let's get some nice beach stories. Yeah. If you have a great story that takes place on a beach, we want to hear it. Send it to us in an email at stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The House ofworks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. 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 earlier. Download the app today." | ||
a6c9cc22-5462-11e8-b449-a78710ce92ea | Fire twucks! Fire twucks! (sic) | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/fire-twucks-fire-twucks-sic | Who doesn't love fire engines? We certainly do. So much that we geeked out on this one in a big way. Enjoy! | Who doesn't love fire engines? We certainly do. So much that we geeked out on this one in a big way. Enjoy! | Thu, 22 Nov 2018 13:33:52 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=13, tm_min=33, tm_sec=52, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=326, tm_isdst=0) | 47211498 | audio/mpeg | "You do it all without breaking a sweat. And you do it all in style. That's why Infinity fully reimagined the QX 60 to help you take on everything with ease. A luxury SUV as functional as it is stylish, as versatile as it is serene features like a panoramic moonroof, ample cargo space and massaging front seats. Introducing the all new 2022 Infinity QX 60, designed to help you take on life in style. Visit infinityusacom to learn more. Now, with extremely limited availability, contact your local retailer for inventory information. Hey, friends. Dating is a journey with ups and downs, for sure. But all the effort is worth it when you meet someone special, right? And when you decide it's time to find a meaningful relationship, eharmony is here for you. Eharmony. Is passionate about creating real love for all. Rooted in compatibility, Eharmony's process reveals truths about yourself, like, I don't know what you want in a relationship. And it helps you connect with a uniquely compatible partner who is right for you. Don't believe it? See for yourself. So start for free today, because every 14 minutes, someone finds love on Eharmony. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast Beep Beep. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, fire Chief Bryant. And there's Jerry, Fire Commissioner Rowland. I'm just a class One firefighter, but that's okay because this is Stuff You Should Know. The fire truck edition. I think every time we say fire truck, we should say fire truck. Okay? For the whole episode, firewalk. Because that's about the level of engagement that everyone can expect from us this episode, because I love fire trucks. My inner three year old is like, yes, let's do this. And give me, like, a Fisher Price drum to bang on while we're talking about it. Maybe one of those xylophones. Yeah. And if you hear me sighing repeatedly, just to give you context, it's election day and I'm just in a bad mood. Don't get political, Chuck. I'm not. Oh, what was it I said? I said, I'm already dreading my hangover that I'm going to have tomorrow. That's right. And I was like, I'm not going to drink for a few days preceding Tuesday. Oh, you're saving your liver up. Yeah, man. Let's talk about fire trucks. They're happy. Have you been on our fire truck? Yeah. Our company fire truck. It's the Way Back machine is now a tricked out fire truck. Yes. And you know what's funny? To bring this full circle, we have in one of our little quiet rooms, we have little quiet rooms. You can go take a phone call. Sometimes they take it down there. And we have one of our old school illustrations that we used to blow those up and frame them of a fire truck. Yeah. The old house stuff works. Website. Lee Dempsey made those. Lee Dempsey. And it looks great. And so I was on the phone this morning. I got up early to go vote emily emily texted me, which, by the way, I got it out of the way, but I waited in a longer line than that first rush. It's a longer line than at, like, 915. Emily, go to work. Yeah. So I guess I kind of had to. I go vote. Emily calls me and says that my daughter's upset because she thinks I went to boat, and she's upset because I didn't take her sailing. So she's crying. Emily's like, I don't know what to do. Can you get on FaceTime at least and show her that you work? I was like, yeah. And not sailing. Right. Let me put on my captain's head just a message. I thought about that. So I go in the quiet room, get on FaceTime, and then the background of FaceTime is that fire truck. Right. And that immediately took over the conversation because she was like, fire truck and all. Kids love fire trucks. Jerry's just talking about her daughter loves fire trucks. In a weird way. It all just sort of came around nice. I want to get in on this, too. Momma loves fire trucks as well. Most dogs hate fire trucks. Oh, she loves them, man. My dogs howl at the moon. Oh, yeah. Moon doesn't do that. Really? Sirens don't it's not big on thunder. Yeah, my dogs don't mind thunder, but they hate sirens. Just sirens. They're hearing just right, I guess. Or maybe they're singing songs of love. Yeah, they're like, I love I've never asked, to be honest. But they howl at sirens. So I want to settle something right out of the gate that I never understood. You've heard of a fire truck? You've heard of a fire engine. You've probably heard somebody point to a fire truck and go, there's a fire truck. And then somebody else points to that same fire truck and says, there's a fire engine. Yes. It's interchangeable. That's actually wrong. There is a difference between a fire truck and a fire engine. And the difference is yes, but still in the practical world of just people and kids, largely semantical. But there is a difference, though, people and kids who are wrong. Well, let me say this. We will explain to you the difference, and then it's up to you if you want to go around to people and say, that's a fire truck, not a fire engine. Actually, we should advise you now not to do that. Don't do it, but just hold that knowledge in your brain. Sure. So what's the diff? Just saying it to yourself. That's a big difference. One actually holds water. Isn't that the main difference? Yeah. If you take away the word fire right from fire truck and fire engine, you got an engine and a truck. And if you understand the origin of fire engines, it will make total sense. Fire engines were originally just a water pump used to douse water on a fire wasn't on a truck, wasn't on wheels. It was on a sled that people dragged from one place to another in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and America. It was an engine for pumping water, right? Yes. And today, if you are appropriately using the word fire engine, what you're talking about is a vehicle with four wheels. That is basically the point. More than four wheels. Five wheels. Four and a half I got. The one in the center is to move a giant amount of water and a pump and some hoses to a fire to douse water on the fire. Same thing as it was in the 1680s. It is today. It's just updated to make it a lot more easy to get it from point A to point B. Right. That's a fire engine. What's a fire truck? Well, a fire truck doesn't have that water tank full of water, right? It has, like, ladders, firefighters. It can even be hooked up to a hydrant. Yeah, but it doesn't. Like, if you live out in the sticks and your little farmhouse is on fire, which is super sad. But in other words, if you don't live near a fire hydrant, you can still get that fire put out if you have a fire engine nearby. Right. And usually if there's like a structure fire or something, the first truck that shows up is going to be the fire engine. They're going to say, we need to get the water and usually the foam out there and start spraying this thing down. And a fire truck may not even show up, depending on how the fire engine does, controlling the fire with the water. Yeah, but they show up because they're kind of just bored anyway. They are bored. They're like, we've cooked chili five times today. I'm so tired of chili. But the fire truck, if it does show up, it'll show up with a bunch of firefighters who probably aren't going to mess with any hoses. They're going to run in there and rescue people. They're going to collapse holes into the roof to get the water in there. They're like, assisting the people with the hoses. And we'll get much more into depth about this, but let's talk about the history of fire engines a little bit. You're ready for that? Yeah, because like you said, they were pulled by people. And the downside of that there are many downsides to that, but one of the biggest ones is once they get to the actual place where they need it, they're tired, yet pulling, like, a giant metal tank of water with a pump attached to it. So they're like, we're here, but we're not very good for work right now. Right? We're here. We're tired. Get used to it for, like, 15 minutes. Eventually, they started to use horses, but again, these things were heavy, so even horses wore out after six or seven blocks. These horses were like, now I'm tired. Right. The people would be like, are you tired, horse? And the horse would just stomp once. Yeah. So that helps all problems. But it was really the advent of not the fire engine, but the car motor. Well, yeah, first it was the steam truck, basically. But the early firefighters are like, those things blow up and they're not very reliable, so it actually didn't catch on very well. It wasn't until, like, the motor powered vehicle, like a dieselpowered motor engine, a combustion engine. That's what I'm looking for. Yeah. And I think about the 1910s when fire engine started carrying those or being moved around on those, that's when it really started. And then for a little while, until like, the 20s or 30s steam and horse drawn firefighting equipment yeah. That goes to the fire truck. Whereas the fire engine moving this heavy, huge amount of water, that was a combustion engine that did that. Yeah. And then it says here in 1911, those mac trucks started pumping out engines and motorized vehicles. Right. That really changed things. And then, of course, if you listen to our skyscrapers podcast, in the 1930s, buildings started getting taller and taller, or our hotel fires podcasts, and then that became a problem. They're like, we just figured out how to get here quickly. And now you're building these tall buildings that catch on fire. So that's when this ladder technology started, they were kind of forced to ramp up their game in terms of getting people higher and higher up. Yeah. So when you had horses finally pulling stuff, you still had tired firefighters who had to run to the fire. So they put on side boards, and then it just made it harder for the horses. So finally somebody said, let's just separate these two things. Right. Let's come up with fire trucks and fire engines. And the fire trucks are going to move the firefighters to the fire so they won't be tired. And then somebody said, well, now we have skyscrapers, so now we need a different kind of truck. The latter truck. Right. From what I can tell, you're going to find components of all these and I think all of the different kinds of fire. Let's just call them fire trucks. Okay. Okay. But there are also specialized trucks. Trucks that specialize in delivering water. Sure. Trucks that specialize in delivering equipment and personnel, and then trucks that specialize in ladders. Yes. Okay. Yes. So that's kind of you can have it all in one truck, or you can have it broken out into three specialized trucks. Yeah. And what kind of trucks you have in your local municipality or county depends on a lot of things. How well funded, how many people live there, how rural it is, or how jam packed it is. And it's a science in itself in a city like New York to make sure you're covered fully. Right. Like every nook and cranny of New York city is covered. What was that early, like, computer civilization simulation called? I think it was called, like, Civilization or something like that. Was it a game? Yeah. I don't know. But there was a thing where fires would break out in your town. You didn't think about that, did you? Right. So you had to send out the fire brigade, and if you just neglected it, then all of a sudden, the area around it would fall into ruin and then there'd be, like, discontent among the population. You're like, Man, I was having fun building a shopping mall. Right now I have to deal with this burned out building. Right. I can't remember what it was called. I'm sure we're going to hear from it. Was it The Sims? Was it? No, it was much less sophisticated than The Sims, but very engrossing, for sure. I've never played one of those. I think that was actually the slogan, the quote on the box. Much less sophisticated than Sims, but very engrossing nonetheless. So with World War II or post World War II, is when you got these buckets I don't think we mentioned the bucket brigade. You've heard that term? That was pre fire engine. And that's when they had long lines of men filling up buckets of water and handing them to the guy next to you. That's how they fought fires. Pretty amazing. I just want to say really quick, I saw, I think, on Twitter, there was a bookstore in, I believe, the UK that moved locations down the road, thanks to basically a bucket brigade of volunteers who just handed it book by book oh, nice. And moved it from and then they burned them in and they charged the guy. A book burning brigade, I think. I thought you were volunteering. So, postworld War Two is when we got what we know as cherry pickers. If you've ever seen these buckets on an extended arm, like maybe someone repairing the phone line or the cable guy or whatever, it's the same thing. It's a much safer way to rescue someone than throwing them over your shoulder at the top of a ladder, which they'll still do. Yeah, there's ladders that will extend you up and, buddy, you're hanging on to the top of the ladder. Oh, man. But if you're in a bucket, you imagine something. No, I can't, because they have ladders that go up, like, 15 stories. Yeah, that's a 15 storey building just standing on the top of a ladder. I would literally lose my mind. Yeah. You're not cut out to be that guy. No, I'm not a bucket. I would just crawl down in the bottom of and be like, Get me down and just scream that the whole time. But I don't think I would lose my mind, I just lose my s. Well, but most of those buckets are open sided anyway, so you still might lose your mind. They have railings and stuff, but no, it doesn't matter. I've been in one of those on a film set. Like, I've been pretty high up in a cherry picker. Yeah. I don't have a big heights thing, but I was still kind of like, well, if this thing something happened, I would be in bad shape. Right. Imagine if you actually were also afraid of heights. You had, like, the rational fear and then the irrational fear combined. But yes, some of them do have this with the ladder. The ladder will go up, and then it's usually on a turntable, which is basically a gear that moves it left and right. But with one of those cherry pickers, usually it's an arm that has at least one or two joints in it. You can kind of move that thing all over. Like one of those 1980s robot arms. Yeah. You got a little joystick. Yeah. And it's just like playing a video game. It's like a rock on soccer robot, but with a fire. But the 1960s is where we really sort of got to where we are now with the modern fire engine. And since then, it's just gotten even better. They're not all red. Yeah. If you don't have a red fire engine, though, it's like, what are you doing? I like those white ones. Do you? Yeah, they're kind of cool. I seem communist to me. Or the yellow ones. What is that? Yeah, I've seen yellow ones. I think. I have to say, Charles, when I was researching this article, there is no more guarantee of local press coverage than a city buying a new fire truck. Yeah. I cannot tell you how many entries there are for different towns around the country. Look what we got. Fire department debuts new fire trucks. Yeah. They're all so shiny, all the chrome. They're like, look at how much it costs. And it's all ours because it's taxpayer owned. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I think it's cute. I would love to do another follow up at some point on, like, fire houses, because the whole thing there's something about being a kid. You're just enthralled by it. Yeah. Because you walk by there's one right there in Oakhurst behind where all the restaurants are. So people with kids are constantly walking by this thing, and the doors always open. Smells like chilly. And the firefighters are always sitting around like I mean, obviously, unless they're on an active fire, they look like they're just enjoying each other. And they always smile and invite the kids in and to take a look, and it's such a cool job. Come on in, have some chili. I love it. Is there a cooler job where you're putting your life on the line, but you're still just like I've been on military basis. Those people aren't just hanging out. There's no chili on a military basis. There's canned chili in your backpack. Yes, I know, but you don't want that. That's just to keep you alive. See, rations something joyful about that chili. I don't know. I think you make a good point. Do you want to take a break? I do. All right, let's take a break and we'll talk about what's on these amazing trucks. 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 cityadvantage Platinum Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more at City comAdventure and travel on with Cityadvantage. 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. Okay, everybody, let's get down to it. What's on fire? Let's start with the fire engine. This is how stuff works article. Was it dry? It was dry. There was a lot of what's it called? I guess a lot of conflation, where basically they make it sound like it's all just on one truck. And I guess it was, because I think they made a visit to a North Carolina fire department to look at their truck and then based the entire article on that. But right now it was kind of funny. And then there was this thing, and then there was this thing, basically. And this thing was cool. And then they had a thing here. Yeah. And they let me sit and run the siren. But again, they're all shapes and sizes. Right. That's my point. I think this is sort of just a standard when you see a standard fire engine, you can count on a lot of this stuff being on it. Is that okay? Yeah. So one thing that you're going to have on an engine is a big tank of water. This is an engine, mostly. Right. But you also have the ability, and this is really neat. If there's a lake nearby or swimming pool even, or obviously fire hydrants are handy. You can suck water from those things and use it, but it doesn't just go straight into a hose. It runs through the truck and then through the I mean, there are hoses that attach to this stuff or suck it out, but you're running it through the central engine so you can regulate all that stuff. Right. And like, an engine has three components. Like every fire engine has at least three components. A tank filled with water that it transports to the fire, a pump that pressurizes that water from being pumped out and then lines or hoses that the pumped out water shoots from onto the fire. So many hoses. A lot of different hoses. This article spelled out every single one of them. Yeah, and what I gathered, too, was they want options. Options so they can have speed, speed, speed, right. So hoses, like, they'll have the big huge 500 footer, but then in compartments they'll have 25 footers and 50 footers because they just want to be able to get water the fastest possible way. And that's not all the times with the longest hose. Yeah, and it's also not necessarily the hose with the widest diameter that's the best for the job. Right. It could be a smaller fire, so you don't need quite as much water. So there is a lot of split second decision but decisions in hoes selection, basically. And from what I gather, the fire captain is telling the crew we're probably going to need these hoses. You take this hose, you take that hose, ready, break kind of thing on the way to the fire. Right. So it's not like the individual firefighters are necessarily deciding for themselves. Although I could be wrong I don't know. I'm totally speaking out of turn, but just cobbling together separate facts. That's the impression I have. Yeah, I think you're right. Obviously, when they get there, there's an assessment period that's super fast, really fast on the way. I think you're right. I think they have an idea because they've been radioed. We've got an apartment building that's four stories and this many units, and the fire is largely on the top floors. So on the way, the captain who sits in the passenger seat is radioing to the firefighters in what's called the jump seat area, which is that little area behind, which carries like, what, six people? Four to six people. There's up to like, eight people in a fire engine, from what I see. So they're radioing back and saying, all right, when we hit the ground, we're going to need 3100 footers, and there are different ports on the sides or the back of the top of the fire engine. It's not just like, well, there's only one area where we can get this water. Again, they just want all sorts of options. So when they get there, they can kind of hit the ground running, right? So they literally hit the ground running when they get there. The House of Works article made it sound like the driver is invariably the pump operator. I don't know if that's true or not, but there is somebody who's designated the motor pump operator the NPO. Look at you. They hop out and they jump up onto the truck and they start the pump. And the first thing that happens when that pump starts, at the very least this house, the Forks article, had a truck that had an impeller water pump on it. And it uses centrifugal force like it's rotors like a turbine, basically spinning really fast. And when water hits it, it slings it outside. And in doing so, the centrifugal force applied to it creates pressure. So it pressurizes the water and they open the valve in the tank. Because remember, they've got maybe 1000 gallons of water, right? It kind of depends, but yeah, that's a lot of water. It's a ton of water. And they turn the pump on and they open the valve that dumps the tank, the water from the tank onto the pump so that's being pressurized and then the pump sends it out to the hoses. The reason that they do this is they want to be able to start dowsing this fire with water immediately. But at the same time they're also looking around for the fire hydrant to connect to for, like you said, a pond to drain from a swimming pool nearby. They can drain your swimming pool if they need to. Yeah. If you're the homeowner, what are you going to do? Get that out of my pool. I don't like that neighbor that much. Yeah, but they're looking for other sources of water and they can actually set up something called a drop tank, which is basically a Collapsible portable pool above ground pool. Is that what that is? Yeah. Okay, that was a little confusing. It was a little confusing, but yeah, it's just something that just is semi rigid that you stand up and other fire trucks can come in from other areas and dump their tanks into the pool. And then you've got the main fire truck drawing water out of it. So it's like a temporary holding facility, but you're looking for another source of water because if you have 1000 gallon tank and you're using one of the hose lines that spewing out 1000 gallons a minute, you have 1 minute of water. Do the math. You need a lot more than that. So that's just basically to get things started while the other firefighters on the engine hop off and start connecting to another source of water, whether it's a fire hydrant or a Ponder swimming pool. Yeah. I would like to hear from some firefighters about use of the onboard water versus drawn water, but I have a feeling you're probably right. Is that that's just for the immediate like, while you're getting hooked up to the hydrant, we're going to go ahead and douse this thing. Yeah. Time is of the essence. Time is of the essence. Of course. So all these lines, it's really kind of beautiful in its simplicity. These lines are color coded, so the hoses and the lines all have colors so the person up there doesn't have to like again, with time being of the essence, it's very simple, which, because they're in control up there on that board of which hoses are being enacted at any given time. Right. And there are relief valves built in, so if you shut off one hose, the other one doesn't go, whoa, double the pressure. Yeah. All of a sudden, all the water is going into that one turns into, like, a cartoon fire hose. Yeah, it was, like, eight people. It's like that. What was it? Roxanne. The Steve Martin movie? Yeah. Did that happen in that? Yeah, it was sort of the updated version of Sierra no, dersurreck. Oh, I'm familiar. No, but I couldn't pronounce it. Right, you did it. But they were firefighters. Right, but did they end up, like, being lifted off of their feet? There were some funny scenes where Steve Martin's, like, on the telephone and in the background at a practice fire, like, zaniness is going on. I'm surprised. In the background? I don't remember that at all. It was a good movie. I think I blocked that out. The whole movie. At least that part. Yeah. All right. So that's what's going on with the water. There's also foam, like you were talking about. These days, this fire retardants do a great job. Sometimes they'll spray it on to make sure something doesn't catch on fire. I don't get the picture that it's always to put out a fire. Is that right? I think they use foam to make sure stuff doesn't reignite. Yes. Depending on the type of foam or depending on the type of fire, you'll use a different type of foam. Right. Like one prevents combustible. Class A, I think, is to prevent reignition. Right. Of maybe like, a hot wood fire. Maybe. It says here Class B is more for car fires. Or if there's, like, gasoline that could ignite. Yes, and I was looking into it very I think, actually foam deserves its own podcast, because apparently it's like firefox are super toxic, I'm sure, and routinely destroys water supplies when it gets in it. But I also saw that they make some from proteins, which is natural, so I'm sure it's fine. You can probably eat it after a fire or something. What does that mean? Is it like we turned a cow into foam glues from Jello? Yeah, she still shown jello. Did we? I think we did. No, that was Lego. No, dude. I think we did remember Jello molds. Did we? Yes. Oh, good Lord. Oh, it was a good one, if I remember correctly. I have. No memory of that. I really believe that we did an episode on Jello. All right. And I think it was good. So this is why when people ask us on stage, what was your favorite episode? It's like I say disco every single time because it's the only one I can remember routinely. But there's so many, literally hundreds of episodes that I love that we've done, which makes me feel very proud of our work. The fact that we don't look back on it and say, like, just jackhammers, basically. I think it's great. I agree. Not to pat ourselves on the back or break our arms doing so. I'm just saying I'm kind of proud of what we've done over the last decade. Chuck agreed. Congratulations. Congratulations. Chuck forgot that she's got a salad she's eating. She's not even paying attention. So hoses are called wines, I think, on the job. Like firefighters. They don't call them hoses. No, they call them wine. Yeah, you're a chump if you call it a hose. Hey, what kind of hose is that? You'll get laughed out of fire. So crossway hoses are hoses? Well, I think that are laid on the ground. Is that right? I believe that they are coiled up, laying over one another, and they're easy to get to on the side of the truck. You could just grab the end of it and run. Okay. And they may even be pre connected. There's a type of hose that's pretty appropriately named pre connect. It's already connected. So if you're the pump operator and you see one of your guys running with the preconnect three, you turn on indigo lever three. That's right. Maybe yellow four, whatever it is. And now all of a sudden, they've got water coming through it. Yeah. They have booster lines. I mean, again, we're not going to go through all these different lines, but it's just very easy to say. They all vary in diameter and length, depending on what your needs are. Depending on the diameter. That will determine how much water can come through at a time. Sure. And some of them are up to 1000 gallons a minute. That's a lot of juice. But again, that's your whole tank in a minute. And I was like, Gosh, that's so fast. That must be like a whole Olympic pool in an hour or something. No, it's 11 hours. So if you're a firefighter and you are putting out a fire next to an Olympic sized pool, you're like jackpot. Yeah. 11 hours worth of water. Yeah. Swimmers are bummed, though. Yeah. How long it would take to fill those things up? Well, it depends on what kind of hose I'm sorry, line. Right? Yeah. The real fun part. Though. Like if every child in adult alike always wants to look at that deluge gun. And that is the thing that is not a hose. But it is the thing that sits atop the fire engine that is like sort of the equivalent of the Gatlin gun on top of the tank in warfare. That you can just point that thing and water is being sucked from the hydrant straight through. So it's regulated into that Deluge Gun and just massive, massive amounts of water can go really high and far. Yeah, it's kind of that simple. It is. And I imagine that's I don't know if everyone I am curious to hear from firefighters. Like, if you have a permanent designation or if it's a tiered thing, like you work your way up to deluge's Gun, or if that's the lowest job. I would guess not. It's because you're just there on the truck. Or maybe the more experienced firefighters are on that ladder going into the building, or if they just take turns or draw straws. That's? What? I don't know. I don't know either. But I would guess that if you're manning the day or humaning the Deluge Gun, you are pretty experienced because you've got basically the whole truck's worth of water at your fingertips or whatever. Water. All the water in the world. Sure. Connected. But if you haven't connected up yet and they're like, start with the Delouge Gun. Right. Which, from what I understand, would be something that they would do because you use the Deluge Gun to kind of dampen down a fire. Yeah, that initial thing, you can get closer to it with the lines and the personnel. So it might be like the first thing you hit a fire with, depending on so maybe the most experienced firefighter, because if you put the rookie back there, they're like, that building is not even on fire. Right. Jackson. You're pointing the wrong way. Jackson because they go by last name. Sure. I think somebody there's got to be a firefighter named Jackson. Firefighter Jackson. The rookie again, more hoses. They have hoses called curb jumpers because they're on the curb. They have hoses that are just carried up like that you can put over your shoulder. It's called a hose pack. It's like all bundled together. So you might carry that on your shoulder up the ladder in order to once you get in there, you're like, I need another 50ft of hose, man. I'm inside. And you've got one slung over your shoulder. Bam. Bundled together, ready to go. They also have hoses that will run up ladders. Too yeah, so there's a line that will run alongside the ladder, usually a five inch diameter line, which I think a ID. Okay. I think pumps 250 gallons a minute. Just significant. That's a lot of water. But they do that so that you can shoot water down onto a fire, which can be helpful for, like, a roof fire or something like that. And then they also have a lot of different nozzles. Too oh, sure. A different nozzle does different jobs. Like, if you have a piercing nozzle, I hadn't heard about one of these. They sound extremely dangerous. It can shoot right through walls, and I'm guessing like, drywall walls. Probably not a brick wall, but who knows? I'm sure it could shoot right through a window. But if you have a fire in another room and you can't get to it, you just use one of those piercing nozzles and it shoots right through the wall. You know what I call that if I was a fire person? What? A Master Blaster. Nice. Get the Master Blaster up here, we got to shoot through some sheet rock. Wasn't that the guy with the small guy controlling the bigger guy in beyond the Thunderdome? Right? That was the only one they appeared in, wasn't it? Yeah, you just nailed all of that. Thank you. I didn't spoil beyond the Thunderdome, did it? Yeah, except you have to say it like Tina Turner. You have to say mastablasta. I can't improve on what you just did. And then there's the ladders. Of course, like you said, some of these bad boys can go like 150ft in the air via hydraulics, which is totally frightening. If you're going that high up, the truck is going to have what are called outriggers, and those are basically just these huge, heavy metal legs that come out from the side of the truck and land on the ground. To really stabilize that truck, they expand its center of gravity so it doesn't tip, but they add so much pressure and force. Oh, man. They actually have to put down pads in between the outrigger and the ground so it doesn't just go right through the ash, crush the concrete, sidewalk. Yeah, it's pretty cool. This is all cool. Yeah. It's so funny how the little kid comes out when you start talking about this stuff. Just like big, heavy things. You want to take an ad break? I need to settle down. Yeah, we need to put our inner five year olds in time out. 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. 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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. Okay, we're back. Our inner five year olds are being very quiet again. They're behaving yes. So we've got the fire engine done, ladder truck done, basically. Right? That ladder is telescoped up. You got the outriggers in place. It's a four alarm fire, and things are going well. So you're probably going to see other fire trucks show up. Yes. This is the classic literal version of the fire truck, which is basically a human and equipment transporter. That's what it's for. Yeah. And if you look at a fire truck and they've got all those compartments running along the sides, they are all full of goodies sandy. Yeah. All kinds of fun stuff. Baby lamb. You're talking about the nozzles, of course. There's something called a barrel strainer. So if you have to throw if you have to suck water out of a lake, you don't want to suck up fish through there. No. While that would be kind of funny looking, it'd be mean. It would be super mean. Have you ever seen video of a salmon ladder? No. I've seen that. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Yeah. Fish ladders. But when they it's not seed of stock when they stock a lake. Oh, yeah. Sometimes they do it from airplanes. And have you seen the one of the closest of the fish is going like, I have not. It's something to see. It's either animal abuse or it's a wild ride. The fish is like, man, that's cool. I think it's both. Yeah. And now I'm in a big new home. Yeah. And then someone will catch me by putting a hook through my mouth. Right. And they're like, you'll never roll your fire here. Emily gets so sad when she sees fisher fisher people. She just can't help but think of the fish even catch and release. Yes. And I've said that it's like, what about catcher and leash? She's like, well, would you want someone to hook you, pull you out of the water, and then just remove the hook and throw you back in? She makes a good point. She does. What else? There's all sorts of tools to bust through walls and pull down ceilings. Yeah. Okay, let's put this out there. If you show up on a fire engine, your job is to run lines. You're running the pump. You're the captain, being like, do this, do that. Somebody light my cigar, that kind of thing. If you show up on a ladder, truck, you're probably working a ladder. If you show up on a fire truck, you are there to work the fire. You're there to rescue people inside the fire. Yes. Same with the ladder truck, probably, too. You're there to manage the fire. You're tracking it to see if it's moving from one place to another or if it's starting to die down. You're in there pulling down sheetrock with a pike pole. Yeah. If you're pulling it from the ceiling or a halogen tool. Yeah. If you're pulling walls down, that may be halligan, actually. Probably, yeah. Sounds Irish, right? Sure. Which, by the way, I want to say rescue Me is probably the greatest firefighter related TV show of all time. I've never seen it. The Dennis Leary show. I know the show I've never seen. It was really good. Really? Yeah. It was bonkers, but it was very good. Dennis Leary does a great job. I'm surprised you watched that. It just doesn't seem like a Josh show. Yeah, I was into it for a while. That and then the Shield, too. Interesting. Yeah. All right. You know me that much better now, drawing these years. So it probably is a halligan tool, is my point. But you're in there if you're a firefighter who showed up on a fire truck, you're messing with the fire to make it easier for the line operators to get water onto the fire where it's needed, right? Yes, exactly. Depending on how advanced your truck or how much dough your municipality has, you might have the Jaws of Life on your truck, which I thought about. I even looked up that article to see if that was worth doing one on. Well, it may just be 30 minutes of us talking about how the fact that it is a super powerful hydraulic powered can opener okay. It might have been like, jackhammers. Okay. No, we'll steer clear of that. Yes. But the Jaws of Life everyone knows, is that super high powered hydraulic can opener that can cut someone out of a car. Right. Which is great. Exhaust fans. Never really thought about that. But there are a couple of types of fans. An exhaust fan is when you would put in an entryway to suck out smoke. They also have positive pressure fans to blow air through and out the other side. And I imagine they can work in concert with one another, depending on their placement. Do you remember Greg, who was an illustrator for a while, too? It's like Illustrator Day that worked with us. Yeah. He had a house fire, and he said his house is generally fine, but the insurance company is considering totaling his house just because of the smoke damage. It just gets everywhere. I'm sure it smells like that forever. Yes. And you can't do anything about it. It's actually really not good for you to, like, live with that, as it's dissipating for years and years and years. I never really thought about that. You always think, like, no, the structure is damaged and compromised, but the structure can be intact and the smoke can total a house. When I worked as a PA, I did an Errand one time for a very not wealthy, but a pretty rich producer to his condo in Santa Monica, which had to have cost, like, a couple of million bucks. And I walked in by myself. He wasn't there. He gave me the keys, and it was the stinkiest. He was a smoked cigarette smoker, and he had been smoking in that place with the window shut for years. And this $2 million suite oceanview condo was the most disgusting. It smelled like a bar. Like, the next morning, it's ruined. Ruined. And I just can't imagine, like, do you desensitize to smoke? It doesn't matter if he not notice it or just not care. No, he doesn't notice it. Interesting. He does not notice it. Maybe if he comes back from a vacation or something, you might be like, it smells a little, like, vaguely smoky. I better get it going again, or something. Oh, man, it was so stale and gross, man. If he wants to sell it, you would have to sell it to a smoker, because any savvy person who understands the health risks of that is like, this place is done. You would have to pull up the floors, pull out the walls, pull out the ceiling, just strip it to its bones and rebuild it from scratch. I just remember thinking, man, and he had a balcony, and it's la. Oh, that is so lazy. It's so lazy. Yeah. What else do they have? Bolt cutters, sledgehammers chainsaws, small ladders. You see them running with a ladder over their shoulder, like a ten or twelve footer. They still have those little guys. Sure. And it's all very useful. They basically have everything. A lot of them have EMS equipment or repelling rope. It's just like everything you can think of, basically, to save lives. That's why you'll see, like, a fire truck at the scene of a heart attack or something like that, because the ambulance might actually not have everything they need for a medical emergency, so they'll send a fire truck out, which seems like a colossal waste of resources and money, but I think something you said earlier might explain it a little bit. They're a little bit bored. Maybe they're like, oh, heart attack, let's go. I'm sure it's nothing like that. Okay. What my hope is from the show that we'll hear from firefighters that are like, you guys got kind of most of it right, and thanks for shining a light on us. It's the best we can hope for. Have you heard of did you look up these tiller trucks? Like, the coolest job is to drive the back of that thing, like Cramer? Yeah, those are called tiller trucks, and tiller drivers drive them, and it's a little cockpit one person cockpit. I got this from hot Rod magazine, and you have to, of course, take a certification test to make sure you can drive it. And as everyone knows or maybe you may not know this, but the whole trick to those things is you got to get in your head that you steer opposite. So when you're making a right hand turn up front, you've got to turn that wheel left. I could not do this. I don't have that kind of coordination. It would be tough, huh? Yeah. Did you do it? Yeah. I mean, I think you get used to it if that's your job. Sure. Like, you wouldn't want to be, like, right again, but when you're driving your car, you just crash into stuff all the time. Maybe it'd be tough. I think, like, you got to be able to flick that switch in your head, because obviously, if they're turning right, you're turning that back wheel left. It makes it much more maneuverable. Right. And apparently, as long as they are, if you've got an experienced tiller person back there, they are really super maneuverable on city street. Well, that's why they exist. Yeah. It's like it's way easier to get a very long truck that's cut into two that can take tight corners rather than one long truck. That's one long length of truck. Yeah, that's the whole reason they're there. I never understood that until, like, yesterday. Yeah. And apparently, they really work well in cities, especially. And here's a couple of little tricks that I never thought about. There is a light on a rod on top of the front cab, and that's there for the tiller steerer to look at as their center point. That's how they center their wheels. Okay. Got you. And if they make a turn, they count because you got to straighten back out afterward. They count, like, two and a half rotations on the wheel for this turn. So two and a half back in the other direction to get straight again. You're actually making me anxious right now. I'm imagining myself having to do this. I go on the way to a fire on a busy city street. Well, they're usually apparently the first person up the ladder, too, so that is not the job for you tiller driver and ladder guy. I just feel like I quit. Yeah. And it's funny. They interviewed and took, like, a course test, the Hot Rod author, and they asked, well, what happens if you turn it the wrong way? And they're like, well, then you're on the curb, and you're knocking out cars, and people, they're like, it's not good. Pretty cool, though. Yeah, I think they said. Here's another stat the operating angle for a ladder, normal operating angle is about 65 to 70 degrees, and the biggest hassle of the ladders is wiring. Oh, I I could bet. Don't think about that. You don't want to get it tangled up. No good. Very interesting. Yeah. You got anything else on fire trucks? No. I want to try out Tiller truck. I wonder if they let civilians like us just, like, get out in a big closed down parking lot. It probably depends on the level of corruption of the mayor of the town that the fire truck lives in. Well, they let the hot rod magazine guy do it. Oh, he's a journal. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, they cooked it up for, like we could probably cook up a reason, right? Yeah. We'll be like, we're doing another episode on fire trucks and we need to do this test. Yeah. And they went, don't you mean fire twucks like, you're speaking our language, buddy. If you want to know more about firewalks, go down to your local fire station, maybe ask them for some chili you'll love. You ask them for a tour. I guarantee you, if they're not busy, they'll say, sure, come on in. And they'll probably give you some chili without asking. Yes. And since I said chili, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one on Warmasks. I thought that was pretty good episode. Hot off the presses. Yes, it was a good episode. Chuck. Greetings from Dublin. Hey, guys. Fairly recent listener. I moved to Ireland from the UK about a year ago, and not knowing many people, you guys have kept me provided a real comfort for me. I just listened to the episode on Warmass, something I already kind of knew about. I used to work for a publisher specializing in military history, and while I found the glorification of war a bit sickening, it was weirdly interesting to me the effect of injury, mental and physical, on the soldiers. We published a book called The Whistler's Room about so called deformed German soldiers. And she puts that in quotes as if to say it's not proper nomenclature. Care quote? Yeah. Getting medical treatment at a hospital before heading back out into the wider world. The men were called Whistlers because during the injury, they could not breathe through their mouths or noses, instead had holes cut in their throats, which created a whistling noise. The book in turn, led me to a film called The Officer's Ward. It's a French film. Lachampre de Alphacia. Wow. Based on a novel? Based on a true story and following a French military engineer who suffered extreme injury to his face and throat on his first day of action in World War I. And his treatment involved facial trauma and a war mask. The ingenuity, compassion and perseverance showed by the doctors and nurses was apparently very accurate, as where the treatment shown it is utterly compelling, heartbreaking, and I recommend it 100%. That is from Hannah McAdams. Keep up the cracking work. I love that. So it's called the Officers Award. French film. I'm going to check it out. Yeah, for sure. Or the Chambra? The officer. Okay. I think you did it better. Chuck, good work. Thanks, Hannah. Great name, too. Hannah McAdams kind of like rolls off the tongue like a punch. Yes. If you want to get in touch with us, like Hannah McAdams did, you can find us@stuffyshow.com. All of our social links are there, or you can send us all an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstep works.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. There's a perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. 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." |
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